The JC - Jewish News, Comment & Culture

ISRAEL AT WAR

Mojtaba Khamenei confirmed as new supreme leader of Iran

The 56-year-old, the second son of the last supreme leader, is closely linked with the IRGC and, ideologically, has been described as ‘like his father – but on steroids’

By Jacob Jaffa

2 min read

Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran's new supreme leader, pictured in 2020 (Getty Images)

By Gio Esfandiary

Iranians in Britain fear the IRGC’s reach on UK soil

Those who fled the Islamic Republic want to live in a safe and stable country. They want to protect the freedoms they came here to enjoy

2 min read

Israel strikes Iranian regime’s military fuel facilities

Israeli and US joint operations enter their second week, aiming to further erode the Islamic Republic's power

By Joshua Marks

3 min read

Smoke and fire rise from the site of airstrikes at Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran, March 7, 2026 (Credit: ATTA KENARE / AFP via Getty Images)

Frontrunner to be next supreme leader owns £100m worth of property on ‘Billionaire’s Row’ in London

Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who was killed last Saturday, is reported to own 11 properties on The Bishops Avenue

By Mark Wood

1 min read

Mojtaba Khamenei (centre), the son of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Photo by Rouzbeh Fouladi / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images)

International Women’s Day

IWD: The female Israeli singers striking a chord for peace in the Middle East

By Florit Shoihet

7 min read

Andy Nyman as Max Bialystock in the revival of Mel Brooks' famously outrageous show, 'The Producers' (Photo: Manuel Harlan)

Theatre

Producers revival and Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia nominated for 2026 Olivier Awards

By Daniel Ben-David

1 min read

London

Luton Airport enhances staff training after ‘antisemitic’ targeting of Israeli author

Alon Penzel had been in the UK for a week promoting his new book on the victims and survivors of October 7

By Daniel Ben-David

2 min read

Side view of a London Metropolitan Police car (Getty Images)

Iran

Four arrested over alleged Iran-linked plot against London’s Jewish community

By Jacob Jaffa

1 min read

Germany

Community leaders give green light for German Jews to serve in army

By Rob Hyde

2 min read

A high speed train travelling between Jerusalem and Ben Gurion International Airport (Credit: AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images)

Shabbat

Chief rabbis say plan to run trains from airport for repatriated Israelis ‘desecrates’ the Sabbath

By Daniel Ben-David

1 min read

‘The dark humour of Dad, who fled Hitler, runs through my new show’

‘As a boy I didn’t know bagels were Jewish! Now I make the best challah’

Howard Jacobson: ‘October 7? It was as if permission had been given to do this to the Jews’

Israel opens Ben Gurion Airport to repatriation flights

Intermarried couples: from disapproval to engagement

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Iran

US offers ‘extensive air cover’ for Kurds to seize parts of western Iran

The CIA is reportedly in ‘active talks’ with Iranian and Iraqi Kurdish militias about potential regime change.

By Jamie Shapiro

1 min read

A Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II jet performs a flyover on January 24, 2026, in Daytona Beach, Florida (Getty Images)

Operation Roaring Lion

US releases footage of sinking of Iran’s ‘prize’ warship in Indian Ocean

More than 140 people are believed dead after the attack off the coast of Sri Lanka

By Jamie Shapiro

1 min read

USA

Senate vote to halt extension of Iran War fails

Senators voted largely along party lines to give the Trump administration a broad mandate to continue striking the Islamic Republic

By Jacob Jaffa

2 min read

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) talks to reporters ahead of a vote on a bipartisan war powers resolution that would have prevented President Donald Trump from continuing the military campaign against Iran (Getty Images)

Gavin Newsom

Gavin Newsom: US should reconsider military support for Israel under Netanyahu

The California governor is regarded as an early frontrunner for the Democratic Party’s 2028 presidential nomination

By Daniel Ben-David

1 min read

California governor Gavin Newsom (Photo: Getty)

World news

Belgium

Explosion damages Belgian synagogue

By JC Reporter

1 min read

Zohran Mamdani

Mamdani distances City Hall from wife’s social media likes appearing to praise October 7

By JC Reporter

1 min read

US President Trump takes questions from the media during a bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office of the White House on March 03, 2026 (Getty Images)

