Endorsing Hitler by Name: Iran's State Media Drops Its Line Between Judaism and Zionism
An Iranian daily outside the hardline core has endorsed Adolf Hitler’s view of the Jews by name. On October 6, Jomhouri-ye Eslami, a paper of the traditional clerical establishment, published an unsigned house editorial built around a fabricated Hitler speech and argued that the record of the Jews confirms what he said about them. The editorial is the sharpest item in a wider October pattern across state television, IRGC-affiliated channels, social media and the front pages of several dailies. We assess with high confidence that the regime’s formal distinction between Judaism, a recognized minority religion, and Zionism, which it calls a colonial project, is breaking down in its own media. The timing coincides with acute economic strain and the October 7 anniversary, but the evidence does not show a coordinated campaign. No measures against Iran’s small Jewish community have been reported.
A Long-Standing Theme in a New Setting
Antisemitic tropes and Holocaust denial have been part of the Islamic Republic’s public discourse for decades. They have appeared in official speeches and state newspapers, at the 2006 Tehran conference that questioned the Holocaust and in repeated Holocaust cartoon contests. The regime’s formal position nonetheless separates Zionism from Judaism. Iran’s Jews are a recognized religious minority with a reserved seat in the Majlis, and officials routinely cite them as proof that Tehran’s quarrel is with Israel alone. In practice, public messaging has often blurred the two.
The October material arrives during war and economic contraction. The United States launched Operation Economic Outcast on August 24, 2026. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control blocked nearly 60 entities, individuals and vessels, suspended several general licenses and exposed five more sectors (aviation, digital assets, gold, shipping and technology) to secondary sanctions. A shadow-fleet designation followed on October 8. Reuters puts September inflation at 73.6 percent, the IMF projects a 7.6 percent contraction in 2026 and the free-market dollar trades near 265,000 tomans. The same pressures run through the October 15 Economic Press Review.
The Jomhouri-ye Eslami Editorial
Jomhouri-ye Eslami was founded in 1979 as the organ of the Islamic Republican Party, and it still speaks for the old clerical establishment. It often criticizes the hardline camp. On October 15, for example, its front page carried a signed column condemning divisiveness in the name of revolutionary zeal. The editorial of October 6 (14 Mehr 1405), titled “Rootless World-Devourers,” is unsigned and therefore speaks for the paper. The news aggregator Akharin Khabar republished it.
The editorial opens with a speech it attributes to Hitler in 1941. In the passage, Hitler calls “Israel” a small group of animal-natured and satanic people without a homeland and says he ordered them massacred, except for a few left alive so that future generations would understand what kind of people they were. No such speech exists. The text names a state founded seven years later, and its closing line follows a fabricated Hitler quotation that has circulated on Arabic- and Persian-language social media for years. The paper presents the invention as history.
From this passage the editorial draws three lessons, all of them about the Jews as a people. The first is that Europe suffered from the Jews in the first half of the twentieth century and sent them to Palestine to rid itself of them, a claim the paper ties to the more than 75,000 deaths in Gaza. The second is that the Jews seek to take possession of the world, which the paper says Netanyahu’s talk of a Greater Israel now proves. The third is that Hitler was right to describe the Jews as a people without a homeland. The editorial concludes that whatever one thinks of Hitler, his view of the Jews cannot be ignored, and that their conduct “confirms one hundred percent everything Hitler said about this criminal people.” It ends by calling for the hatred nations now feel toward the Zionists to be intensified until Zionism is uprooted.
What the Text Does
Three features set the editorial apart from the regime’s usual output. First, it uses “Jews” and “Zionists” interchangeably, so its attack falls on a people. Second, it quotes Hitler ordering a massacre and endorses his reasoning. Its only reservation, that readers may judge Hitler as they wish, stops short of the killing itself. Third, it recycles the classic European charges of rootlessness, world domination and inborn malice, and it offers Gaza and Greater Israel as evidence.
