Iranian Jews in Greater Boston and beyond are reacting with a mix of relief, hope and wary realism to the joint U.S-Israel attack on Iran, and drawing on centuries of history and recent memories of revolution, war and exile to make sense of a moment many describe as “extraordinary” and “mind-blowing.”

Iranian-born Jews and their descendants described watching the latest strikes on Iran and trying to reconcile gratitude for a possible end to a brutal regime with anxiety about what might come next.

For Moshe Rahmani, who grew up in Tehran and left around the time of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the current moment feels both miraculous and long overdue. Speaking from his home in Brighton, Rahmani said the Islamic regime’s leaders “dug their own grave” and compared their brutality to that of the Nazis, while noting he does not want to diminish the Holocaust.

“These people are Nazis,” he said, describing reports that tens of thousands had been killed in recent weeks. Rahmani said he believes coordinated pressure from the United States and Israel on Iran’s military, police and security services has pushed the regime to a breaking point.

“I just don’t think they can survive the pressure – two superpowers: America and Israel – raining like that,” he said, adding that strikes were targeting the military and not civilians.

Rahmani, whose family traces its presence in Iran back 2,000 years, lived in Tehran until the start of the revolution. He said under the Shah (who ruled Iran until the revolution), Jews had relative security and could participate in broader society, despite occasional antisemitism at mass events such as soccer matches. Under the Islamic Republic, he said, Jews survived by keeping quiet – a “small credit” he gives the regime even as he welcomes what he sees as its impending collapse.

He called the timing of the latest blows to Iran’s leadership – coinciding with the Jewish holiday of Purim, which commemorates the salvation of Persian and world Jewry in ancient times – no coincidence.

“Nothing in the world is coincidence,” Rahmani said. “The whole story of Purim is happening right in front of our eyes.”

Others who left Iran as children or young adults recall a childhood shaped by fear and secrecy.

Ashkon Hedvat, who moved from Tehran to the Boston area in 1986 after a six month stop in Italy to secure a visa, said he was taught in Iran never to reveal his Jewish identity publicly.

“As a kid, we were told, ‘Don’t say you’re Jewish,’” he recalled. Strict dress codes applied to both men and women, and those who violated them risked being beaten. “There were a lot of challenges, but I believe God gives us challenges we can overcome,” he said.

Now in his 40s and working in finance in Greater Boston, Hedvat remains closely connected to a small but “tight knit and friendly” Farsi-speaking Jewish community that stays in touch through synagogue life. When news broke of the latest attacks he was at synagogue, where he felt “excited and overjoyed.”

Hedvat said many in the community still speak Farsi at home and see Iran as both a place of deep Jewish culture and history. He hopes regime change could one day make a return trip possible.

In Marblehead, Mimi Lemay was thinking about her late father, Amnon Netzer. Netzer, who was born in Iran, made aliyah to Israel and co-founded the Iranian Studies Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he researched Iranian Jewish history and culture.

Lemay sees the current military campaign against Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and other instruments of repression as potentially decisive – if the U.S. and Israel “follow through on their commitment.” But she also emphasized how fractured Iran’s internal opposition remains, and how much may depend on the Iranian diaspora, which she described as well educated, well resourced and politically active.

The possible role of the exiled Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, looms large. Some see him as a potential unifying figure with strong backing among expats in the U.S. Others doubt that a younger generation inside Iran, shaped by decades of authoritarian rule and economic hardship, would accept a return to monarchy.

Lemay, who has met the Shah’s son personally, suggested he may be more valuable as an organizer and symbol than as a future king. “I’m not sure Iran needs a constitutional monarchy,” she said, but added that the prince could help rally support and expertise at a critical moment.

In Beverly, Dr. Eli Davidyan, an Israeli-born Jew whose parents were born in Iran and part of the Zionist movement there before moving to Tel Aviv, said the strikes on Iran were “long overdue” and expressed hope they would finally clear the way for a new political order.

His family, he said, can trace its presence in Iran back “since the First Temple,” with roots in the ancient, mountainous city of Hamadan. Davidyan, who visited Iran before the revolution in a security role for El Al, dreams of returning to walk the streets his parents knew – something he believes may now be conceivable.

He also pointed to a broader network of Jews from Iran, Iraq and Kurdistan who have resettled in Israel and the United States, including families now living in Brookline and elsewhere in Greater Boston.

Younger Iranian Americans are often more conflicted about the use of force to remake Iran’s political landscape.

Jonah Nagi, a 33-year-old clinical social worker and first generation American of Persian Jewish descent, said he supports the goal of removing the Islamic Republic but worries a military campaign could fail to produce real change – or usher in a new dictatorship.

Nagi’s parents were college students in the U.S. when the 1979 revolution erupted. They never returned to live in Iran, and his grandparents eventually scattered to Europe, North America and Israel. He grew up in Newton, in a home where Farsi, Persian food and music were constant, and where the revolution was both distant history and a living wound.

He said his mother views military intervention as the only realistic path to toppling the regime, but he is not so sure.

“I worry it may not lead to regime change,” he said, citing the human cost for Iranian civilians and foreign troops, and the difficulty of finding a credible opposition leader.

Looking to Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of 1906 as a precedent, Nagi said today’s political discourse – shaped by years of anger toward a radical Islamist government – could yet produce a very different outcome. But he stressed that no path is without risk.

Rahmani, of Brighton, estimated that Greater Boston’s Iranian-Jewish community is comprised of about 100 families, and described it as close-knit. Rahmani called it “a very momentous time” and “extraordinary,” insisting that Jews in Iran and the diaspora would ultimately flourish in the new freedoms he believes are coming.

Lemay said she dreams of visiting the country where her relatives lived for 2,000 years. “I would go in a heartbeat,” she said. “My father, during the last years of his life, spoke lyrically – which is the Iranian way to speak poetically about the land and the people there. And there’s no place I would rather go.” Θ