Last month, as she took her usual morning walk on Santa Monica Beach, near her home in Los Angeles, Nazila received an unusual text message. It was ominously brief: “We’re okay. Don’t call! Don’t text!”
Since June 12, when Israel started bombing Iran, Nazila—an Iranian Jewish expatriate who asked me to withhold her last name for fear of regime retaliation against her relatives in Iran—had been anxious about the welfare of her family members. The text came from Nazila’s sister, who, along with her husband and children, is among the roughly 9,000 Jews who still live in Iran. After the escalation of hostilities with Israel, and the wave of arrests that Iran has conducted throughout the country, several dozen Jews were detained, according to human-rights-agency sources. Authorities have interrogated them, scoured their social-media and messaging-app activity, and warned them to avoid contact with any Israeli citizen or relatives abroad.