Iran

‘I have to be involved’ in selection of Iran’s new supreme leader, says Trump

By Jacob Jaffa

1 min read

People stand next to missile debris after it fell near Qamishli International Airport, near the Turkish border in the Qamishli district of Hasakah, Syria, March 4, 2026 (Getty Images)

Operation Roaring Lion

Iran denies firing missile at Turkey after Nato interception

By Daniel Ben-David

1 min read

Israeli Air Force

Watch: Israeli F-35 shoots down Iranian fighter jet over Tehran

By Jamie Shapiro

1 min read

Israeli embassy in London (Images: Getty Images)

Operation Roaring Lion

Israeli embassies worldwide could be targeted over Operation Roaring Lion, Iran claims

By Jamie Shapiro

1 min read

Iran

Iran’s grand ayatollahs issue fatwa calling on Muslims worldwide to avenge Khamenei’s death

Hossein Noori Hamedani and Naser Makarem Shirazi said it was a ‘religious duty’ to take revenge on ‘bloodthirsty Zionists’

By Jacob Jaffa

1 min read

Iran war: X cracks down on users who post ‘trivial and misleading’ AI content Watch: IDF strikes Iranian soldiers operating air defence unit

UK News

Government

Foreign Office ‘missing in action,’ say furious Brits stuck in Israel

The Prime Minister said efforts to rescue citizens from across the region was ‘one of the biggest operations of its kind’

By Jane Prinsley

3 min read

People say the blessings over Challahs during a Kabalat Shabbat service inside an underground car park bomb shelter on March 06, 2026 in Tel Aviv (Getty Images)

High Court

Owen Jones attacked ‘journalistic integrity’ of Jewish BBC News editor, libel trial hears

A barrister representing Raffi Berg argued that an article by Jones conveyed the impression that his client was a ‘bent journalist’ and an ‘Israeli stooge’

By Jacob Jaffa

2 min read

Journalist Owen Jones during a recording of Zack Polanski's Bold Politics podcast on the second day of the Green Party Conference at Bournemouth International Centre on October 04, 2025 (Getty Images)

West London Synagogue

West London Synagogue organ being restored – by same company which built it 120 years ago

It is part of a £2 million redevelopment project for the shul

By Ben Conway

3 min read

The interior of West London Synagogue before the redevelopment

Iranian dissidents

‘Spread the love’: Golders Green Israeli restaurant hosts Purim party for dissidents amid Iran War

Around 100 Iranians and Jews ate, drank, and danced together, sharing their hope that Iran would soon be free of the regime

By Jamie Shapiro

3 min read

Bracha hosted a Purim party for Iranian dissidents in Golders Green (Courtesy)

Opinion

Is fighting antisemitism a losing battle?

American Jews spend roughly $600 million a year to combat Jew-hatred. What’s needed most is a philanthropic audit assessing what’s actually working

By Melissa Langsam Braunstein

3 min read

Deborah Lipstadt, Dara Horn and Bret Stephens (Image: 92NY)

By Lawrence J. Haas

Europe’s Iran stance is a strategic error that hurts its US alliance

Wiser leaders would stop picking fights with Washington over a war they can’t influence and that ultimately advances their own security

4 min read

By Stephen Pollard

Ed Miliband’s toxic legacy: Syria, Corbyn and Britain’s retreat on Iran

Despite being so disastrously wrong so many times, he maintains the air of smug superiority that he has had since he first became Labour leader. Now we learn of the latest example of his indifference to tyranny and terror

3 min read

By Kasra Aarabi

To topple the Islamic Republic, dismantle the IRGC machinery of repression

There are about 200,000 highly radicalised and armed members that make up this core suppressive force, with at least 50,000 in Tehran alone

5 min read

By Maureen Lipman

I think my genes contain not one iota of athleticism

My own failure to compete was probably because my brother was so much better than me at everything, arguably, with the exception of my Eartha Kitt impersonation – or as he called it, my showing off – so I opted out

5 min read

By Dominic Green

Starmer-Hermer legal posturing on Iran is government by Guardian editorial

The PM failed to take a stand, so we will fall. That was the week that was, and this is the UK that was

4 min read

By Yaakov Katz

How the Iran war forged the closest US-Israel alliance yet

Hundreds of aircraft flew side-by-side. They refuelled one another. They protected one another. This was not symbolic coordination. It was operational fusion

3 min read