The usual formula in the Iranian press combines anti-Zionism with Holocaust “questioning.” This editorial goes further and adopts the Nazi view of Jews as its own. The choice of paper adds to the significance. Language of this kind has long appeared in Kayhan and IRGC outlets, and its appearance in a traditional conservative daily that often attacks the hardliners shows that it now reaches well beyond them.
A Wider October Pattern
The editorial is part of a broader set of items across Iranian media this month.
The Khazar campaign. The IRGC-affiliated Ofogh channel aired a “War Headquarters” segment by commentator Ahmad Kazemi on what it called a Zionist plot to rename the Caspian Sea, known in Persian as Khazar. Kazemi argued that using the non-Iranian word Khazar helps Israel’s case. On October 13, state television began labeling the sea “Caspian” on its weather maps, according to Iran International. The political geographer Pirouz Mojtahedzadeh objected that the change weakens Iran’s position against efforts to rename the Persian Gulf. The campaign borrows from the antisemitic Khazar myth, which holds that European Jews descend from the medieval Khazars in order to sever their link to the Land of Israel, and recasts it as a story about Israeli designs on the Caucasus.
Holocaust denial on social media. A video of about two and a half minutes, circulating on Instagram, shows a speaker dressed as Hitler answering an interviewer. He recites the standard denial script: the six million figure is invented, gas chambers were too costly to build in wartime, no trace of the bodies exists and the crematoria burned typhus victims. He cites Peter Novick’s “The Holocaust in American Life” and notes that its author is Jewish. Novick wrote about the politics of Holocaust memory in the United States and never denied the Holocaust. The report found no sign of official objection to the video.
The front pages of October 15. Several threads ran across the day’s press. Khorasan led with a headline calling Azerbaijan’s school hijab ban the Zionist project “Ilham,” a play on President Ilham Aliyev’s first name, and Kayhan International ran a viewpoint on Zionist war criminals manipulating Azerbaijan. Our October 14 Iranian Press Monitor tracked how four outlets assigned Israeli authorship to the ban without evidence. Al-Wefaq devoted its cover to Yahya Sinwar, and Kayhan’s front page quoted John Mearsheimer describing the October 7 attack as a legal act. Farhikhtegan interviewed Antony Loewenstein, author of “The Palestine Laboratory,” and Jomhouri-ye Eslami ran a piece arguing that even Israelis consider their state an occupier. The report notes an old pattern here: Jewish critics of Israel are used to validate a message that elsewhere attacks Jews as a people. The press handling of the anniversary itself is covered in the October 7 Iranian Press Monitor.
The Jews of Iran
The 2016 census counted fewer than 10,000 Jews in Iran. The community holds one reserved Majlis seat, filled by Homayoun Sameh, who also heads the Tehran Jewish Committee. On April 7, 2026, an Israeli strike on a neighboring target destroyed the Rafi’-Nia synagogue in central Tehran; the IDF described the damage as collateral. Culture Minister Abbas Salehi, First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref and Mohammad Javad Zarif condemned the strike, and Sameh said Israel had not spared the Jewish community even during its holidays.
The regime points to this community as evidence that its hostility is directed at Zionism alone. None of the October material names Iranian Jews, and no new measure against the community has been reported. However, the same system whose officials condemned the synagogue’s destruction in April now hosts media that attack Jews as a people, and that contradiction erodes the community’s value to the regime as proof of a purely anti-Zionist stance.
Abroad, British investigators link a 2026 series of arson and stabbing attacks on Jewish targets in London to a group called HAYI, which they believe is a front for the IRGC. Two men charged in March under the National Security Act over surveillance of Jewish targets deny the charges, Bloomberg reported on October 9.
Assessment
The October material is more explicit than the regime’s usual output. A daily outside the hardline core has endorsed Hitler by name and called the Jews a criminal people, an IRGC channel has turned a place name into a Jewish plot and state television has acted on it. Holocaust denial circulates on social media without visible official objection.
