Gary Willig – October 13, 2021
Iranian Vice President for Economic Affairs Mohsen Rezaee warned that the country’s 10,000 Jews were hostage against Israel, Iranian opposition groups and the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported.
The “Iranian Regime Countdown” organization wrote a post on its Telegram account on Monday that Rezaee said in a speech that “he Israeli government knows very well that if it makes a mistake, the regime will treat the 10,000 Jews living in Iran differently.”
Rezaee, a former head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, made the remarks in an address to the members of the Tharollah Tehran organization.
According to Iranian Regime Countdown, this is the first time Iran has threatened the country’s Jewish community instead of threatening Israel directly.
Rezaee has made similar threats to take large numbers of hostages in the past. In June, Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-born journalist living in the US, reported that Rezaee had threatened to take 1,000 Americans hostage in order to blackmail the US into providing relief for Iran’s struggling economy. Rezaee stated at the time that he would demand $1 billion for each hostage.
In January 2020, Rezaee threatened to “turn Tel Aviv and Haifa to dust” if the US attacked Iran.