Flames engulf cars following unrest sparked by dire economic conditions, in a place given as Isfahan, Iran, Jan. 9, 2026, in this screengrab from Iran’s state media broadcast footage. Photo: IRIB via WANA(West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

The United States is withdrawing some personnel from bases in the Middle East, a US official said on Wednesday, after a senior Iranian official said Tehran had warned neighbors it would hit American bases if Washington strikes.

With Iran‘s leadership trying to quell the worst domestic unrest the Islamic Republic has ever faced, Tehran is seeking to deter US President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to intervene on behalf of anti-government protesters.

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States was pulling some personnel from key bases in the region as a precaution given heightened regional tensions.

Britain was also withdrawing some personnel from an air base in Qatar ahead of possible US strikes, British media reported. The British defense ministry had no immediate comment.

“All the signals are that a US attack is imminent, but that is also how this administration behaves to keep everyone on their toes. Unpredictability is part of the strategy,” a Western military official told Reuters later on Wednesday.

Two European officials said US military intervention could come in the next 24 hours. An Israeli official also said it appeared Trump had decided to intervene, though the scope and timing remained unclear.

Qatar said drawdowns from its Al Udeid air base, the biggest US base in the Middle East, were “being undertaken in response to the current regional tensions.”

Three diplomats said some personnel had been told to leave the base, though there were no immediate signs of large numbers of troops being bussed out to a soccer stadium and shopping mall as took place hours before an Iranian missile strike last year.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene in support of protesters in Iran, where thousands of people have been reported killed in a crackdown on the unrest against clerical rule.

Iran and its Western foes have both described the unrest, which began two weeks ago as demonstrations against dire economic conditions and rapidly escalated in recent days, as the most violent since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that installed Iran‘s system of Shi’ite clerical rule.

An Iranian official has said more than 2,000 people have died. A rights group put the toll at more than 2,600. Other reports have said the number could be 12,000 if not higher.

Iran has “never faced this volume of destruction,” Armed Forces Chief of Staff Abdolrahim Mousavi said on Wednesday, blaming foreign enemies.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot described “the most violent repression in Iran‘s contemporary history.”

Iranian authorities have accused the US and Israel of fomenting the unrest, carried out by people it calls armed terrorists.

IRAN ASKS REGIONAL STATES TO PREVENT A US ATTACK

Trump has openly threatened to intervene in Iran for days, without giving specifics. In an interview with CBS News on Tuesday, he vowed “very strong action” if Iran executes protesters. He also urged Iranians to keep protesting and take over institutions, declaring “help is on the way.”

The senior Iranian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tehran had asked US allies in the region to prevent Washington from attacking Iran.

“Tehran has told regional countries, from Saudi Arabia and UAE to Turkey, that US bases in those countries will be attacked” if the US targets Iran, the official said.

Direct contacts between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff have been suspended, the official added.

The United States has forces across the region including the forward headquarters of its Central Command at Al Udeid in Qatar and the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.

GOVERNMENT DOESN’T SEEM NEAR COLLAPSE, WESTERN OFFICIAL SAYS

The flow of information from inside Iran has been hampered by an internet blackout.

The US-based HRANA rights group said it had so far verified the deaths of 2,403 protesters and 147 government-affiliated individuals, dwarfing tolls from previous waves of protests crushed by the authorities in 2022 and 2009.

The government’s prestige was hammered by a 12-day Israeli bombing campaign last June – joined by the US – that followed setbacks for Iran‘s regional allies in Lebanon and Syria. European powers restored UN sanctions over Iran‘s nuclear program, compounding the economic crisis there.

The unrest on such a scale caught the authorities off guard at a vulnerable time, but it does not appear that the government faces imminent collapse, and its security apparatus still appears to be in control, one Western official said.

The authorities have sought to project images showing they retain public support. Iranian state TV broadcast footage of large funeral processions for people killed in the unrest in Tehran, Isfahan, Bushehr and other cities.

People waved flags and pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and held aloft signs with anti-riot slogans.

President Masoud Pezeshkian, an elected figure whose power is subordinate to that of Khamenei, told a cabinet meeting that as long as the government had popular support, “all the enemies’ efforts against the country will come to nothing.”

State media reported that the head of Iran‘s top security body, Ali Larijani, had spoken to the foreign minister of Qatar, while Iran‘s top diplomat Araqchi had spoken to his Emirati and Turkish counterparts. Araqchi told UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed that “calm has prevailed.”

HRANA reported 18,137 arrests so far.