Two drivers are plausible. The war and the economic collapse make an external enemy useful, and the October 7 anniversary gives the press a fixed date for anti-Israel themes. External scapegoats have risen alongside domestic hardship before. However, the evidence does not show a central directive. The items come from outlets with different owners and factional loyalties, and they do not share sourcing. In the report’s judgment, that diversity makes the trend more significant, because it points to a shared vocabulary across the system. The breadth recalls the cross-factional response to Secretary Rubio’s Athens speech, covered in Xerxes Strikes Back, although the October material targets a people and that episode did not.
The bottom line is that the regime’s claimed distinction between Judaism and Zionism is collapsing in its own media. The immediate risk to Iran’s Jewish community appears limited, since no measures against it have been reported. Even so, the rhetorical ground for treating Iran’s Jews as a fifth column is being laid.
Key Points
- A mainstream Iranian daily has endorsed Hitler’s view of the Jews by name and called for intensified hatred. The Jomhouri-ye Eslami editorial of October 6 calls Hitler’s understanding of the Jews correct and says their record confirms it (high confidence).
- The editorial rests on an invented quotation and fuses Jews with Zionists throughout. The supposed 1941 speech names a state that did not yet exist, its final line matches a long-circulating fake and all three of its lessons concern the Jews (high confidence).
- Antisemitic content now appears in pragmatic and state outlets as well as the hardline core. The pattern spans Jomhouri-ye Eslami, state television weather maps, the Khorasan and Kayhan front pages, IRGC-affiliated Ofogh and a Holocaust-denial video on Instagram (moderate confidence).
- The timing matches acute economic strain and the October 7 anniversary, but a coordinated campaign is not proven. Inflation stands at 73.6 percent and the IMF forecasts a 7.6 percent contraction under Operation Economic Outcast and the naval blockade. No directive or common sourcing has been identified (moderate confidence).
- The regime’s use of Iran’s Jews as evidence of a purely anti-Zionist stance is weakening. Officials condemned the destruction of the Rafi’-Nia synagogue in April, and media within the same system now attack Jews as a people (moderate confidence).
What to Watch
- Iran’s Jewish leadership. Statements by Homayoun Sameh or the Tehran Jewish Committee, including any pressure on them to endorse or condemn the editorial.
- Official voices. Holocaust denial or references to Hitler by officials, Friday prayer leaders or the Leader’s office would show the language moving from the press into the state.
- Reaction inside Iran. Any response or retraction from Jomhouri-ye Eslami, or criticism of the editorial from other Iranian outlets or public figures.
- State-backed events. A revival of Holocaust cartoon contests or similar events.
- The Caucasus file. Further Khazar or Greater Israel themes in coverage of Azerbaijan and the Caucasus.
- Legal pressure at home. Espionage arrests or legal action involving Iranian Jews.
- Plots abroad. Iran-linked plots against Jewish targets outside Iran, and the progress of the London trial.
This special report is based on a briefing note on antisemitic propaganda and Holocaust denial in Iranian state media dated October 15, 2026 (23 Mehr 1405), with appendices translating the Jomhouri-ye Eslami editorial and the Holocaust-denial video. Sources cited in the report include the Persian original of the editorial and its Akharin Khabar republication, Iran International (October 13), Davis Polk’s client note on Operation Economic Outcast (August 27), Bloomberg (October 9), reporting on the destruction of the Rafi’-Nia synagogue and the October 15 front pages of Khorasan, Kayhan, Kayhan International, Al-Wefaq, Farhikhtegan and Jomhouri-ye Eslami. Economic figures are from Reuters and the IMF as cited in the report. Translations from the Persian are the report’s own. The one verbatim quote is from the editorial, as translated in the report; all other statements are paraphrased. The report identifies no central directive behind the material, and the attribution of the London attacks to an IRGC front is the view of British investigators.