Roozbeh Farahanipour sat in the blue-green glow of his Westwood restaurant\u2019s 220-gallon saltwater aquarium and worried about Iran, his voice accented in anguish.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnger and hate for the Iranian regime \u2014 I have it, but I try to manage it,\u201d said Farahanipour, owner of Delphi Greek restaurant and two other nearby eateries. \u201cI don\u2019t think that anything good will come out of this. If, for any reason, the regime is going to be changed, either we\u2019re facing another Iraq or Afghanistan, or we\u2019re going to see the Balkans situation. Iran is going to be split in pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n
Farahanipour, 53, who\u2019d been a political activist<\/a> 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: \u201cWhat\u2019s gonna be the gas price tomorrow?\u201d <\/p>\n Such is life for Iranian Americans in Los Angeles, a diaspora that comprises the largest Iranian community outside of Iran. Farahanipour, like other Iranian Americans interviewed by The Times, described \u201cvery mixed and complicated\u201d feelings over the crisis in Iran, which escalated early Sunday<\/a> when the U.S. struck three nuclear sites there, joining an Israeli effort to disrupt the country\u2019s quest for an atomic weapon<\/a>.<\/p>\n About 141,000 Iranian Americans live in L.A. County, according to the Iranian Data Dashboard<\/a>, which is hosted by the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies. The epicenter of the community is Westwood, where the neighborhood\u2019s namesake boulevard is speckled with storefronts covered in Persian script. <\/p>\n On Sunday morning, reaction to news of the conflict was muted in an area nicknamed \u201cTehrangeles\u201d \u2014 a reference to Iran\u2019s capital \u2014 after it welcomed Iranians who emigrated to L.A. during the 1979 Islamic Revolution<\/a>. 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<\/a>, the pre-revolution Iranian flag hung near the cash register \u2014 but none of the diners wanted to give an interview. <\/p>\n \u201cNo thank you; [I\u2019m] not really political,\u201d one middle-aged guest said with a wry smile.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThis scenario \u2014 which seems almost fantastical in a way \u2014 is something that has been in the imagination: the United States is going to bomb Iran,\u201d said Harris, an Iranian American who wrote the book \u201cA Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran.\u201d \u201cFor 20 years, this is something that has been regularly discussed.\u201d<\/p>\n Many emigres find themselves torn between 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. <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI am talking to them every day,\u201d said Mary, 35.<\/p>\n Standing outside Shater Abbass Bakery & Market \u2014 whose owner also has hung the pre-1979 Iranian flag \u2014 Mary said she was \u201chopeful and worried.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a very confusing feeling,\u201d she said. \u201cSome people, they are happy because they don\u2019t like the government \u2014 they hate the government.\u201d Others, she said, are upset over the destruction of property and death of civilians.<\/p>\n Mary had been planning to visit her family in Iran in August, but that\u2019s been scrambled. \u201cNow, I don\u2019t know what I should do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Not far from Westwood, Beverly Hills\u2019 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\u2019s large \u201cBeverly Hills\u201d sign. One of them waved an Israeli flag. <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cNow that they\u2019re in a weak point,\u201d he said of Iran\u2019s authoritarian leadership, \u201cthat\u2019s the time maybe for the Iranians to rise up and try to do what is right.\u201d <\/p>\n 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\u2019t been back since. He said returning is not something he even thinks about. <\/p>\n \u201cThe place that I spent my childhood is not there anymore,\u201d he said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roozbeh Farahanipour sat in the blue-green glow of his Westwood restaurant\u2019s 220-gallon saltwater aquarium and worried about Iran,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[8052,1119,1582,276,113,83,8053,8048,8055,2961,224,2444,5337,8051,50,465,8050,8054,8049,8056],"class_list":{"0":"post-6643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-authoritarian-government","9":"tag-beverly-hills","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-conflict","13":"tag-iran","14":"tag-iranian-americans","15":"tag-iranian-community","16":"tag-l-a-county","17":"tag-la","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-los-angeles-times","20":"tag-losangeles","21":"tag-mary","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-reaction","24":"tag-roozbeh-farahanipour","25":"tag-sunday-morning","26":"tag-u-s-military","27":"tag-westwood"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114729875218191125","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}