Biting The Dust Of Iran

 Nadene Goldfoot                                         

TBN Broadcasting  writes that Israel, USA  are at war with Iran, I presume meaning Now!  Why not?  This is the 20th day of 2026 war with Iran.  

In recent joint operations with the U.S. and independent strikes, Israel has systematically eliminated the upper echelons of the Iranian regime. The most high-profile leaders killed include:

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei:(19 April 1939 – 28 February 2026) was an Iranian politician and Shia cleric who served as the second supreme leader of Iran from 1989 until his assassination in the 2026 Iran war. Former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has consistently advocated for the elimination of Israel, frequently referring to the nation as an "unstable Zionist regime," a "cancerous tumor," and a "terrorist camp"    Khamenei was a key figure in the Iranian Revolution and a close confidant of Ruhollah Khomeini. Iran’s Supreme Leader was killed during initial coordinated U.S. and Israeli air strikes. Khamenei condemned the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen and compared Saudi Arabia to Israel.(this shows competition between Shi'a and Sunni branches of Islam)  Khamenei also condemned the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and called Myanmar's de facto leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi a "brutal woman". He condemned the United Arab Emirates as "useless" on several occasions. UAE belongs to Abraham Accords and Saudi Arabia does not...yet.  On 28 February 2026, a series of large-scale US and Israeli missile strikes were carried out against targets in Iran. Khamenei was killed in an attack by the Israeli Air Force on his compound.

• Ali Ardashir Larijani (3 June 1958 – 17 March 2026) was an Iranian politician, military officer, and philosopher who served as the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council from 2025 until his assassination in 2026. He had previously served in the position from 2005 to 2007. From late December 2025 until his assassination, he was widely considered to be one of the most powerful officials in the Iranian government. One day before his death, Larijani rebuked Islamic countries – particularly the UAE – for "abandoning Iran" and siding with the U.S. and Israel  Ali Larijani: was the top security official who essentially ran the country as the de facto leader after the death of Ayatollah Khamenei.  
• On 13 June 2025 the Iran–Israel war broke out with attacks on several nuclear facilities. On 22 June, the United States Air Force and Navy attacked the Natanz Nuclear Facility, Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, and the Isfahan Nuclear Technology/Research Center.
  
  Gholamreza Soleimani ( 1964 – 17 March 2026) was an Iranian military officer who served as a senior officer in the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and commander of the paramilitary Basij forces. He was killed during the 2026 Iran war by Israeli strikes. Gholamreza Soleimani: was the commander of Iran’s internal plainclothes paramilitary force, the Basij.  Gholamreza Soleimani directed the paramilitary force’s involvement in several high-fatality crackdowns against Iranian civilians. Under his leadership, the Basij transitioned from a social organization into a primary kinetic force used to terminate domestic unrest through lethal means.                        
  
  Commodore Alireza Tangsiri  1962 – 26 March 2026) was an Iranian naval officer who served as the commander of the IRGC Navy. He was killed by the Israel Defense  The Commander of the Revolutionary Guards Navy, who succumbed to severe injuries.
• Other High-Ranking Figures: The Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, the Minister of Defense, and various top generals within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The Prophesized In-Gathering Of Jews In Israel

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Lots of people don't realize that the continuing immigration to  Israel had been prophesized long ago.  The prophecy of the ingathering of Jews (known in Hebrew as Kibbutz Galuyot) is a foundational tenet in Jewish eschatology, promising that God will gather the scattered Jewish people from the "four corners of the earth" and restore them to the Land of Israel in the end of days.  Well, it's been happening, right in our very own time;  hard to believe, isn't it?   This prophecy is primarily found in Isaiah 11:12, where God promises to assemble the outcasts of Israel and gather the dispersed of Judah from the "four corners of the earth."                                       

 Joshua entered Canaan with 601,730 Israelites (Jews).  They had been prisoners of Egypt for the past 400 years building storage buildings for the Egyptians.   Israel's Jewish population passed the 6 million mark for the first time in 2013. According to data released by the Central Bureau of Statistics that year, the milestone was considered symbolically significant as it was equivalent to the number of Jewish people killed in the Holocaust. Yes, we lost 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.

