Egyptian influencer Loay Al Shareef has drawn flak for saying that Jewish people have a “debt” to free Iran from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s hold, echoing a line often claimed by Israel to seek regime change in the Islamic Republic.
Speaking at the Jerusalem Post Miami Summit earlier in January, Al Shareef said, “All of you here, the Jewish people, you have a debt in your necks to the Persian people. Cyrus the great freed your ancestors 2,500 years ago and it’s now time to pay the debt for Cyrus and return it and free Iranians to make Iran great again.”
According to the Middle East Eye, Al Shareef is a zionist supporter and his content provides validation on many of Israel’s talking points.
His statement comes at a time when Iran is facing its largest protest since 2022 that broke out in the country on December 28, 2025, over economic collapse, largely due to the US-led sanctions it faces.
The crackdown has allegedly left at least 3,095 people dead, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, exceeding that of any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalling the chaos surrounding the 1979 revolution.
The Iran government had also shut down internet earlier in January due to the protests. On January 8, people in Iran’s capital, Tehran, shouted from their homes and rallied in the street after a call by the country’s exiled crown prince for a mass demonstration, witnesses said, a new escalation in the protests that have spread nationwide across the Islamic Republic.
The protest represented the first test of whether the Iranian public could be swayed by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whose fatally ill father fled Iran just before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
(With inputs from PTI)
This post was last modified on January 19, 2026 3:42 pm