Members of the local Iranian community are expressing mixed reactions of hope, uncertainty and worry over what happens next following strikes over the weekend by U.S. and Israeli forces on Iran.
Saeed Shafiyan-Rad is the president of the Iranian Association of Boston, a non-profit that’s not affiliated with any political or religious organizations. The IAB has been vocal in condemning the Iranian government’s recent crackdowns against protestors.
Shafiyan-Rad said many in the Iranian community in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere celebrated the strikes, which resulted in the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
But now comes the hard part, he said: figuring out where things go from here.
“Working out, well, who’s next? What’s gonna happen?” Shafiyan-Rad said. “Those are some of the questions that still exist for myself as well as other Iranians in New England as well as… who’s gonna fill up that vacuum?”
While he’s hopeful that democratic norms will take hold in Iran, he believes deploying U.S. ground forces in the country would be a mistake.
“It’s going to be much, much more difficult and the [casualties] for American people would be much higher,” Shafiyan-Rad said. “And I hope they don’t make that decision because I don’t think it’s wise to make that decision.”
While there were demonstrations of support for the military strikes, others within the Iranian American community were more reserved.
Reza Sadr of Newton still has family in Iran. He’s been following the news anxiously and describes his feelings as complicated.
While he disagrees with the Islamic regime, he isn’t sure the U.S. military intervention will improve things.
“I don’t personally think that either the present government of the United States, or especially the Israeli government, is on the right side of history,” he said.
Sadr would like to see the entire government overthrown, but worries it may come back even stronger if that is unsuccessful.
Amin Feizpour is the founder of the Iran Circle, a non-profit aimed at facilitating conversations around politics, culture and history across the Iranian diaspora.
He’s avoided going to Iran since he moved here for fear of getting arrested over his anti-regime stance. But he lands somewhere in the middle of the current conflict.
“You don’t have to be on [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s side, and you don’t have to be on the Islamist regime’s side,” he said. “You can have a third way, you can have a discussion about what are the alternative solutions for the situation in Iran.”
