“All human beings are members of one frame/ Since all, at first, from the same essence came./ When time afflicts a limb with pain./ The other limbs cannot at rest remain./ If thou feel not for other’s misery./ A human being is no name for thee.”
– A poem by the 19-century Persian poet Saadi Shirazi engraved on the United Nations building in New York.
BOSTON – After several weeks of conflict abroad in Iran, local Boston Iranian groups are torn over their attitude about the American government and the war it initiated in cooperation with Israel.
The war commenced with a joint US-Israeli strike on February 28, targeting and killing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, top general Abdolrahim Mousavi and the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Mohammad Pakpour, according to a March 28 article by Al Jazeera. In response Iran immediately launched drone and missile strikes against Israel and nearby US assets, and the Gulf states.
After a missile attack by Hezbollah, Israel has evacuated and bombed parts of Lebanon in retaliation. By the end of the first week of the conflict, six American soldiers and 1,332 civilians in Iran had died, according to a March 6 article by Reuters. As of April 9 the death toll stood at 3,400 Iranian citizens, 1,700 Lebanese citizens, 23 Israeli citizens and 23 US soldiers.
Last week, a tenuous two-week ceasefire was brokered between the US and Iran, but as of this writing it’s unclear if it will last.
“Talking specifically about the community in Boston, it’s very divided,” said Amin Feizpour, the founder and director of the Iran Circle, a network of scholars that talk about issues related to Iran. I would say it’s like 50-50. He lived in Iran until he was 24 before moving to Boston.
“Fifty percent of the people are pro-war, pro Trump, pro Netanyahu … and 50% of us are completely against the war,” he said.
Feizpour said there are also a portion of Iranians who are torn on the issue, and several who are “prose-loving” Islamic Republic supporters who want to stop the war to maintain the regime.
While there are not yet any polls of local Boston Iranian opinion, a poll released by the National Iranian American Council surveyed 508 American-Iranian citizens revealing that as of March 27, 66.1% opposed the war, which was 16.8% higher from when the war began.
Shiraz Hajiani, a lecturer of Islamic studies at Harvard University, said that political unrest in Iran stretched back before the 1979 revolution when 1,000 families controlled all the wealth of Iran and the Shah grew more distant from his people. The revolt was popular across the political spectrum, allowing Ayatollah Khomeini, the most powerful Iranian religious leader at the time, to play a key role in the movement and to assume power. This led to the Islamic Republic we know today—which, according to Hajiani, claims it is a theocracy, but acts as a nationalist state with theocratic rhetoric.
“One of my professors, who was also a specialist in Iranian Studies, said that one of his friends said, ‘Before the 1979 revolution, we used to pray at home and drink in the park. Now we drink at home and pray in the park,” said Hajiani.
“[The police] can basically do anything to you,” said Naaz Kazemi, an organizer for Boston For Iran, an interest group dedicated to organizing in favor of U.S. intervention in Iran. She emigrated from Iran to the US in 2019, and now lives in the Boston area.
“If you are not wearing your hijab [in Iran] to their standards they can arrest you and take you to jail, and once you go to these jails you never know what’s going to happen,” she said.
Women, who have been on the frontline of political protests in Iran since 1979, are still subjugated to oppressive laws regarding garments, said Hajiani.
Kazemi said she has had friends that have gotten raped because they didn’t comply with those laws.
While it is unclear how many Iranian citizens died in the protests leading up to February 28, Kazemi says she believes it is far greater than the casualties caused by the US-Israeli strikes. In late January, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran Mai Sato said that the death toll may have been greater than the 3,000 claimed by the Iranian government, according to Le Monde.
“We are very grateful for President Trump and what he’s doing because this is not a war with Iran. This is a war for Iran and the Iranian people,” said Kazemi.
She said there is no option for the government to change and be functional. The only option is the US destroying the regime. She said that the price of basic foods like meat and eggs are constantly climbing, which she believes has nothing to do with the sanctions from America because a lot of these products are produced in Iran.
Hajiani disagreed, saying that American intervention has impacted economic instability in Iran, which it had no right to do. This has led to a lot of prices of goods in Iran to go “through the roof.”
“When you have lived under that much suppression and dictatorship, you are worried about your life,” she said. “So whoever lends you a hand for help, you’re not going to question them in that moment, because this is basically you either die from the bullets that your government is shooting at you or you have this hope that after America has stricken all of these Islamic Republic Revolutionary guards, then they have a chance to rise and get back their lives.”
She believes the mission is very much targeted at the IRGC and, based on conversations she’s had with people back in Iran, the strikes often do not cause innocent casualties.
In contrast, Feizpour said it is a “racist” and “fascist” decision by congress to let Trump attack Iran. He noted the over 160 girls that died after a US missile hit a school in Minab, which surprised him that the US would subsequently push forward with the war. He doesn’t believe the current methods are working, and believes the war has targeted more historical infrastructure than military opponents.
