(NewsNation) — More than one million Americans of Iranian descent are watching — along with the rest of the world — to see if change will come to Iran amid President Donald Trump’s latest messages.
The city of Los Angeles, in particular, is on high alert. It’s home to more Iranians than any other city in the world, outside of Iran, with one part of its Westwood neighborhood known colloquially as “Tehran-geles.”
More than 2,000 protesters have been killed, and another 17,000 have been detained during nationwide protests in Iran. As violence unfolds in their homeland, many Iranian Americans are desperately trying to follow developments in Iran, but their efforts have been hampered by communication outages there.
One Iranian American currently living in L.A. tells NewsNation it’s hard not to fear the worst: “Every day, just crying because I don’t know if my family (is) alive or not.”
She urged America in her plea: “Please do something. Please help the people because they are alone.”
It’s not out of the question. Trump on Tuesday promised “help is on the way,” encouraged protestors to continue their demonstrations and repeated threats of potential military action against Tehran.
“Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS.”
Iranian exile: US interference may harm more than help
Roozbeh Farahanipour was one of the leaders of the Iranian student uprising in 1999. Since moving to L.A., he’s become a successful restaurateur.
Farahanipour believes momentum is with those in Iran pushing for regime change, especially since the current protests have spread to all Iranian provinces, unlike his own movement 26 years ago, which was largely limited to Tehran.
He said Iranian people should be behind the elimination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and not an outside force — like the U.S. — coming in.
“What if he wants to do that’s more than welcome to go capture the Khamenei or kill Khamenei. Well, I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Farahanipour said.
He added that he thinks U.S. forces in the area would only serve to escalate the chaos and, potentially, cause demonstrators to lose sight of their goals.
“I think, if the people are getting distracted from their own demonstration, they’re going to harm them more than helping them,” he said.
One American Iranian, Hadi, told NewsNation that this protest has different focuses than previous uprisings.
“This revolution feels different because this thing is not about hijab or religion,” he said. “It’s about the economy and the young people to reach their goals because the young people like me in Iran, they don’t have any opportunity to get to reach their goals and their future, you know.”
Hadi says if regime change really happens, he and many others would go back to Iran to help rebuild their country.