Tucker Carlson’s latest baseless conspiracy blames Iran war on Chabad movement

New antisemitic theories surfaced this week after the outbreak of the Iran war, with far-right commentators blaming the conflict on the Chabad Hasidic movement, as a Jewish security group warned about potential threats.

The far-right media personality Tucker Carlson led his Wednesday show with baseless claims that the war’s aim was to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque and rebuild the Jewish temple.

The mosque is located on the Temple Mount, the site of the First and Second Temples, which were central to Judaism until both were destroyed in antiquity.

“There are key players involved in this war, the one happening tonight, who believe that what we’re seeing on our television screen and on Twitter will usher in a series of events that will begin with the destruction of the Dome of the Rock, Al Aqsa Mosque, and then the rebuilding of the Third Temple,” Carlson said.

“This has been going on a long time in public through, in part, the efforts of a group called Chabad,” he said.

“Chabad has been pushing in a pretty subtle way, unless you look carefully, for the reconstruction of the Third Temple,” Carlson said.

His evidence was a handful of patches worn by Israeli soldiers showing the temple that he claimed, without evidence, had come from Chabad.

Carlson framed the conflict as a “global religious war,” sparked by Jews and fought between Christians and Muslims.

“Christians have a way of dying disproportionately in these wars, which tells you something about their real motives,” he said.

The Chabad movement, based in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights, is known for its warm outreach efforts to other Jews and is not a political organization.

Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, a Chabad community leader in Brooklyn, called Carlson’s claims a “dangerous blood libel.”

“Chabad’s focus is on encouraging mitzvos — good deeds — to bring more goodness into the world and hasten the coming of the Messiah, while living responsibly in the present,” Behrman said in a statement, adding that the patches depicting the temple were unrelated to Chabad.

“Reckless rhetoric like this is dangerous and irresponsible,” Behrman said.

Other Chabad community members mocked Carlson for the claims.

New location announced: pic.twitter.com/EgUD1vvRB3

— Levi Teldon (@AlamoRabbi) March 5, 2026

Candace Owens, another prominent right-wing media personality with a history of antisemitism, picked up the claim, stating, “Tucker is telling the truth about Chabad.”

“You should absolutely be aware of where the Chabad is nearest your home. These people are dangerous. They are a radical sect of mystic occultists that follow the idea of a war messiah and they harm kids,” Owens posted on X.

Owens on Wednesday also blamed Israel for the 9/11 terror attacks, another baseless antisemitic canard.

Carlson has voiced other unfounded, conspiratorial claims against Israel in recent weeks, such as stating that President Isaac Herzog visited Jeffrey Epstein’s island and that Qatar and Saudi Arabia arrested Mossad agents in their territories.

The allegation that Jews are seeking to destroy Al Aqsa has caused sporadic outbreaks of violence against Jews in Israel for nearly a century.

Carlson has recently taken up several talking points familiar to the anti-Zionist left, such as casting Jews as non-indigenous European invaders in the Holy Land, part of a larger melding of talking points between the far left, the far right and Islamist groups.

Owens on Thursday posted about the Khazar hypothesis, a debunked academic theory that attempts to refute Jewish indigeneity in Israel, after Carlson brought it up in an interview with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee last week.

Both the right and left have accused Israel of dragging the US into the war with Iran. Carlson also stated this week that Israel controls the US through lies and manipulation, echoing age-old tropes that Jews wield outsize power from the shadows, and that Jews are manipulative warmongerers.

Carlson has millions of followers online and his show receives more viewership than some broadcast news networks.

Antisemitism has also infiltrated the ranks of lower-level Republicans, leaked chats showed.

The Miami Herald on Thursday reported on a group chat for the Miami-Dade County Republican Party in which participants used slurs against Jews, promoted Nazi concepts, and used derogatory and violent language against women and black people.

A leaked chat showed similar language from a chat for young Republicans in New York last year.

Polls show that most Republicans back the campaign against Iran, though.

US President Donald Trump dismissed Carlson’s statements on the Iran war earlier this week and again on Thursday.

“Tucker has lost his way,” Trump told ABC News. “I knew that a long time ago, and he’s not MAGA. MAGA is saving our country. MAGA is making our country great again. MAGA is America first, and Tucker is none of those things. And Tucker is really not smart enough to understand that.”

On the other side of the spectrum, activists with the far-left activist group CodePink said on Wednesday, “We won’t die for Israel’s war,” echoing a talking point from the far right, which often uses the slogan, “I’m not dying for Israel.”

Jewish security group issues warning

The Secure Community Network (SCN), a US Jewish community security group, issued a bulletin on Thursday warning about potential threats to American Jews during the war, citing the proliferation of antisemitism online and other threats.

There are no known, specific threats to Jewish communities, the bulletin said.

SCN said that, since the Iran campaign began, violent posts online targeting Jews that the group identified nearly doubled, from 2,211 in the five days prior to the airstrikes, to 4,322 violent posts in the five days after the war began.

Iran has activated proxies in Western countries in the past. A court in Argentina in 2024 found that Iran and its proxy Hezbollah were responsible for the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing that killed 85 people, for example.

More recently, Iran-linked operatives in the US have targeted a prominent dissident, Trump and Jewish Americans, according to US officials. Iran denies the charges.

The US Department of Homeland Security warned on Tuesday that Iran and its proxies “probably” pose a threat of targeted attacks on the United States, although a large-scale physical attack was unlikely.

The department arrested 11 Iranians in the US illegally last year, one of whom was connected to Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, while another was an Iranian military sniper.

Earlier this week, two senior Shiite clerics issued fatwas calling on Muslims worldwide to take revenge for Khamenei’s death, Iran International reported.

SCN urged vigilance in Jewish communities and taking precautionary measures such as reporting suspicious activities to law enforcement, vetting individuals who are attending events, and only providing details about events to registered attendees.

Both right-wing antisemitism and leftist anti-Zionism have instigated deadly violence against American Jews, such as the far-right shooter motivated by online antisemitism who killed 11 Jewish congregants in Pittsburgh in 2018, and the leftist attacker who allegedly killed two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, last year.

Other recent Iran-linked plots have targeted Jews in Mexico and Azerbaijan.

The mass killing in Bondi Beach, Australia, late last year targeted a Chabad event.