With a distressed accent, Roozbeh Farahanipour sat in the blue-green light of his restaurant’s 220-gallon saltwater aquarium and fretted about Iran.
It was Sunday morning, and the U.S. military had attacked the country he had fled 25 years before, intensifying a war that had started nine days earlier when Israel launched a surprise attack on its longstanding adversary in the Middle East.
Hatred and rage toward the Iranian government According to Farahanipour, who owns Delphi Greek restaurant and two other cafes in the area, “I have it, but I try to manage it.” Nothing positive will come of this, in my opinion. If the dictatorship is overthrown for any reason, we will either have to deal with another Iraq or Afghanistan or the situation in the Balkans. Iran will be divided into fragments.
As a gray shark in the tank behind him made leisurely loops, 53-year-old Farahanipour, who had been a political activist before escaping Iran, reeled out a series of queries. What would happen to Iranian civilians if the U.S. attack led to a wider conflict? What about the possible death toll among Israelis? Americans as well? After considering those important questions, he asked a more practical one: How much will petrol cost tomorrow?
The lives of Iranian Americans in Los Angeles, the largest Iranian population outside of Iran, are like this. Like other Iranian Americans interviewed by The Times, Farahanipour expressed a range of conflicting emotions over the Iranian issue, which intensified early on Sunday when the United States hit three nuclear installations in Iran as part of an Israeli attempt to thwart the nation’s pursuit of an atomic weapon.
The UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies hosts the Iranian Data Dashboard, which shows that there are around 141,000 Iranian Americans in L.A. County. Westwood, where the named avenue is dotted with shopfronts adorned in Persian lettering, is the community’s epicenter.
In a neighborhood known as Tehrangeles, which is a reference to Iran’s capital after it welcomed Iranian immigrants to Los Angeles during the Islamic Revolution of 1979, response to the conflict’s news was subdued on Sunday morning. Journalists from CNN, Spectrum News, and other organizations outnumbered Iranian customers in certain establishments. The pre-revolution Iranian flag was displayed beside the cash register at the Attari Sandwich Shop, which is well-known for its beef tongue sandwich, but none of the patrons wanted to be interviewed.
With a wry smile, one middle-aged attendee answered, “No, thank you. [I’m] not really political.”
Any U.S. military engagement with Iran is loaded with significance and has long been the focus of hand-wringing, according to UCLA associate professor of sociology Kevan Harris.
This situation, which in some ways looks nearly bizarre, has existed in the imagination: Harris, an Iranian American author of A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran, declared that the United States will bomb Iran. This is something that has been debated frequently throughout the past 20 years.
Many emigrants struggle with a strong hate and animosity of the authoritarian regime they left behind, as well as worry for their surviving family members. There were people in Westwood who wanted to talk.
Out of worry for her family’s safety in Iran, a woman who wished to be named only as Mary said she had emigrated five years prior and was traveling to Los Angeles with her spouse. According to the Chicago resident, the past week and a half has been extremely challenging, in part because her parents and other members of her immediate family still remain in Tehran. Because of the continuous Israeli military bombardment, they recently departed the city for another area in Iran.
“I communicate with them on a daily basis,” said Mary, 35.
Mary expressed her optimism and concern while standing outside Shater Abbass Bakery & Market, whose proprietor has also hung the Iranian flag from before 1979.
She described the feeling as being really perplexing. Some people are content because they dislike or even despise the government. She claimed that other people are angry over the civilian deaths and property damage.
In August, Mary had intended to travel to Iran to see her relatives, but plans have changed. She said, “I don’t know what I should do now.”
There was a noticeable Iranian Jewish community in Beverly Hills, not far from Westwood. Shahram Javidnia, 62, was walking close to a throng of pro-Israel activists on Sunday morning as they marched toward the city’s enormous Beverly Hills sign. An Israeli flag was waved by one of them.
Javidnia, a Beverly Hills-based Iranian Jew who is anti-Iranian, said he keeps an eye on social media, TV, and radio for updates on the situation in Iran.
He claimed that because Iran’s authoritarian leadership is at a weak moment right now, it might be time for the Iranian people to take a stand and strive to do the right thing.
A year before the Islamic Republic was established and the shah was overthrown by revolution, Javidnia arrived in the United States as a teenager in 1978. He made his home in the Los Angeles region and hasn’t returned. He claimed that he doesn’t even consider going back.
He claimed that the location where he spent his early years was no longer there. It is nonexistent.
