The Iranian government is “mapping” Jews around the world with plans to kill them if Israel attacks Iran, according to a report in the London-based Jewish Chronicle.
Catherine Perez-Shakdam, a Middle East scholar and research fellow at a think tank, met Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in February 2017. She believes that he was unaware that she is Jewish.
According to Perez-Shakdam, the only thing Khamenei fears is an Israeli attack. “He believes Netanyahu’s threats, and he knows that for now, Israel is militarily superior,” she told the paper. “He feels that the Iranian regime can’t sustain a defeat.”
During her trip, Perez-Shakdad was told of a plan to “map key Jewish figures around the world for Iran’s assassination squads,” per the Chronicle.
“The idea was to identify all prominent NGOs run by Jews, who was doing what in each business sector, the important rabbis,” she said. “They wanted to figure out their influence and where they lived with their families in order to target them.”
The paper noted that in November, British intelligence’s MI5 stated it had foiled 10 assassination attempts in just one year. It did not say if any of those attempts targeted Jews.
