It’s been over a year since Daveed, a pseudonym, spoke to his cousins in Tehran.

While the Iran native, who today sells goods in Jerusalem, is worried for the relatives he left behind years ago, he is also acutely aware of the danger he can put them in merely by making contact.

“Nowadays, it’s safest to keep a low profile,” he said. Of the situation his family is in, he knows nothing beyond “they’re afraid.”

As Israel and the United States begin the third week of their joint aerial assault against the Iranian regime, thousands of Jews living in the Islamic Republic are facing fraught circumstances.

Exactly how fraught is difficult to determine. Since the campaign began, many Jews in Iran, like Daveed’s cousins, have had little or no contact with relatives abroad. Internet blackouts have limited communication, but in many cases the silence is deliberate, as such contact — particularly with those in Israel — risks drawing suspicion from authorities.

Iranian Jewish community leaders and activists warn that attempts from within Israel to contact Jews in Iran could put their lives at risk. For that reason, The Times of Israel did not directly contact Jews in the country.

Interviews have been conducted, however, with relatives, friends, and community figures connected to Iran’s Jews in an effort to understand how the war is affecting them. (This article was approved for publication by Israel’s military censor, which requires the submission of material concerning the status of Jewish communities in “hostile nations.”)

Online estimates put Iran’s Jewish population at between 8,000 and 15,000 people, mostly concentrated in Tehran, with smaller communities in cities such as Isfahan and Shiraz.

Since Israel’s establishment, tens of thousands of Iranian Jews have immigrated to the Jewish State, making up an estimated population of about 200,000 today, mostly Israeli-born.

Daveed told The Times of Israel that he remembers the country fondly and longs to see it “free” one day.

Now middle-aged, Daveed moved to Israel with his wife and children in his early 30s after growing up in Tehran and completing compulsory military service there.

While speaking in Hebrew to the Times of Israel from his small shop, where he sells roasted nuts, seeds, dried fruit and spices, two other Iranian Jewish immigrants working nearby passed, calling out to him in Farsi.

When asked about their relatives in Iran, they declined to comment.

“It all will be okay, I........

© The Times of Israel