Ofra Haza (Hebrew: עפרה חזה; 19 November 1957 – 23 February 2000) was an Israeli singer, songwriter, and actress, commonly known in the Western world as "the Madonna of the East", or "the Israeli Madonna". Of Yemenite-Mizrahi descent, Haza performed music known as a mixture of traditional Middle Eastern and commercial singing styles, fusing elements of Eastern and Western instrumentation, orchestration and dance-beat, as well as lyrics from Mizrahi and Jewish folk tales and poetry.

                    Some Jews From Yemen, Ofra Haza's line

The largest waves of Jewish immigration (Aliyah) to Israel came from the former Soviet Union (mainly Russia and Ukraine), followed by mass exoduses from Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries.  When: The largest influx occurred following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, with continued arrivals well into the 2000s, although when I made Aliyah in 1980, lot of Russians had already arrived in Haifa.  When: Following Israel's independence in 1948 and throughout the 1950s, large populations fled or were expelled from Arab nations. Major contributors include Morocco, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, and Tunisia.

Jews from Eastern and Central Europe can by the hundreds of thousands driven by the Holocaust.  They helped with the  founding of the state, and came as subsequent post-war waves from places like Romania, Poland, and Hungary in the late 1940s and 1950s.

A lawyer from Kenya was one of my pen pals..As I remember, he came to do his milueem and finally moved his family to Israel.  He's one I admired very much.  

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                   2024 Summer Olympics
• Gashau Ayale: one of many outstanding runners from Ethiopia Won gold for Israel's team at the 2025 European Athletics Championships and has been a top finisher in elite international races.  Ayale was born in the village of Gojam in Ethiopia to Tabak (his father) and Tesfia (his mother), and is Jewish. He was born into the Beta Israel ethno-religious community of Ethiopian Jews. 

Ethiopians came by the 10s of thousands by different airlifts. 

•  Notable organized airlifts, such as Operation Moses (1984) and Operation Solomon (1991), brought significant communities from Ethiopia.  
• This divine promise of restoration is a major focal point across the Hebrew Bible, emphasizing the ultimate redemption and return of the exiles.
  
                              made aliyah from France
  

The rising tide of anti-Semitism and fear of terror attacks prompted the largest immigration of Jews to Israel from Western Europe in history during 2015. The Jewish Agency reported that 9,880 Western European Jews made aliyah to Israel in 2015, the largest annual number ever recorded. The vast majority of these immigrants (7,900) came from France, where there were two large national terror attacks as well as many individual violent attacks against Jews during the year. An estimated 800 of these individuals made aliyah from England. In total, 2015 saw 31,013 Jewish individuals from around the globe make Aliyah to Israel, a 12-year high.

Approximately 135,000 Jewish Americans have made Aliyah to Israel since the country's establishment in 1948. In recent years, an average of 3,500 to 4,000 North Americans immigrate to Israel annually. Driven by a surge in Zionist solidarity, 4,150 Jewish individuals relocated from North America to Israel, which marked a four-year high.

Mordechai Deluca never considered delaying his move to Israel from the United States because of the war with Iran. If anything, the opposite is true. “My worry was, how could I get there as fast as possible?” said Deluca, 39, who arrived in Israel on March 9, just eight days after the war with Iran began.  Deluca, who grew up in North Carolina, said that being physically present in Israel during such a crucial time was important to him. He spent last year’s war between Israel and Iran in Washington, D.C., and “being so far away made me feel so much more powerless,” he said. Deluca had first thought about making aliyah, or immigrating to Israel, after he went on a Birthright Israel trip 20 years ago. His desire intensified after Oct. 7, 2026 which he spent in Israel, and where he attended a funeral for a lone soldier who didn’t have immediate family in the country.                                          

                    My mother's Bon Voyage party before leaving for Israel

I made aliyah in 1980 with my husband and a German shepherd.  I had to return by end of 1985 due to the illness of my son back home in Oregon.  Sometimes that can happen, especially with American Jews, I think. Then I was a Yored.   The English cannot do that as they lose their citizenship with England by accepting it from Israel.  That's why I started blogging by 2004;  trying to defend Israel.  

