标签： Asia

Amid weeks of sustained Israeli and American air bombardment across Iran that has killed thousands of people, an early morning Israeli strike on the Iranian capital Tehran has completely leveled the city’s historic Rafi-Nia Synagogue, according to multiple Iranian local media reports.

Iran’s official Mehr News Agency and reformist publication Shargh confirmed the synagogue was hit in the attack carried out on April 7, during the Jewish holy holiday of Passover. Video footage shared by local journalists and media outlets shows rescue teams sifting through the rubble of the destroyed structure, with scattered Hebrew religious liturgical texts visible among the debris. As of the latest updates, no casualties have been reported from the incident.

Shargh noted that the Rafi-Nia Synagogue served as a central gathering place for Tehran’s Khorasan Jewish community, a group of Jewish Iranians whose families trace their roots back to Iran’s historical northeastern Khorasan region. Iran is home to the third-largest Jewish population in the Middle East, following only Israel and Turkey. A 2016 Iranian national census recorded the country’s Jewish population at just over 9,000, though many community members estimate the actual number is significantly higher. Under Iranian law, Judaism is an officially recognized and protected religion, and Tehran alone hosts roughly 30 active synagogues for the local Jewish community.

The destruction of the synagogue comes amid a sustained campaign of cross-border strikes that began on February 28, when Israel and the United States launched ongoing bombardment across Iranian territory. Data collected by the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) indicates that more than 3,600 Iranians have been killed in the attacks since they began, including at least 1,665 civilian casualties. Neither Israel nor the United States has issued an official statement confirming or commenting on the strike that hit the synagogue. Middle East Eye has reached out to the Israeli military to request comment on the incident.

For weeks, members of Iran’s Jewish community have already expressed growing anxiety over their safety and future amid the escalating conflict. In interviews with Middle East Eye conducted in March, multiple Jewish Iranians emphasized their deep ties to the country, rejecting framing that casts them as outsiders amid rising regional tensions. “Yes, I’m Jewish. But I cannot see the country where I was born and raised as my enemy,” a 46-year-old Jewish businesswoman from Shiraz told the outlet. “I am both Jewish and Iranian. Because of that, I believe I can judge this situation without hatred. Much of the chaos we have seen in the region in recent years is connected to Netanyahu’s policies.”

On a tense Monday in occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir launched a controversial incursion into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, entering through the Moroccan Gate under a heavy escort of armed Israeli police. The incursion took place against the backdrop of an unprecedented, month-long closure that has barred nearly all Muslim worshippers from accessing one of Islam’s most sacred holy sites, a move that has already stoked deep anger across the Muslim world.

Israeli authorities have justified the ongoing closure by citing security concerns tied to the ongoing war with Iran, but Palestinian officials and advocacy groups have openly questioned the credibility of these claims. They point to the fact that Israeli officials have allowed large-scale public gatherings for Jewish holiday celebrations in other parts of the country, raising accusations that the security pretext is being used to advance a long-held far-right agenda to reshape control of Al-Aqsa.

In parallel to Ben Gvir’s incursion, Israeli police — operating under Ben Gvir’s oversight — have drafted a new access plan that would resume daily incursions by ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers into the mosque compound once it reopens. The proposal, which still requires approval from Israel’s High Court, would cap entry at 150 people at a time, a limit that applies equally to both Muslim worshippers and Jewish visitors. The plan marks a break from the pre-war status quo arrangement, which has for decades recognized the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf as the sole exclusive administrative authority over Al-Aqsa, including full control over entry and site management.

Critics of the plan warn that the 150-person cap is not an even-handed restriction: with the compound’s capacity to hold hundreds of thousands of worshippers for weekly Friday prayers and thousands for daily prayers, the limit effectively shuts out the vast majority of Muslim worshippers while normalizing and expanding daily settler incursions. Before the war, these incursions — which already violated the long-standing status quo — took place twice daily on non-weekends, with settlers entering in groups of fewer than 100 people under constant police protection. The new plan would raise the maximum group size to 150, a change that has been openly celebrated by ultra-nationalist Israeli activists who advocate for Israeli control over Al-Aqsa. Arnon Segal, a prominent leader in Temple Mount activist groups that organize these incursions, called the new cap a “historic development” and a long-awaited “dream” in a post on social media platform X.

The incursion and the new access plan have drawn widespread condemnation from Palestinian, regional, and international actors. The Palestinian Ministry of Religious Affairs called Ben Gvir’s incursion, carried out while the site remains closed to Muslim worshippers, an extremely dangerous step that undermines the inherent religious sanctity of Al-Aqsa. The Al-Quds International Institution, in a hard-hitting official statement released Monday, argued that the plan “deepens the division of Al-Aqsa Mosque” between Muslim and Jewish communities, saying it leverages the ongoing war to quietly transform the site into a shared Jewish-Islamic holy site as a stepping stone to the full Judaization of the compound. The institution also noted that the arrangement would place Ben Gvir in de facto control of all of the mosque’s affairs, fully sidelining the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, the internationally recognized governing body for the site. It called the move a deliberate insult to Arab and Muslim leaders who have so far only issued verbal statements against Israeli actions, reducing them to passive onlookers while a sacred site is reshaped against their will.