“This is extremely unacceptable,” said Feizpour. “You know, it is an assault on another country … against all of the international law, against the US Constitution, and US laws.”
“Trump basically followed Netanyahu’s lead to do this,” he said. “I feel that my homeland is currently basically being assaulted by two invasive predators, not even governments, but they are more like just individuals, and it’s like two regimes.”
In his experience examining politics in the Middle East, Hajiani believes that Netanyahu has sought a war with Iran for 40 years. Over the decades attitudes have become more conservative in Israeli politics, military strategy, and society.
Hamas and Hezbollah and all of the other movements that Iran has supported have been labeled as terrorist organizations, and have also happened to oppose Western and Israeli political interests, said Hajiani. Israel made a truce with Hezbollah and the Lebanese forces they have violated around 1000 times. Most recently, immediately after the ceasefire between the US and Iran.
“It’s not really Trump’s war,” said Hajiani. “It’s Netanyahu’s war. And if we call it what it is, it will make a lot of sense to the world that America is playing not Israeli, but Netanyahu’s policies, because there are a lot of people in Israel who are opposed to this war, just as much as a lot of people in Iran opposed to the conflict with with Israel”
A possible alternate motivation for the US attack is that Iran is a counterweight in a lot of conflicts regarding US allies in the Middle East, said Hajiani. Also, Israel and a lot of weapons manufacturers are benefitting from the conflict. He also believes it is a way that the US can maintain its global dominance.
“The US dollar since the 1970s has been the mechanism for trade with the BRICS countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and joined by Saudi Arabia and various others, including two countries that have been in the news, Venezuela and Iran,” said Hajiani. “They were shifting away from using the dollar as trade. That means the US economy basically, if that trend continues, the US economy basically just spirals.”
He said he doesn’t believe Trump’s assertion that Iran is close to developing a nuclear bomb.
“When the Obama administration was able to negotiate the nuclear agreement, they were able to have the IAEA go and inspect all the facilities, nuclear facilities that the Iranians have,” said Hajiani. “That is not done in Israel, nor is it required by the powers that be, America and Britain and so on, who supplied Israel with this weapon.”
Aside from Trump’s reasoning behind the attacks, some local Iranian’s, regardless of the US’s political motives, are optimistic about the attacks.
“The reason people are happy and they are chanting ‘Israel and Iran’ is not because we are happy that Iran is being bombed right now, it’s because we see this as our only chance to get beyond the Islamic Republic in Iran,” said Saman Abbaspoor, a protestor at an event organized by Boston for Iran. He immigrated to the US in 2018 and moved to Boston a year ago, and is now a post-doctorate researcher at Harvard Medical School.
Iranians have protested the regime for 50 years, two months ago they tried again and tens of thousands died, said Abbaspoor. Since the US and Israel began the war, far fewer have died.
“I guess the response or the simile that really works in my mind is that if you have cancer, and a lot of us Iranians view this regime as a cancer, you have to get chemo. And chemo is poison,” said a protester at the same event who requested to remain anonymous for the safety of her family. “It’s a toxin. It’s not something super good for you. A healthy person should not get chemo.”
The protester said that she understands why the opposition is hesitant because of what happened when the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, but said that this outcome would be different because, unlike other nations, Iranians do not like their regime.
“I think for anybody to get to that position of power, they cannot be a purely good person. So I don’t think Trump comes at this from good intentions,” the anonymous protester said. “But is his action at the end of the day helping us? Yes.”
Hajiani said it is very rare that an external force can intervene in a foreign country’s government, and reconfigure an operation in a matter of months. This takes many years, potentially generations, and even then it will take a long time for a country to reach stability.
“Some were thinking, ‘Oh, wonderful, the bombs will come and, you know, once, once the head of the snake is cut off, the snake will die,” said Hajiani. “Well, that’s not how real politics works. And this is … a regime that has been in place for 47 years. … They have created structures for the continuation of governance.”
Some anticipate wider political ramifications down the line, but others brought up the short term consequences if the US did not intervene.
“It’s ok to be antiwar,” said Saeid Gholami, another protestor at the event. “We don’t blame you but listen from the people who have been in the country who know the best and don’t make it a political situation. This is not Democrat-Republican. This is a humanitarian situation.”
Gholami drew parallels between ISIS and the IRGC saying that the Iranian people’s lives are in danger if immediate action is not taken.
Feizpour said he believes that a practical conclusion is to end the conflict as soon as possible, and release the thousands of political prisoners in Iran as soon as possible, but not all local Iranians agree.
“A referendum should determine the future of the state,” said Feizpour. “It should not be, you know, a war that is basically intended to destroy all of the infrastructure in Iran which is what’s happening now.”
This article is syndicated by the MassWire news service of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. If you want to see more reporting like this, sign up for BINJ’s free weekly newsletter at https://binj.news/signup/.
