Iran's main Jewish organisation on Wednesday denied any involvement in a secret operation organised by Israel to transport a group of 40 Iranian Jews to the Jewish state. "Iranian Jews affirm that considering the good living conditions of religious minorities in Iran... they have never resorted to organised immigration," the Central Jewish Committee said in a statement.
A group of 10 Iranian families and three individuals arrived in Israel on Tuesday via an unnamed third country in a covert operation that marked the biggest recent influx of Iranian Jews to the Jewish state.
Despite the bitter enmity between the two countries, a record number of 200 Jews emigrated from Iran this year alone, according to the Jewish Agency, the Jewish immigration body.
"Childish bribery and lies against Iran by the agents of Zionism and arrogance will not hurt the profound ties of Iranian Jews with Iranians and the sacred system of the Islamic republic," the Iranian statement said. It appeared to be referring to rewards reportedly offered to Iranian Jews who immigrated to Israel, which Iran does not recognise.
It also complained that foreign news organisations were publishing "sheer lies" about the situation of the Jewish community in Iran. Hostility between Israel and Iran deepened after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map and predicted that it is doomed to disappear.
Iran's Jewish community is the largest in the Middle East after Israel, but out of some 100,000 Jews who lived there before the 1979 Islamic revolution, only around 25,000 remain in the Islamic republic today.
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