JERUSALEM – The publication aligned with Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei praised the individual accused of killing an American and an Israeli in Washington, D.C., describing him as “our dear brother.” This incident took place on Wednesday night.
Elias Rodriguez, aged 31, from Chicago, reportedly informed police and bystanders that he shot Sarah Milgrim, a 26-year-old from Kansas, and her 30-year-old Israeli partner, Yaron Lischinsky, as an act of support “for Palestine . . . for Gaza.”
Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim were fatally shot while leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum. They are seen here posing together in an undisclosed location, as shown in this image provided by the Embassy of Israel to the U.S. on May 22, 2025. (Embassy of Israel to the USA via X/Handout via Reuters)
“Our dear brother Elias Rodriguez, who killed two Israelis in the U.S., has founded the Washington Basij,” the newspaper wrote Saturday. The Basij is an Iranian para-military organization that is assigned to crush all dissent against Khamenei’s ironclad rule.
The fiercely anti-American editor of Kayhan, Hossein Shariatmadari, asked, “Any news of our dear brother Elias Rodriguez, who sent two Zionist wild animals in Washington to hell with a bullet?”
The Iranian media’s glorification of the murders stunned even longtime regime watchers.
“Iran openly calls for terror attacks against Israel on U.S. soil. Kayhan, the mouthpiece of Supreme Leader Khamenei, praises the attack on Israeli embassy staff in Washington DC — one of whom was an American citizen — calling the killer the founder of the ‘Washington Basij,’ Iran’s brutal militia,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Oren Marmorstein, wrote on X. “Unfathomable.”
Iranian-born Israeli Beni Sabti, an expert on Iran and a research fellow for the Institute for National Security Studies, told Fox News Digital the threat of terror from his homeland is directed at the U.S.
“It’s very important that Americans understand that the terror is also or mostly against them,” he said.
Sabti added that Vatan-e-Emrooz’s message of support of the murders means “the shooting was revenge by that guy and also in the Islamic tradition that Elias is the prophet Eliyahoo, who killed many infidels, so it’s a kind of phrase that Elias is a man of God when he killed those employees of the embassy.”
