Remembering Iranian Jewish martyr Arvin Ghahramani

Last year during this week the genocidal Jew hating Ayatollah regime executed the innocent 20-year-old Iranian Jew Arvin Ghahramani after the regime accused him of murder. He allegedly killed a Muslim man in self-defense during an altercation. As an Iranian Jewish reporter who has covered the Jewish community living in Iran for the past 25 years, I can say Ghahramani’s sudden execution shocked Iranian Jews living in Iran, the U.S. and worldwide. The circumstances surrounding his arrest, two-year imprisonment, torture and final execution did not receive much news media exposure, but certainly cannot be ignored nor forgotten. Ghahramani’s shameful execution yet again proved that the Ayatollah regime in Iran is no friend of the Jews despite the regime’s exhaustive propaganda efforts.

Ghahramani was allegedly involved in a street brawl with a Muslim man, Amir Shokri in 2022, according to a May report from an Iran-based outlet run by human rights activists. Shokri was reportedly killed during the fight, and Ghahramani was arrested, quickly tried and sentenced, per the report. There was no evidence presented in the regime’s sham trial that Ghahramani was directly responsible for the killing. To contrary, it seemed as if he was just an easy target for the regime’s police to pin the crime on him since his face was allegedly identified by their security video during the incident. One of the most tragic aspects of his arrest and imprisonment was the fact Jewish leaders inside Iran had totally ignored Ghahramani case while he was rotting in jail for two years and being abused in jail. Shamefully they only decided to finally intervene at the last minute when his death sentence was announced. Sources closely monitoring Jews in Iran who I interviewed last year said the Jewish community members inside Iran were furious with their leaders who had not only done nothing for Ghahramani, but also kept them in the dark about the death sentence he was facing. One Iranian Jewish reporter, now based in Israel, Rosa Parto, said she realized Ghahramani had first lied to the regime’s authorities in order to avoid being physically assaulted or sexually abused in prison by the guards if they realized he was a Jew arrested for killing a Muslim. Only later on when his family and Jewish leaders came to visit him did the regime’s authorities discover he was a Jew, and matters got worse for him.

Likewise, what was most painful about Ghahramani’s case was the tremendous amount of vile Jew hatred that the regime’s officials and the Shokri family publicly spewed. Aside from my own reporting, there was never any mainstream western news media coverage of the head Islamic cleric Habibollah Ghafoori, in the city of Kermanshah, who had been whipping up public Jew-hatred in the weeks before Ghahramani’s death. Ghafoori had publicly demanded of many occasions that the young Jewish man be immediately executed. Additionally, there was never any mainstream western news media coverage of one of the Jewish community’s leader in Iran— namely, Homayoun Sameyah Najaf-Abadi, and his wife, who tried to visit the Shokri home in Kermanshah to resolve Ghahramani’s case but were chased out and threatened by the Shokri family members! While Iran’s current Sharia laws permit the family of a “victim” in Iran to ask the state-run court not to enforce a death sentence if it agrees to receive diya, or blood money, Shokri’s family refused to take what they called “impure Jewish money”. Instead, they demanded that Ghahramani be executed since he was a Jew.

Another disappointing aspect of Ghahramani’s case was the lack of real action from Iranian Jewish “leaders” in New York and Los Angeles last year to launch any sort of public campaign in the U.S. to raise attention to his pending execution. In fact they did next to nothing in the public sphere to bring about a possible postponement or cancellation of Ghahramani execution. While many Iranian American Jewish activists tried their best to raise awareness about Ghahramani’s case in the public sphere, it was not enough to place pressure on the regime to postpone or cancel his execution. While some many argue that the Ayatollah regime would have not been swayed to seek vengeance on this young Jewish man, I humbly disagree. Roughly 25 years ago, 13 Jews living in the city of Shiraz in Iran were accused of spying for Israel and faced similar potential death sentences. At that time, many brave Iranian American Jewish activists and leaders, with the help of the larger American Jewish community, launched an international public campaign to pressure the Ayatollah regime not to execute the “Shiraz 13” and it was ultimately successful. Those Jews in Shiraz had their sentences change to imprisonment and were later eventually released. Shamefully, last year the Iranian American Jewish “leaders” failed to make the same effort to save Ghahramani either due to indifference or fear that a vocal campaign against the Ayatollah regime could potentially place Iran’s remaining 5,000 to 8,000 Jews in jeopardy.

Ultimately Ghahramani was a young Jewish man with his entire life ahead of him and did not deserve to be abruptly executed by the Ayatollah regime in Iran. There was certainly not enough evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt to convict him of such a crime. Instead, his shameful execution was yet another example of the Ayatollah regime’s near 50-year record of genocidal Jew hatred and constant persecution of Iran’s Jews. Over the years this evil Islamo-Nazi regime in Iran has repeatedly tried to advance its false propaganda that it “loves and protects” Iran’s dwindling Jewish community but we all know these claims are pure lies. The record of innocent Jews the regime has executed over the decades speaks for itself and the countless anti-Jewish incidents that have gone unpunished or not investigated by the regime in Iran also speak for themselves. Jewish “propaganda mouthpieces” for the regime inside Iran who constantly claim the Ayatollahs are benevolent towards Iran’s Jews were totally silent after Ghahramani’s execution. One must ask why?

A leopard cannot change its spots and the Ayatollah regime in Iran has not and will not change its policy of genocidal Jew hatred and persecution of Jews. My only hope is that one day soon when the current regime is no longer in power, Ghahramani and other innocent Iranian Jews executed or killing by this evil regime will be properly honored and remembered. Hopefully those members of the current regime in Iran will be also be held accountable for their crimes against humanity during their time in power and face justice.