For Iran's Jews, "Freedom's" Just Another Word for Losing Israel

There's a fascinating piece in The Tower about a Swedish Jew's visit to the Jewish community in Tehran. I was especially taken with this bit wherein the visitor compares and contrasts Jews living in Europe and Iran:

As I leave the Haroonian family home it hits me: The overwhelming mix of joy and sadness, of being in Tehran on Shabbat with my people, a scene so familiar and foreign all at once. To a certain degree, the Jews of Iran enjoy greater freedom than I, a European Jew, have ever known. Their synagogues are unguarded, their Jewish identity on proud display, and their religious life lauded and encouraged while mine is increasingly outlawed and oppressed. But their freedom exists inside a large and impenetrable prison, their homogenous traditional orthodoxy that I long for back home is only possible in a place where the alternatives are deemed illegal. 

But most of all, I am struck by their longing for Israel. 

My connection to Israel is a backbone, an integral part of my identity as a Jew. Being in Iran showed me what it would be like to live without it. How completely untethered and unsafe I would feel. On my continent, people are fleeing their homes because they are Jewish, their Jewish identity making it unsafe for them to stay. What if there was no Israel to come home to? What if we were left alone, like shards of crystal, dispersed in the Diaspora? How would we act? What would we be? What would we have to do in order to please our master?