Jewish Americans and supporters of Israel gather at the National Mall in Washington, DC on Nov. 14, 2023 for the “March for Israel” rally. Photo: Dion J. Pierre/The Algemeiner

American Jewish life has long been anchored in a small number of powerful metropolitan centers. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and a handful of others remain indispensable. They house national institutions, sustain Jewish education at scale, train professionals, and shape the public face of American Jewry. Any serious strategy for Jewish continuity must acknowledge their central role.

But it must also acknowledge something equally important: a people that concentrates too much of its institutional life, talent, and imagination in a narrow geographic band risks fragility rather than strength.

That insight animates a recent essay by Joe Roberts, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Tulsa, published in eJewishPhilanthropy under the pointed title, “American Jewry’s Future Lies Not on the Coasts, but in Its Heartland.” Roberts’ argument is not anti-coastal. It is pro-resilience and deserves careful attention from communal leaders and donors alike.

Every system weakens when too much weight rests on too few pillars. Conservatives have long made this case about government, markets, and civil society. Jewish communal life is no different. America’s largest Jewish communities remain strong, but they are under strain; rising costs, professional burnout, institutional consolidation, and an increasingly hostile cultural climate. These pressures do not diminish their importance, but they expose the danger of assuming a small number of metros can carry Jewish America indefinitely.

Roberts names the risk plainly: when smaller and mid-sized Jewish communities quietly thin out or disappear, American Jewry loses more than numbers. It loses geographic confidence, national presence, and the connective tissue that makes Jewish life feel broadly American rather than narrowly coastal.

Too often, Jewish communities outside the major hubs are described exclusively in terms of vulnerability. Sometimes those concerns are real. But they are not the whole story. In smaller communities, impact is magnified. Five young families can stabilize a synagogue. One capable professional can reverse a decade of attrition. One serious donor can change the future of an entire community. The evidence is already visible: Nashville’s Jewish population has grown substantially over the past decade; Birmingham has maintained institutional stability through deliberate investment in day school affordability and professional retention. These are not anomalies. They are proof of concept.

This aligns with what broader research tells us about community life beyond large cities. A growing body of work, including my own research from the American Enterprise Institute, has pushed back against elite assumptions about rural and small-town America. Many residents of smaller communities report stronger social ties, greater trust in neighbors, and higher satisfaction with their quality of life than those in dense urban centers. Those conditions – trust, stability, mutual responsibility – are precisely the soil in which Jewish life has historically taken root.

There is also a hard-headed argument here. From a stewardship perspective, smaller Jewish communities often offer greater marginal returns. In major metros, new funding may sustain existing infrastructure. In heartland communities, the same resources can create it: leadership pipelines, educational access, intergenerational continuity. A diversified communal portfolio is more durable than one concentrated in a handful of prestigious markets, no matter how successful those markets appear today.

Demographic reality reinforces this logic. Younger Americans, including younger Jews, are increasingly mobile and increasingly priced out of coastal cities. Many are choosing mid-sized metros for affordability, family life, and rootedness. Jewish life will either follow them intentionally or lose them quietly.

Much of the growth in heartland Jewish communities is Orthodox or traditionally observant: young families drawn by housing costs, community cohesion, and the opportunity to build institutions from the ground up. If the future of American Jewish demography is increasingly traditional, then ignoring where traditional families are actually settling is not merely a strategic error. It is communal denial.

But there is another migration pattern that deserves attention. Remote work has enabled a different kind of Jew to leave coastal cities: younger, less affiliated, professionally mobile, often disconnected from legacy institutions. These are Jews who might drift away entirely without intentional outreach or who might, given the right invitation, become the next generation of engaged leaders. Heartland communities have an opportunity that coastal institutions often lack: the chance to form relationships before habits calcify, to offer belonging before indifference sets in.

Roberts rightly emphasizes Israel education as a priority, and the point deserves amplification. In the post-October 7 landscape, confident identification with Israel has become socially costly in many elite coastal environments – on campuses, in progressive professional circles, in cultural institutions that once seemed like natural homes for Jewish participation. Smaller communities are often less saturated by these pressures. They may be better positioned to cultivate the kind of unapologetic, literate Israel connection that coastal institutions increasingly struggle to sustain. Geographic dispersion is not only demographic insurance; it may be ideological shelter.

None of this minimizes the urgency of security. Rising antisemitism is real, and protecting Jewish institutions is essential. But security alone cannot sustain a people. Jewish continuity depends on confidence and the belief that Jewish life is not merely something to defend, but something worth building. Smaller communities often grasp this instinctively because survival depends on meaning, not scale.

Put bluntly: a Judaism that can only thrive where it is fashionable is a Judaism that has already lost something essential.

Roberts writes as a federation executive, and federations remain the most plausible vehicle for the cross-communal investment he envisions. But honesty requires acknowledging the model is under strain: declining campaign totals, aging donor bases, tension between local priorities and national allocations. The question is not only whether federations should redirect resources toward heartland communities, but whether they can and whether donors are willing to support that redirection even when it means less visibility per dollar spent.

