Guest post: The bitter aftertaste of liquorice in Iran

By Lyn Julius

I never gave liquorice much thought until I met Victoria. This lady, now in her 80s, had lived in Iran until 1979. Her late husband's business was to harvest the roots of the liquorice plants which proliferate naturally near the town of Kermanshah, and to sell the liquorice for food processing, tobacco or for its medicinal properties.

As soon as the Shah was deposed and the Islamic Republic of Iran declared, Victoria's husband lost no time in bundling his family out of the country. Israel had been a major client. Under the Shah, Iran had good relations with the Jewish state. After the Islamic revolution, Israel became the 'Little Satan' and the US 'The Great Satan'.

As we know, Iran's proxies Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iraqi militias have been waging war on Israel since 7 October, and Iran has been attacking Israel directly with drones and ballistic missiles. While Iran races to develop nuclear weapons to dominate the region, it denies the Holocaust and regularly declares its intention to wipe out the Jewish state.

Victoria and her family abandoned their house and their business. They caught a plane to London. She was just one of the tens of thousands of Jews who made their escape from Iran, many migrating to the US, the UK or Israel.

In London, she went to the Iranian embassy to register the family's lost assets. Their house was now a police station, but the thought of turning up on the doorstep to order the policemen out was improbable.

Victoria knows of no refugee from the Islamic regime – Jewish or non-Jewish – who has received compensation.

In the decades since the Islamic revolution, the Jewish community has dwindled from 100,000 to less than 10,000. Jews risked their lives to be smuggled out over the Turkish or Pakistani border. The latter route was treacherous, and several disappeared without trace.

Forty Jews have lost their lives to the regime. The wealthy businessman Habib Elghanian was executed as an example to the terrified community. Most recently, a young Jew, Arvin Ghahremani, was executed for defending himself in a brawl. His victim's family could have caused the death sentence to be commuted had they agreed to accept blood money. But when they found out Ghahremani was Jewish, they refused.

The remaining Jews are ostensibly free to practise their religion, but any link with Israel is taboo. The secret police controls what the community says. From time to time, Jewish leaders condemn Israel's actions. To its credit, the regime has not encouraged popular violence against Jews, although there have been isolated incidents.

Jews in the Isalmic Republic of Iran have fewer rights than Muslims, are subject to unfair inheritance laws and debarred from the upper echelons of government, the army and politics – except for one token Jewish MP.

Victoria had nothing but pleasant memories of life under the Shah. Neverthless Jews have suffered pogroms and forced conversions during their 3,000-year old history.

Unlike their rulers, the Iranian people are generally thought of as open-minded and pro-western. Women have been fighting for western freedoms, but they have been ruthlessly repressed.

Let's not forget the innocent victims of this antisemitic and brutal regime.

This year during the month of November we commemorate the exodus of Jews from Arab countries and Iran. On 20 November at 7 pm UK time Harif (www.harif.org) will be holding a special event in London on the theme of 'Jews of Iran,' featuring the 'Nightingale of Iran' with the Dardashti sisters. You can follow the event online. Booking details here: https://www.jw3.org.uk/book/719601.

Lyn Julius is the founder of Harif, the UK Association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, and the author of Uprooted: how 3,000 years of Jewish civilisation in the Arab world vanished overnight, published by Vallentine Mitchell in 2018.