Following their expulsion and after the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 CE, the majority of the Jews were dispersed throughout the world. The Jewish national idea, however, was never abandoned, nor was the longing to return to their homeland. Throughout the centuries, Jews have maintained a presence in the Land, in greater or lesser numbers; uninterrupted contact with Jews abroad has enriched the cultural, spiritual and intellectual life of both communities.

 

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Forgotten Iranians That Count The Most, The Revolutionary Youth

 :Nadene Goldfoot                                            

"We are not your enemy," Sara Netanyahu tells Persians worldwide on Instagram next to an image of showing Israeli and Iranian lion embracing and looking at the sunset. Message evokes both Operation Rising Lion and Iran's exiled monarchy, now in hands of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi.  The Revolution started on April 21, 2026 with my count, but do remember when Amini died. 

On 16 September 2022, 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, also known as Jina Amini, died in a hospital in Tehran, Iran, under suspicious circumstances. The Guidance Patrol, the religious morality police of Iran's government, had arrested Amini for allegedly not wearing the hijab in accordance with government standards.

Their world under hijabs in a hot weather climate, not fun

Following her arrest, she fell into a coma and died in the hospital. While authorities claimed she suffered a heart attack, witnesses and her family stated she had been severely beaten, a finding later corroborated by a UN fact-finding mission. Her death ignited worldwide protests under the slogan "Woman, Life, Freedom," highlighting women's rights and opposition to compulsory veiling in Iran.

The "Revolution of Iranian youth" is widely recognized as the nationwide movement and massive demonstrations triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody, which officially began on September 16, 2022.  2022–2023 Mahsa Amini Protests: At least \(550\) protesters were killed by state security forces over months of civil unrest.

The most disappointing aspect of the war between Israel, Iran and USA is their lack of mentioning the welfare of the Iranian youth rebelling against the Ayatollah government!  Iranian youth leading anti-government protests face a brutal state crackdown marked by mass arrests, torture, and thousands of deaths. 

While exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi has urged demonstrators to form networks and occupy city centers to trigger a democratic transition, his movement faces ideological divisions within the broader opposition and has not achieved undisputed consensus inside the country which is a surprise and hard to believe, for all the news I get from Tousi, and I believe that more than AI, is that even some of the Revolutionary Guards and other police have joined the group.  It is our own USA's Trump who hasn't mentioned anything in the deals he has been making with the Ayatollah regime.  I know that Israel has been helping the youth all along.  International Diplomacy: Pahlavi is actively lobbying global leaders. He advocates for international diplomatic pressure, calling for measures that support the free flow of information for Iranian citizens.  Coalition Building: He has convened dissidents across ideological spectrums to draft transition plans, including a committee focused on transitional justice, to discuss a democratic and secular future for Iran.  He's packed and ready to go to Iran the minute he can be safe there; for if he is dead, he will be of no use.  

                              Sharif University

 Students at major universities, including Tehran’s Sharif University, have actively demonstrated against the theocratic establishment, facing suspensions and severe retaliatory violence.  The regime frequently enforces near-total internet and telecommunication blackouts during peak uprisings to suppress information and hide the scale of human rights violations.

 Security forces have responded to massive, nationwide uprisings with sweeping raids, mass arbitrary arrests, and lethal force.

Deaths are hard to count.  Initial Revolution and Consolidations (1979–1988): While historical consensus places deaths during the 1978–1979 revolution at around \(2,000\) to \(3,000\), subsequent revolutionary court executions, purges, and the 1988 mass executions of political prisoners claimed thousands more, with some human rights organizations estimating total historical victims in the tens of thousands.  2025–2026 Uprisings: The most intense state crackdown since the revolution began. Activists and human rights agencies like Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRANA) have documented thousands of deaths, with varying unverified and activist estimates citing tens of thousands dead over the span of this unrest. The Iranian government released figures of over \(3,000\) killed during the same period, citing both civilians and security forces.