What would meaningful investment look like? National foundations could establish heartland fellowships that place talented young professionals in smaller communities with multi-year salary support. Legacy donors could endow positions – executive directors, educators, rabbis – in communities that cannot currently compete for top-tier talent. Federations could create flexible innovation funds that empower local boards to experiment without proving ROI to distant program officers. These are not radical proposals. They are the ordinary work of institution-building, redirected toward communities overlooked for too long.

American Jewry became strong by building institutions wherever Jews settled, not only where it was easiest or most fashionable. That instinct created synagogues, schools, and communities across the map. If we want Jewish life in America to remain confident, resilient, and recognizably American in the decades ahead, we must recover it – deliberately, strategically, and now.

The future of American Jewry will not be decided in one city or one region. It will be decided by whether we have the wisdom to invest in all the communities that make us a people.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. 

The Western Wall and Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Michael Dickson, who serves as the Executive Director of Stand With Us, and I were grabbing coffee in the Rova when the conversation turned personal. We’d been swapping origin stories, his from North London, mine from Philadelphia, both of us raised in proudly Jewish homes where Israel wasn’t a place on a map but a place we visited, a place that shaped us. We both made aliyah as young parents with little ones in tow. And now here we are.

“Let’s walk,” I said.

We ended up at the rooftop overlook at the Aish World Center, the Western Wall across from us, ancient and alive. But we weren’t talking about history. We were talking about the future. Specifically, what we’re building in the next generation that will carry them through whatever comes next.

Because here’s what I know for certain: The question isn’t whether our kids will face hard things. It’s whether we’re giving them the tools to get back up.

When I found myself struggling after October 7th, I thought about my grandparents. All four were Holocaust survivors from Transylvania who eventually made their way to Pennsylvania. They rebuilt vibrant Jewish lives in another country, in another culture, in another language. They didn’t have therapists or support groups or Instagram accounts to process their trauma. They had each other. They had Shabbat. They had forward motion.

They never sat me down and taught me resilience. They modeled it. The Friday night candles. The holiday tables that groaned with food. Every time they chose joy when despair would have been easier. I absorbed it without realizing I was learning anything at all.

Michael nodded when I told him this. “Trauma and despair are not a strategy,” he said. “You have to pick yourself up and think about what constructive things you can do.”

That’s not toxic positivity. That’s survival wisdom passed down through generations.

Michael co-authored a book called ISResilience: What Israelis Can Teach the World, with a pioneering Israeli psychologist. They interviewed war heroes, Olympic champions, Ethiopian immigrants — Israelis who had overcome extraordinary hardship. As we talked, Michael walked me through three traits that stood out. I couldn’t help but think about how we could cultivate these in our homes.

The first is empathy, feeling your emotions fully instead of pushing them away. “Israelis are never worried about showing you their emotions,” Michael explained. “They’re like open books.” In our homes, this means letting our kids see us cry. Letting them be sad. Not rushing to fix every feeling but sitting with them in it.

The second is flexibility. “As soon as Israelis have a problem, they find a way around it,” he said. We teach this when we let our kids problem solve instead of swooping in. When we show them that Plan B isn’t failure, it’s adaptation.

The third is the ability to take hardship and make it meaningful. “What’s the first thing people did after October 7th?” Michael asked. “Made meals for each other, supported each other, helped each other.” When hard things happen in our families, we can ask our children: What can we do? Who can we help? How do we make this matter?

But underneath all three is something so ordinary we might overlook it: community.

“You could be walking down the street here, and your kid doesn’t have socks on, someone’s going to tell you,” Michael laughed. That’s Israel. Sometimes maddening, always connected.

Shabbat dinner is the ultimate expression of this. Not just immediate family but friends, neighbors, the random cousin passing through. “We might underestimate it because we think it’s just what we do,” Michael reflected, “but actually it helps guard our own resilience and strength.”

Our grandparents knew this instinctively. They built communities wherever they landed. They never let their children feel alone. The table was always expandable.

Michael and I stood there for a while, looking out at the Western Wall, the Temple Mount beyond it. Thousands of years of Jewish continuity in a single frame.

That’s what we’re passing down. Not just empathy, flexibility, and making hardship matter. But the table itself. The community. The way our grandparents raised us is the way we raise our kids.

“From Jerusalem, the light will shine,” Michael said.

That’s the job. Raising a generation that knows how to carry it.

Jamie Geller is the Global Spokesperson and Chief Communications Officer for AISH. She is a bestselling cookbook author, Jewish education advocate, and formerly an award-winning producer and marketing executive with HBO, CNN, and Food Network.