(RNS) — In a video widely shared on X, one of Iran’s two chief rabbis stood beside the rubble of Tehran’s Rafi-Nia Synagogue, holding a damaged sacred book in his hand.

The synagogue was leveled in a strike overnight Monday (April 6) before the ceasefire was declared, one of scores of religious and cultural heritage sites destroyed or significantly damaged by the war led by Israeli and U.S. forces.

Rabbi Younes Hamami Lalehzar and Homayoun Sameh, the Iranian Jewish community’s dedicated representative in Parliament, harshly criticized the strike, which Israel took responsibility for.

“Unfortunately, during the Jewish holidays, the Israeli entity targeted us and did not even spare Jews in Iran, as it struck one of our old and sacred synagogues,” Sameh said in a statement Tuesday. “The synagogue building was completely destroyed and our Torah scrolls were left under the rubble.”

Iran’s state-affiliated Mehr News reported that the strike fell on a residential area, while the Israeli military said the strike targeted a leading member of the Khatam al-Anbiya, the central command of Iran’s military. The military statement said it regrets the collateral damage.

Though there is no accurate count, between 8,000 and 15,000 Jews are believed to still live in Iran, down from around 100,000 before the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

“In these days of war, staying in touch with the Jewish community in Iran is not simple,” Rabbi Mendy Chitrik, chairman of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States, told RNS. “They are proud Iranians and part of Iranian history and society. In conversations with their families in the diaspora, one feels the deep concern for their safety and well-being.”

Under the Islamic Republic’s Constitution, Jews, Zoroastrians and Christians are recognized religious minorities with freedom of worship and representation in Iran’s Parliament.

In practice, human rights groups and other external observers have harshly criticized the unequal treatment of non-Muslims, including the Jewish community, under Iranian law.

In 2024, an Iranian Jewish man was executed after a monthslong trial that drew international attention, with critics noting that under Iranian law, had the man been a Shiite, he would not have been liable for the death penalty.

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Last March, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that some 700 Iranian Jews had applied for asylum in the U.S., citing religious persecution, alongside 13,000 applications from members of other religious minorities.

Days before the synagogue’s destruction, St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church in Tehran was also damaged in a strike, earning the condemnation of Russia’s Foreign Ministry.

“We are horrified by the news of the serious damage and significant material losses inflicted on April 1 on St. Nicholas Cathedral in Tehran as a result of yet another barbaric airstrike by the US-Israeli tandem,” said Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

The church was built in the 1940s, though the Russian Orthodox community has had a presence in Tehran since at least the 1700s.

The church was “a place of strength for the Russian Orthodox diaspora and a spiritual link to the historical homeland,” said Zakharova. “The entire Orthodox community of Tehran, regardless of citizenship, contributed as much as they could to preserving it through labor or donations.”

On March 2, Tehran’s Golestan Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that once housed the monarchs of the Safavid and Qajar dynasties, was damaged by shock waves from a U.S.-Israeli strike.

In Isfahan, the centuries-old Shah and Jameh Mosque complexes were also damaged by bombardment.

Intentional destruction of cultural heritage during wartime is considered a war crime under the 1954 Hague convention,

Peter Stone, president of Blue Shield International, a nonprofit devoted to the protection of cultural heritage worldwide, told RNS that more than 100 sites have been damaged. But he added: “From all of the information that we’ve gotten from photos and videos and media coverage, there doesn’t seem to have been any specific deliberate targeting of cultural sites by either the Americans or the Israelis. All of the damage appears to have been what’s called collateral damage.”

Stone noted that the frameworks that underpin international law on the protection of cultural heritage all call for measures to be taken in peacetime.

“If you’re going to protect cultural property, you essentially have to put everything in place before a war kicks off, because if you leave it until a war has started, then you dramatically reduce the possible mitigation of damage to cultural property.”

Stone noted that his organization often serves as a conduit to get sites such as hospitals, schools and religious sites on no-strike lists.

Wars, however, scramble the best-laid plans. The strike hit the Rafi-Nia Synagogue during the Jewish holiday Passover.

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