In practical terms, the Al-Quds International Institution explained, the 150-person cap means that even when the site formally reopens, it will remain effectively closed to the vast majority of Muslim worshippers: 150 people would not even fill the first row of the Qibli Mosque, the largest indoor prayer hall in the 144,000-square-meter Al-Aqsa compound. The institution warned that the plan would have “serious consequences” and issued an urgent call for action from Palestinians and all Muslim-majority nations, specifically calling on Jordan — the internationally recognized custodian of Jerusalem’s holy sites — and the Jerusalem Waqf to take concrete steps to push back against attempts to eliminate their long-standing role governing Al-Aqsa. “If implemented, Al-Aqsa Mosque will effectively be closed to Muslims and open to settler incursions. This is a humiliating act of aggression and an unacceptable reality that must be confronted by all possible means,” the statement read.

Hamas also issued a condemnation, saying Ben Gvir’s incursion “reflects a deepening of the occupation’s arrogance and its deliberate targeting of the mosque’s sanctity.” Jordan and Qatar have also added their voices to the criticism of the move. Ben Gvir, for his part, has defended the plan, arguing that it is a matter of fairness: he noted that anti-war protests of up to 600 people have been allowed in Israel, so he is “obliged to ensure justice and prevent discrimination” against those seeking access to the Western Wall and Al-Aqsa compound, which he refers to by the Israeli name Temple Mount. He called on the High Court to approve the plan to allow small-group access to both sites.

In the border town of O’Smach straddling Thailand and Cambodia, a recently seized illicit operation laid bare the staggering, industrial-scale expansion of transnational cyber scam networks that have exploded across Southeast Asia in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic.

For a journalist who has tracked the rise of these criminal compounds for years from a base in the region, and visited multiple scam centers before, the size of the O’Smach Resort complex—seized by Thailand’s military during a December border conflict with Cambodia—still defied prior expectations. Covering roughly 197 acres, an area equal to 150 full-sized American football fields, it dwarfed every other scam facility the reporter had previously observed.

Thailand’s military organized a guided media tour of the seized compound this week, revealing the full scope of the well-established criminal operation that once operated from the site. Thai officials stated they seized the territory after Cambodian actors used the complex as a base for cross-border attacks during the December dispute.

The compound, bearing the innocuous name O’Smach Resort, is linked to Cambodian politician Ly Yong Phat, who is already sanctioned by the United States for documented human rights abuses tied to the same site. While it remains unconfirmed whether ongoing expansion work at the complex is also tied to Ly, visible signs of new construction are scattered across the self-contained facility: stacks of unused bricks and idle construction cranes dot the landscape, indicating the criminal network was actively growing its operations before the seizure.

Inside the complex, the infrastructure is built explicitly to support large-scale coordinated fraud. In total, the site holds 157 separate structures. Twenty-nine of these are dedicated office buildings for scam operating companies, while the rest include mass worker dormitories, luxury staff apartments, and even three-story private villas for senior criminal leaders. Thai military estimates suggest at least 10,000 people resided and worked within the compound at the height of its operation. To accommodate the majority Chinese workforce that ran the scams, the compound even hosts a range of regional Chinese dining options, from spicy Hunan dishes and southern Chinese Shaxian delicacies to Sichuan-style hot and sour rice noodles.

During the tour, reporters were led to a four-story office building where scammers specifically targeted American victims. The office was left largely intact after the seizure: half-eaten snacks remained on desks, and every workstation held detailed scam scripts and notes written in Chinese. American SIM cards were scattered across surfaces, confirming the operation’s direct targeting of United States consumers.

One of the recovered scripts illustrates the sophisticated, long-con tactics scammers use to manipulate victims. The 24-page document builds out an elaborate backstory for a fake female persona named Mila, who is framed as a successful trader with huge earnings from gold options trading. The script goes far beyond basic financial fraud framing: it adds deeply personal details, including the death of Mila’s husband from leukemia when their daughter was an infant, childhood bullying, and a move to South Africa to live with her uncle as a teenager. These manufactured emotional details are designed to build trust with targets over weeks or months before scammers move to steal their money.

The revelation of this massive single compound lines up with broader estimates from global authorities. The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights currently estimates that roughly 300,000 people are trapped in the scam industry across Southeast Asia, many of them coerced into committing fraud against victims worldwide. Newly released FBI data this week underscores the staggering human cost for one major target market: U.S. consumers lost nearly $21 billion to all types of scams in 2023 alone.

While both Thailand and Cambodia have made public pledges to crack down on cross-border cyber scam operations, senior Thai officials emphasized that the problem is fundamentally global in scope, and cannot be solved by two neighboring countries acting alone. “Every country of the world has to join together to solve this problem. We cannot do it alone with Cambodia and Thailand,” stated Air Chief Marshal Prapas Sornchaidee, one of the senior military officials leading the media tour.

Recent regional developments signal growing momentum to address the crisis: Cambodia has recently advanced new legislation that would impose penalties as severe as life imprisonment for operators of illicit scam centers, and multiple countries have already extradited high-profile scam suspects back to their home jurisdictions to face charges. Still, the discovery of a 10,000-person fully operational scam compound near the Thai-Cambodian border makes clear that transnational criminal networks have already built a far larger infrastructure than many global leaders had previously acknowledged.