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LOS ANGELES, California – Los Angeles — home to the largest Iranian population outside Iran — has become a focal point for the Iranian diaspora as tensions surrounding the conflict in the Middle East intensify.
Thousands of people gathered in the streets of Los Angeles following the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran that reportedly killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For many in the community who remember life in Iran before the 1979 revolution, the news brought a moment they said they had waited decades to see.
Roozbeh Farahanipour, an Iranian-American who was just seven years old when clerics took control of Iran, said he couldn’t believe it.
“I grabbed a bottle of champagne, opened it, and drank it up,” Farahanipour said. “It was the moment we waited for, for many, many years.”
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Roozbeh Farahanipour was involved with opposition movements against the regime before fleeing Iran. (Courtesy of Roozbeh Farahanipour)
Farahanipour participated in student protests in Iran in 1999, events that eventually forced him to flee the country after authorities arrested him. He recalled learning that his execution had been announced in a newspaper before his trial, prompting him to escape Iran.
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“[The] night before my trial, they published my execution judgment in the newspaper, day before back to trial. That’s the last day I was in Iran,” Farahanipour recounted.
Roozbeh Farahanipour said he fled Iran after reading his execution judgment in the local newspaper. (Amalia Roy)
While he initially supported the U.S. and Israeli strikes that targeted senior leaders of Iran’s government, he now worries the military operation has continued longer than necessary.
“Minute one, after starting the war, they killed the head of state. They should announce the victory at minute two,” he said. “Why should we stay there and make it more complicated?”
Mohammad Ghafarian left Iran in 1972 to study, before the revolution. He doesn’t plan on returning, but Ghafarian has siblings in the country he has not heard from since the conflict began. (Amalia Roy)
Mohammad Ghafarian, who left Iran years before the revolution to study abroad, now runs a grocery store in Los Angeles. He said he has not heard from his family in Iran for nearly a month and fears for civilians caught in the violence.
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“I would love for the governments of America and Israel to overthrow the regime,” Ghafarian said. “But when they are bombing our country — facilities, power plants, water reservoirs, houses — they can’t divide the people from bad to good.”
Despite concerns about the ongoing conflict, some Iranian-Americans believe the strikes could open the door for Iranians inside the country to challenge the regime.