L.A.’s Iranian community has ‘mixed and complicated’ feelings about U.S. attack

Roozbeh Farahanipour sat in the blue-green glow of his Westwood restaurant’s 220-gallon saltwater aquarium and worried about Iran, his voice accented in anguish.

It was Sunday morning, and the homeland he fled a quarter-century ago had been bombed by the U.S. military, escalating a conflict that began nine days earlier when Israel sprang a surprise attack on its perennial Middle Eastern foe.

“Anger and hate for the Iranian regime — I have it, but I try to manage it,” said Farahanipour, owner of Delphi Greek restaurant and two other nearby eateries. “I don’t think that anything good will come out of this. If, for any reason, the regime is going to be changed, either we’re facing another Iraq or Afghanistan, or we’re going to see the Balkans situation. Iran is going to be split in pieces.”

Farahanipour, 53, who’d been a political activist before fleeing Iran, rattled off a series of questions as a gray-colored shark made lazy loops in the tank behind him. What might happen to civilians in Iran if the U.S. attack triggers a more widespread war? What about the potential loss of Israeli lives? And Americans too? After wrestling with those weighty questions, he posed a more workaday one: “What’s gonna be the gas price tomorrow?”

Such is life for Iranian Americans in Los Angeles, a diaspora that makes up the largest Iranian community outside Iran. Farahanipour, like other Iranian Americans interviewed by The Times, described “very mixed and complicated” feelings over the crisis in Iran, which escalated early Sunday when the U.S. struck three nuclear sites there, joining an Israeli effort to disrupt the country’s quest for an atomic weapon.

People shop at Stater Abbass Bakery and Market in Westwood as the local Iranian community comes to terms with the U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities on Sunday.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

About 141,000 Iranian Americans live in L.A. County, according to the Iranian Data Dashboard, which is hosted by the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies. The epicenter of the community is Westwood, where the namesake boulevard is speckled with storefronts covered in Persian script.

On Sunday morning, reaction to news of the conflict was muted in an area nicknamed “Tehrangeles” — a reference to Iran’s capital — after it welcomed Iranians who immigrated to L.A. during the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In some stores and restaurants, journalists from CNN, Spectrum News and other outlets outnumbered Iranian patrons. At Attari Sandwich Shop, known for its beef tongue sandwich, the pre-revolution Iranian flag hung near the cash register — but none of the diners wanted to give an interview.

“No thank you; [I’m] not really political,” one middle-aged guest said with a wry smile.

Kevan Harris, an associate professor of sociology at UCLA, said that any U.S. involvement in a military conflict with Iran is freighted with meaning, and has long been the subject of hand-wringing.

“This scenario — which seems almost fantastical in a way — is something that has been in the imagination: The United States is going to bomb Iran,” said Harris, an Iranian American who wrote the book “A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran.” “For 20 years, this is something that has been regularly discussed.”

Many emigres find themselves grappling with deep dislike and resentment of the authoritarian government they fled, and concern about the family members left behind. Some in Westwood were willing to chat.

People eat at Atari Sandwich Shop, a well-known Persian diner in Westwood, on Sunday.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

A woman who asked to be identified only as Mary, out of safety concerns for her family in Iran, said she had emigrated five years ago and was visiting L.A. with her husband. The Chicago resident said that the last week and a half have been very difficult, partly because many in her immediate family, including her parents, still live in Tehran. They recently left the city for another location in Iran due to the ongoing attacks by Israeli forces.

“I am talking to them every day,” said Mary, 35.

Standing outside Shater Abbass Bakery & Market — whose owner also has hung the pre-1979 Iranian flag — Mary said she was “hopeful and worried.”

“It’s a very confusing feeling,” she said. “Some people, they are happy because they don’t like the government — they hate the government.” Others, she said, are upset over the destruction of property and deaths of civilians.

Mary had been planning to visit her family in Iran in August, but that’s been scrambled. “Now, I don’t know what I should do,” she said.

Not far from Westwood, Beverly Hills’ prominent Iranian Jewish community was making its presence felt. On Sunday morning, Shahram Javidnia, 62, walked near a group of pro-Israel supporters who were staging a procession headed toward the city’s large “Beverly Hills” sign. One of them waved an Israeli flag.

Javidnia, an Iranian Jew who lives in Beverly Hills and opposes the government in Iran, said he monitors social media, TV and radio for news of the situation there.

“Now that they’re in a weak point,” he said of Iran’s authoritarian leadership, “that’s the time maybe for the Iranians to rise up and try to do what is right.”

Javidnia came to the U.S. in 1978 as a teenager, a year before revolution would lead to the overthrow of the shah and establishment of the Islamic Republic. He settled in the L.A. area, and hasn’t been back since. He said returning is not something he even thinks about.

“The place that I spent my childhood is not there anymore,” he said. “It doesn’t exist.”