Justin Haubrich woke on Saturday to a phone call from his wife: Ayatollah Khamenei was dead, she told him. As a first-generation Iranian-American, Haubrich could hardly believe that the rule of the Ayatollahs had so abruptly been brought to a screeching halt from the weekend’s military actions in Iran.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime event,” Haubrich told Straight Arrow News. And it’s one that will have profound implications on his family and his life. “It means we will finally be able to see our country again after 47 years.”
Haubrich was born in Oklahoma to parents unable to return to their home country of Iran after the family spent time in India as dual citizens – a common conundrum following the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Now, he told SAN, for the first time in his life, Haubrich has the opportunity to see the nation his ancestors come from.
Haubrich is one of over 500,000 Iranian-Americans living in the United States. And like many others, he is watching the joint U.S.-Israel airstrikes in his family’s home country closely. While he has always desired to visit his family’s homeland, dual Iranian-American citizens have long feared being seized by the government should they cross Iranian borders. Following this weekend’s “Operation Epic Fury,” Haubrich sees the possibility of creating an entirely new relationship with the place his family comes from.
“This is what the Iranian people have been asking for,” he told SAN. “We weren’t sure if we would ever see a free Iran, and now it is happening.”
Hope after the January massacre
In the immediate aftermath of last weekend’s attacks, much remains uncertain: How long will the U.S. remain engaged in this conflict? What will it cost, and what will be gained?
But one truth that has emerged with striking clarity is a growing sentiment from Iranian-Americans that hope is on the horizon. SAN spoke with several members of the Iranian diaspora, who said they look to the future with a mix of hope, pride and concern about the challenges of rebuilding their homeland after thousands of Iranians were killed during protests inside the country in recent months. The Iranian community abroad, and their relatives living inside Iran, have been asking for militarized intervention for years.
Amid vocal criticism of the war on media and academic platforms, Reza Langari, an Iran-born university professor now based in Texas, told SAN that his community generally supports the United States and Israel’s decision to strike. This, he said, is because strikes level the playing field of standing up to the regime.
Iranians say this intervention is not ‘like Syria’
Avideh Motmaen-Far, President of the Council of Iranian Canadians, told SAN she is not worried this current moment will follow previous patterns, such as when civil unrest broke out in Syria after U.S. intervention.
“Everybody said it would be like Syria, but the protests show that millions of Iranians in different countries are protesting peacefully,” Motmaen-Far said.
On Valentine’s Day, she pointed out, protestors in the West gave flowers to police officers on the scene. In many cases, she said, protestors stayed after events to clean up, leaving streets even cleaner than when protests began.
“I think this is a reflection of what the future Iran will be,” she told SAN. “They showed you can work together.”
However, the road to peace is littered with challenges, and fears of a wider, longer conflict are valid concerns, Langari said.
“They are aiming for a prolonged war so they can somehow manage to wear down the U.S. and Israel,” Langari told SAN. Already, the U.S. has seen gas prices spike due to the near-total closure of the Strait of Hormuz along Iran’s southern border.
Internet blackouts slow updates
The situation on the ground is moving at “unprecedented” speeds, Professor Masoud Zamani, an international law and policy lecturer at University of British Columbia told SAN.
“I think a regime change is certain,” Zamani said. “The regime has no means of survival.”
Experts told SAN it is still too soon to gauge just how weak the regime is.
“Due to the information blackout from Iran, coupled with the current fog of war, it is incredibly difficult to know what is currently happening inside Iran outside of the Iranian government’s narratives or US/Israel drone footage,” said Tal Hagin, an Israel-based information war analyst.
“The Islamic Republic is undoubtedly the weakest it has ever been and much of its leadership has been killed,” Alireza Nader, of the Nader Research Group, told SAN.
”But the regime has been preparing for such a war for more than two decades and it still has a significant part of the population supporting it,” Nader continued. “Many of its members may fight to the death.”
As the strikes unfold, Iranian immigrants on the outside ask western leaders to listen to the unified voices of their people calling for Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to return home.
Pahlavi told 60 Minutes he will not run for office himself, but rather that he will govern the first one to two years he expects it will take to set up a crisis transition government. Then, he said he hopes to establish a series of democratic elections in which Iranians can choose their new government system.
Cautious but hopeful outlook for foreign relations
First-generation Iranian immigrants in the West are in favor of diplomacy from their adopted countries. However, older Iranians who live in exile and were born in-nation are a bit more cautious.
“I do not accept the hands of the United Kingdom, the EU, Russia or China in meddling in Iran’s affairs of looting our nation,” Shabnam Assadollahi, a political commentator who was held in Iran’s notorious Evin prison as a teenager, told SAN. Assadollahi said that history shows foreign intervention in Iran has weakened the nation while benefiting foreign empires.
“Iran’s future must be engineered by Iranians, and not by foreign powers with their own interests,” said Assadollahi.
Obstacles to a smooth power transition
While there is hope and joy in the streets, Iranians living abroad also recognize that returning to their homeland remains a difficult task. To visit Iran is one thing, but to return from exile or to re-emigrate to Iran is a whole other concept. Some feel their roots in the West are too strong to leave. Others, like Assadollahi, who has been in exile for almost 50 years, told SAN that a return could be potentially life threatening, with other vested interest groups still prospecting for power.
“The post-Islamic Republic world must not become a playground for ideological experiments, whether Islamist, leftist, cult-driven, or authoritarian in new packaging,” she said. “Iran needs a controlled, lawful transition that prevents the next tyranny before it begins.”