View from the Gulf: Iran targeted Arabs and Jews alike — antisemitism does Tehran's work

When Iranian missiles and drones streaked across the skies of the Gulf this spring, they did not pause to ask who below was Arab and who was Jewish. They struck Abu Dhabi, Manama, Amman and they struck Tel Aviv. They killed civilians in the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait who were simply going about their lives, just as they killed Israelis sheltering with their children. 

The regime in Tehran has never made a distinction between us. It is long past time the rest of the world stopped making one.

Yet I have watched in disbelief as the response to this war, in too many Western cities and on too many Western campuses, has been a surge of hatred directed not at the regime that started it but at Jews. 

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Monitoring groups recorded a spike in antisemitic incidents worldwide within days of the war's outbreak. Synagogues, Jewish schools and Jewish charities have been attacked from London to North America, with several plots traced back to fronts of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Think about what that means. The ayatollahs fire missiles at Jews in the Middle East, and their sympathizers answer by terrorizing Jews in the West.

This is not only immoral. It is strategically illiterate. Blaming Jewish communities for Iranian aggression is precisely the outcome Tehran has spent four decades engineering. Antisemitism is the regime’s favorite export, cheaper than oil and far more corrosive. Every torched synagogue in Europe is a victory the IRGC did not have to pay for.

If you want to see the alternative, come to my region. Walk through Dubai or Abu Dhabi today, and you will see rabbis moving openly through hotel lobbies and souks. You will find kosher restaurants, Jewish day schools and the Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue standing beside a mosque and a church at the Abrahamic Family House. 

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You will meet Jewish entrepreneurs and investors building companies with Emirati and even Iranian partners who live in the UAE, signing deals in Hebrew, Arabic, and English in the same afternoon.

This is not a public relations exercise. It is daily life in the United Arab Emirates, and it is the most powerful rebuttal to antisemitism anywhere on earth: a Muslim-majority nation where Jewish life, like the lives of all communities in the UAE, is not merely tolerated but welcomed, protected and celebrated.

That is exactly why Iran targets us. The UAE is home to more than 200 nationalities, including over 300,000 Iranians and 50,000 Americans who live and thrive in this land of peace, prosperity, and coexistence. It is also a country leading the AI industry as if it were the oil of the future and helping Arabs reach Mars.

Tehran did not attack the Emirates despite our peace with everyone in the region. It attacked us because of it. Coexistence is the one weapon the regime cannot counter because its entire ideology depends on convincing Muslims, Jews and Christians that they are eternal enemies. The Abraham Accords proved that to be a lie, and the ayatollahs have never forgiven us for it.

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Here is what the cynics predicted in 2020: that the Accords were a fair-weather arrangement that would collapse under the first real strain. The opposite has happened. Under fire, the partnership between the Abrahamic accords has deepened. Trade continues in the billions. The war has made our peace permanent.

So when I see protesters in Western capitals chanting against Jews in the name of the war, I want to tell them what any Emirati or Bahraini could: you are not standing with the people of the Middle East. The people of the Middle East are building a future with the Jewish people, as neighbors, partners and friends. You are standing with a dying regime that kills Arabs, Jews and Persians with equal enthusiasm and who would happily watch your own societies tear themselves apart over the oldest hatred in history.

The choice before the region has never been clearer. There is the Tehran model: missiles, militias, conspiracy and ruin. And there is the Abu Dhabi model: synagogues beside mosques, commerce instead of chaos and two peoples who chose each other when it would have been easier not to. My region has made its choice. The West should stop letting the mob make its choice for it.