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Here’s What You Didn’t Read About the Jewish Man Executed By Iran
Arvin Nathaniel Ghahremani. Photo: screenshot.
Regarding the execution of Jewish Iranian citizen Arvin Ghahremani, the Associated Press wholeheartedly embraces the dubious narrative of the Islamic regime’s judiciary. While selling its wares on the mantra of “Advancing the power of facts,” the leading news service conceals the harrowing basic facts from readers — that the young man’s family insisted that he was defending himself from his attacker, and that the Iran Human Rights advocacy group slammed the legal case’s “significant flaws.”
The AP’s Nov. 4 coverage ignored the case’s glaring problems, and hewed closely to the line espoused from a website affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, starting with a headline that frames Ghahremani’s act as motivated by nothing more than money, as opposed to self-preservation: “Iran executes a Jewish citizen convicted of murder following a dispute over money.”
With no byline and a dateline of Tehran, the AP’s article begins:
Iran on Monday executed a Jewish citizen convicted of murdering another man in 2022 following a personal dispute, reports said. It was a rare case of an execution of member of a religious minority in the predominately Muslim nation.
Mizanonline.ir, a website affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, said 23-year-old Arvin Ghahremani was put to death after the country’s Supreme Court affirmed the capital punishment handed down in the case earlier last year. …
According to the report, Ghahramani attacked the victim outside a gym in Kermanshah in 2022 and stabbed the man several times following a dispute over money he had loaned the victim.
“In the midst of the threats of war with Israel, the Islamic republic executed Arvin Ghahremani, an Iranian Jewish citizen,” said IHR [Iran Human Rights] director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, adding the legal case had “significant flaws.”
“However, in addition to this, Arvin was a Jew, and the institutionalised anti-Semitism in the Islamic republic undoubtedly played a crucial role in the execution of his sentence,” Amiry-Moghaddam added.
IHR said that Ghahremani was accused of killing a man during a street fight in Kermanshah two years ago. But it said that, according to his family, he had been attacked with a knife and defended himself using the attacker’s weapon.
Unlike AFP, the Associated Press story contained no mention of the claim of self-defense, nothing about IHR’s statement about “significant flaws” in the case, not a word about Amiry-Moghaddam’s charge that “institutionalized antisemitism … undoubtedly played a crucial role” in the ruling, and no hint of the backdrop of Iran’s attacks on Israel and its ongoing threats to wipe the Jewish State off the face of the earth.
Furthermore, AFP included additional essential information, raising further questions about the Iranian judiciary’s version of events which the AP shared without challenge:
The defendant’s lawyers requested a retrial three times, but each request was rejected, it added.
Mizan said that Ghahremani was 21 at the time of the fight. However IHR said he was 18 then, with other reports saying he was 20 or 21 by the time of his execution.
Moreover, the AP’s selective reporting omitted a clear indication that antisemitism played a key role in Ghahremani’s execution. Thus, the AP story noted the “the convicted man’s lawyers and relatives had failed to convince the victim’s family to abstain from qisas — an act under Islamic penal code that calls for similar punishment, or an ‘eye for an eye’ — and effectively pardon his killer.”
But, according to the Iran Human Rights NGO, Shokri’s family had initially agreed to pardon Ghahremani — that is, until they learned that Ghahremani was Jewish. Thus, IHR reported:
An informed source told IHRNGO: “Arvin’s religion was initially cited as Shia Muslim in the case and the victim’s family agreed to accept diya but changed their mind and insisted on his execution when they discovered that he was Jewish.”
Finally, on Nov. 6, Voice of America (VOA) revealed additional red flags indicating that there’s more to the story than the laundered Mizan-Iranian judiciary-AP version lets on (“New details emerge in Iran’s first execution of Jewish minority member in 30 years“):
VOA has learned that Arvin Ghahremani, the first Jewish person executed by the Islamic Republic in 30 years, was put to death in the western city of Kermanshah on Monday without prior notice to his family. …
A U.S.-based source with contacts in Iran sent VOA the text of a letter that Ghahremani’s Iranian lawyer, Peyman Saketkhou, wrote on Tuesday and stated that Ghahremani had been executed without notice to family members or defense lawyers. …
The source requested anonymity to safeguard communications with Iran-based lawyers, whose work on cases dealing with sensitive issues has exposed them to harassment and arrest by Iranian authorities.
“The execution of Ghahremani without notice to the family shows the cruelty of the regime,” George Haroonian, an Iranian American rights activist, said in a statement to VOA.
According to VOA:
Another Iran-based rights group, Human Rights Activists in Iran, reacted to Ghahremani’s execution by noting that under Iranian law, when a Muslim kills a non-Muslim, qisas does not give the non-Muslim’s family the right to seek the offender’s execution. It said that in such cases, only blood money or lesser punishments typically are imposed.
Finally, VOA included a reaction from the US government:
The Biden administration issued its first reaction to Ghahremani’s execution on Wednesday.
“We are dismayed by reports that the regime in Iran executed Arvin Ghahramani. The circumstances of the case and the prosecution raise troubling questions about due process,” U.S. special envoy Deborah Liptstadt said in a post on the X platform.
Meanwhile, while CAMERA contacted the AP about the gross failings of wire service’s Nov. 4 article the very same day it was published, the news agency has neither improved its initial story nor published a follow up with the developments noted by Voice of America.
“Advancing the power of facts” is the AP’s promise to readers, and concealing the troubling questions about due process in the horrific execution of Arvin Ghahremani is the reality.
Tamar Sternthal is the director of CAMERA’s Israel Office. A version of this article previously appeared on the CAMERA website.
The post Here’s What You Didn’t Read About the Jewish Man Executed By Iran first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War
Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests
A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan
Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.