Israeli strike destroys Tehran's historic Rafi-Nia synagogue, scattering a community's heritage

In the early hours of April 7, three Israeli missiles struck the end of Malek Lane, a quiet cul-de-sac near Tehran's historic centre. The target, according to the Israeli military, was a senior commander of Iran's armed forces, Khatam al-Anbiya. The casualty was the Rafi-Nia synagogue, a modest two-storey house that had served as the spiritual and social heart of the capital's Jewish community since 1958.

Marjan, a member of the Association of Jewish Graduates of Iran, arrived minutes after the blast. She found the synagogue and an adjacent residential building levelled, with pages from sacred texts scattered across neighbouring streets. Emergency crews, Red Crescent volunteers and Revolutionary Guards personnel were already picking through the debris. Residents who had fled in panic returned to recover what remained of their belongings, many in tears.

A community cornerstone lost

The building dated from the first Pahlavi dynasty. Its owner, Abdul Rahman Rafi-Nia, donated it to the Jewish community in 1958. Beyond religious services, it hosted the Association of Jewish Graduates, a kosher vegetarian restaurant in the basement, and served as an open door for local families. There was no external sign marking it as a synagogue, a common precaution for Jewish sites in Iran.

Narciss M. Sohrabi, a researcher at the Ladyss laboratory in Paris and the Centre for Iranian Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, has spent years documenting Jewish community spaces in Tehran. She described the building as almost invisible, tucked away at the end of a dead-end street. "How could a small, modest, almost invisible building have been targeted?" she asked.

Race to save the scrolls

Miraculously, no one was inside at the time of the strike. But the community soon realised that ancient Torah scrolls lay buried beneath tonnes of rubble. Worshippers gathered what holy books they could from the alleyway and street. Synagogue officials persuaded rescue teams to halt mechanical excavators near the Torah ark, insisting the debris be cleared by hand. After five days, the scrolls were recovered mostly intact, protected by their sturdy wooden cases.

"We knew that if the excavators continued to clear the rubble around the Torah ark, the scrolls would be destroyed. The rubble had to be removed by hand."

Collateral damage and a shrinking population

The Israeli army acknowledged responsibility in a statement to The Times of Israel, expressing regret for the collateral damage and saying precision munitions were used to minimise civilian risk. The strike has deepened anxiety within a community that has dwindled from more than 100,000 before the 1979 Islamic Revolution to an estimated 9,000 to 10,000 today. Iran still hosts the largest indigenous Jewish population in the Middle East outside Israel.

Miriam Nissimov, senior lecturer at Tel Aviv University and author of "From Cyrus to Khomeini: The Jews of Iran", notes that unlike Jews in neighbouring Arab countries, Iranian Jews did not flee en masse after Israel's creation. Emigration has been gradual, driven by attachment to a millennia-old heritage. The Iranian constitution recognises Judaism, granting the community synagogues, schools and a reserved parliamentary seat. Yet restrictions persist: Jews face barriers to senior public office, and Muslim-born citizens cannot legally convert to Judaism, according to Amnesty International. State-linked media have also propagated anti-Jewish stereotypes.

Pressure since the 2025 war

Tensions escalated after the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June 2025. The NGO Human Rights in Iran reports that at least thirty Iranian Jews were summoned for questioning by security services during that conflict, largely due to family ties in Israel. Communication with relatives abroad has become fraught; some use foreign SIM cards, others avoid answering calls from Israeli numbers. The NGO says the climate of fear is unprecedented since the revolution.

Rebuilding promises and wider neglect

In the strike's aftermath, Seyyed Reza Salehi Amiri, Iran's Minister of Tourism and Cultural Heritage, pledged to rebuild Rafi-Nia and designate it a national heritage site, partly converting it into a museum to commemorate the attack. He told the ISNA news agency the site would stand as testimony to what he called a "child-killing regime".

Human rights groups warn the reality is more complex. HRANA (Human Rights Activists in Iran) documents abandonment and damage at other minority sites, including the historic Giliard Jewish cemetery in Mazandaran province, a listed national heritage site where tombstones are broken and grounds used as illegal dumping sites. The deterioration of such sites represents not only a loss for the Jewish community but a fading piece of Iran's own history.