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Globe and Mail
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
For Iranian-Americans, a potential U.S. attack on the regime brings complex feelings
Nearly 20 years ago, Iranian-American comedian Maz Jobrani set out with other entertainers on an Axis of Evil comedy tour, hoping laughs could subvert stereotypes. Being Iranian, he jokes, is like a Facebook relationship status: It's complicated. Perhaps never more than in the past week, as Israeli munitions have pounded the country where he was born, where 90 million people live as inheritors of a proud history – but under the rule of an authoritarian Islamic regime. 'We love our land. We love our history and we don't want that destroyed. We don't want our people destroyed, either,' Mr. Jobrani said in an interview Friday. Born in Tehran, he knows how people have suffered under what he calls 'a brutal dictatorship.' His own cousins are among those who have fled the Iranian capital in recent days, seeking safety in more distant places. Still, he has little hope that bombs and missiles will win their liberty from oppression. 'War has never helped solve anything – not in the 21st century,' he said. 'We haven't really come out of a war, especially in the Middle East, and gone: 'See? It worked!'' Roughly a half-million Iranian-Americans live in the U.S., a population whose largest concentration lies in Los Angeles – 'Tehrangeles' – but whose numbers reach across the country. Turmoil in the country of their birth has accustomed them to anxiety. 'I had a bit where I said, I just wish I was Swedish, life would be so much easier,' Mr. Jobrani said. 'Being Iranian, it's constant – they're always in the news and always the enemy.' Analysis: Collapse of Iranian regime could have unintended consequences for U.S. and Israel Yet many, like Mr. Jobrani, see little gain in using military force to attack the regime that has ruled the country since 1979. In the days before Israel launched strikes against Iran last week, the National Iranian American Council, or NIAC, commissioned a poll that showed 53 per cent of Iranian-Americans opposed U.S. military action against Iran, while nearly one in two said diplomacy represents the best path to preventing the country from obtaining nuclear weapons. Only 22 per cent said military operations are the best hope to forestall a nuclear-armed Iran. 'The strong outcry in the Iranian community is, 'Don't get involved in this. Stop the war. Stop the bombing. Let the Iranian people breathe and give them a chance to chart their own future,' said Ryan Costello, a policy director with NIAC. 'The movement for democracy in Iran has to be one that's led by Iranians, not a hostile government.' For others, however, the attacks on Iran have also brought a flourish of hope. In the NIAC poll, 36 per cent of respondents said they supported U.S. military action against Iran. Now, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordering military strikes against the country where she lived until her late 20s, Farnoush Davis cannot suppress a feeling of hope. 'It's very exciting,' she said. Opinion: Iranians deserve a path to freedom that is also free from violence Ms. Davis grew up with little love for the ruling authorities who demanded she cover her head, made Western music illegal and lay U.S. flags on doorsteps for people to tread on. As a young woman, she rejected the hijab, stepped carefully around the flags, developed a fondness for Michael Jackson – and ultimately left for the U.S., where she now lives as a citizen in Idaho. For people in Iran, the downpour of Israeli munitions, offers a fresh chance 'to take down the Islamic republic, get their lives back and go for freedom,' she believes. For nearly a half-century, she added every attempt to demand change from within has failed. 'We need to have some help from outside,' she said. 'I appreciate what Netanyahu is doing.' For those whose lives are intertwined with Iran, the past two years have given even greater cause for fear. Professor Persis Karim, the Neda Nobari Chair of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University, said she can only imagine how terrified people in Iran must feel because they have watched Israel's military campaign in Gaza. Analysis: Trump's two-week pause on Iran puts him at centre of world's biggest drama She has family members in Tehran and spoke with a cousin after the first night of bombing. Her cousin lives with her elderly mother and didn't want to leave. 'Two days later, I got a text and she said: 'We're leaving,'' Prof. Karim said, speaking Friday from a hotel room in Los Angeles after a Thursday night screening of a film she co-directed and executive produced about Iranian-Americans. Sadly, she says, few people attended, likely because they are worried, sick and anxious. Prof. Karim said she is 'ashamed' of the U.S.'s behaviour and that of President Donald Trump especially. 'I think the whole thing is absolutely disgusting in terms of international leadership,' she said. She also criticized Israel for suggesting it is time for Iranian people to rise up, calling it 'completely nonsense.' 'People cannot rise up and liberate themselves from an oppressive government when bombs are being lobbed at them, especially at civilians and civilian sites,' she said. 'I think what it's doing, it's going to harden the Islamic Republic.' Mr. Jobrani, meanwhile, has found himself placing his hopes for a better Iranian future not in Mr. Netanyahu or Mr. Trump, but in others who he sees as more determined to seek peace – perhaps European diplomats, perhaps Chinese negotiators, perhaps even Russia's Vladimir Putin or U.S. conservatives like Steven Bannon and Tucker Carlson, who have publicly opposed U.S. entry into war with Iran. 'Maybe these other ideologues from his party can convince him not to escalate,' Mr. Jobrani said. It is, he said, 'a surreal time and situation.'
