MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Los Angeles is home to the largest Iranian community outside of Iran. As reporter Benjamin Gottlieb tells us, how folks there feel about the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran has a lot to do with who they are and how they came to live in the U.S.
BENJAMIN GOTTLIEB, BYLINE: Tara Grammy is glued to her phone.
TARA GRAMMY: Do you mind if I turn on the news?
UNIDENTIFIED VOICE FROM PHONE: (Non-English language spoken).
GOTTLIEB: We're about to sit down for lunch at Attari Sandwich Shop in Westwood. It's a destination here for LA Persian fare.
GRAMMY: (Non-English language spoken).
GOTTLIEB: Favorites like Persian potato salad with chicken, or beef tongue served on crunchy French bread. Grammy is an actor, producer and playwright. She's just finished an audition for a new role, but she can't think about all that right now. Like most Iranians living in the diaspora, her mind is fixated on what's happening inside Iran and the wellbeing of her family members that still live there.
GRAMMY: People are so desperate for the downfall of the regime, which we are, too. I am, too. But I can't sit and watch Tehran being bombed.
GOTTLIEB: Grammy was born in Tehran and immigrated to Toronto when she was 6 years old. But she'd spend just about every summer in Iran with her family. She says she's no stranger to threats of war.
GRAMMY: But when it's your own country and your own people and streets that you recognize and the names - and that's where my aunt lives, that's where my uncle lives, that's where we went shopping - it's like, it's just a constant stream of shocked and terrified.
GOTTLIEB: That combination of shock and terror permeates much of LA's Persian diaspora, the largest community outside of Iran. But so, too, does staunch criticism of the current Iranian government.
NAZANIN NOUR: I want the people of Iran to be free from the Islamic Republic. I want my family and friends and the people of Iran to be safe.
GOTTLIEB: Nazanin Nour is also an actor who's become well known in recent years for her antiregime activism. Like Grammy, she's fearful of traveling to Iran, where she used to visit as a child, because of her past criticism of the Iranian regime, most recently during the Woman, Life, Freedom protests a few years ago. She has complex feelings about what's happening, especially Israel's ability to spur the sort of political change that she's desperate for.
NOUR: You can be anti-Islamic Republic and also anti-foreign intervention, and also from a regime specifically that's committing their own atrocities against another people, the Palestinians. How do we think that they're going to have any hand in actually "freeing," quote-unquote, "liberating," quote-unquote, another people?
GOTTLIEB: The view, however, is a bit different for many Iranian religious and ethnic minorities living abroad - Baha'is, Christians and Jews - who've been persecuted by the regime.
SAM YEBRI: No Iranian American wants to see Iranians stuck in the middle of a war, but nothing can be worse than what this regime is and what it has done.
GOTTLIEB: Sam Yebri was born in Tehran, but he fled when he was just a year old with his family amid the Iranian Revolution. He's Jewish and, like the vast majority of Iranian Jews living in the diaspora, he hasn't been back since.
YEBRI: That's one of the hopes, is that Iranians of all backgrounds across the globe - Muslims, Christians, Baha'is, Zoroastrians, Jews - can one day return to the land of our birth.
GOTTLIEB: Yebri believes, like many Persian Jews, that Israel's military campaign in Iran is the best chance in recent memory of fomenting regime change. But for folks like Grammy, folks who have traveled extensively to Iran and still have family there, how change happens matters.
GRAMMY: Do you know what I named my son? My son's name is Deyar, which means homeland, and his last name is Azad, which means free.
GOTTLIEB: Free Homeland. Her biggest dream, she says, is to take her son, not yet 2 years old, to visit Iran. And while she's not supportive of her hometown being bombed, she knows taking him just isn't possible without political change. For NPR News, I'm Benjamin Gottlieb in Los Angeles. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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