Bloomberg
3 days ago
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Russian Ties Do Little for Iran While Boosting North Korea
During its war on Ukraine, Russia has leaned on North Korea for artillery shells and troops, and on Iran for drone technology. The payback for the two members of what George W. Bush once called the 'Axis of Evil' has been markedly different. A year after Kim Jong Un signed a mutual defense pact with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the North Korean leader appears to be in his most secure position since taking power in late 2011.
Fox News
14-06-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Time for Israel to take out ‘head of the snake,' target members of Iranian regime, says former IDF intel chief
Israel's ongoing military campaign on Iran's nuclear infrastructure could mark not just a military escalation but a strategic shift, according to retired Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin. The former head of Israeli military intelligence and one of the architects behind the legendary 1981 strike on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor said Israel should expand its sights not just military targets, but political ones. "Israel took the decision that, on one hand, it's time to end the leadership of the Axis of Evil — the head of the snake," Yadlin told Fox News Digital. "At the same time, deal with the main problems there. Which is the nuclear." Yadlin didn't say how long he thought the conflict would drag on. While he didn't openly call for regime change, Yadlin suggested the IDF take out regime targets "beyond the military level." "It's not a one-day operation. It seems more like a week, two weeks. But when you start a war, even if you start it very successfully, you never know when it is finished." "I hope that the achievements of the IDF, which are degrading the Iranian air defense, degrading the Iranian missile, ballistic missile capabilities, drones capabilities, and maybe even some regime targets beyond the military level that Israel started with, will convince the Iranians that it is time to stop. And then they will come to negotiation with the Trump administration much weaker." While Secretary of State Marco Rubio initially insisted it was not involved in the initial strikes on Tehran, President Donald Trump seemed to suggest he hoped Israel's strikes would pressure a weaker Iran to acquiesce at the negotiating table. The two sides are at loggerheads over the U.S.'s insistence that Iran cannot have any capacity to enrich uranium and Iran's insistence that it must have uranium for a civil nuclear program. "The military operation is aimed, in my view, to a political end, and the political end is an agreement with Iran that will block a possibility to go to the border," Yadlin said. "We need a stronger agreement" than the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, he said. Yadlin, who in 1981 flew one of the F-16s that destroyed Iraq's nuclear facility in a single-night operation, made clear that Israel's latest campaign is far more complex. "This is not 1981," he said. "Iran has learned. Their facilities are dispersed, buried in mountains, and protected by advanced air defenses. It's not a one-night operation." He added, "There are sites that I'm not sure can be destroyed." He said the recent attack was the result of years of intelligence gathering – and brave Mossad agents on the ground in Iran. Israel lured top Iranian commanders into a bunker, where they coordinated a response to Israel's attacks, then blew up the bunker. "All of the intelligence that Israel collected, from the time I was chief of intelligence 2005 to 2010, enabled this operation against the Iranian nuclear program to be very efficient, very much like the good intelligence enabled Israel to destroy Hezbollah. Unfortunately, the same intelligence agencies missed the seventh of October, 2023." Indeed, Israel's past preventive strikes — 1981's Operation Opera and the 2007 airstrike on Syria's suspected reactor — were rapid, surgical and designed to neutralize a singular target. In contrast, Yadlin suggested the current campaign could last weeks and involve broader goals. "It's not a one-day operation. It seems more like a week, two weeks. But when you start a war, even if you start it very successfully, you never know when it is finished." The operation is being framed by Israeli defense officials as a continuation of the Begin Doctrine, established after the 1981 Osirak strike, which declared that Israel would never allow a hostile regime in the region to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Yadlin himself is a symbol of that doctrine. As one of the eight pilots who flew into Iraq over four decades ago, he helped define Israel's policy of preemptive action — a legacy that is now being tested again under radically different circumstances. "This campaign," Yadlin emphasized, "is unlike anything the country has done before."
Asharq Al-Awsat
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Israel's Defense Minister Warns Yemen's Houthis of Heavy Retaliation
Israel's defense minister on Thursday warned Yemen's Houthis will suffer heavy blows if they continue to fire at Israel and that its defense forces are prepared for any mission. US President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday the US would stop bombing the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen, saying that the group had agreed to stop attacking US ships. A ceasefire deal between Yemen's Houthis and the US does not include sparing Israel, the Houthis said on Wednesday, later saying they targeted Israel with drones. "Israel must be able to defend itself on its own against any threat and any enemy," Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement on X. "The Houthis will suffer heavy blows from Israel if they continue to fire at us', he said, adding that the Israeli army is prepared for any mission. Katz also cautioned the Iranian leadership, which he accused of financing and arming the Houthi organization, declaring that the proxy system is over and "the axis of evil has collapsed." He stated that Iran bears direct responsibility and warned that actions similar to those taken against Hezbollah in Beirut, Hamas in Gaza, Assad in Damascus, and the Houthis in Yemen could be carried out in Tehran.
