Phila.'s Iranian Americans anxious, afraid, hopeful

Iranian Americans across the region say they are anxious, fearful, and hopeful about the turbulent events that have overtaken Iran since its contested June 12 presidential elections.

"My reaction is a mixture of several things," said Bryn Mawr resident Kurosh Darvish, 40. "I'm frustrated that the demonstrations" last week against the re-election of hard-line incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "haven't led to any real changes in the election [results] or the political system."

An assistant professor of bioengineering at Temple University, Darvish has followed events by piecing together information from newspapers, cable TV, and firsthand reports on Facebook. He said he had become increasingly concerned for family and friends.

After days of relative peace, Saturday's demonstrations in Tehran led to the death of more than 10 protesters. Some fear it was a sign that supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has declared Ahmadinejad the rightful president, may resort to more brutal measures to silence supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.

Darvish said his father, who teaches at Islamic Azad University, north of Tehran, told him by phone Monday that one of his students had been killed in the protests. "[My father] said he's fine, but there have been incidents of people breaking windows and disturbing nearby homes," he said.

For the most part, local Iranians voiced hope - a guarded, cautious hope - that the protest movement marked a sea change for Iran's 30-year-old Islamic regime.

"I saw some interesting footage" posted on the Web "from the fights on the streets on Saturday," said Pardis Minuchehr, a lecturer in Persian studies at University of Pennsylvania who left Iran in 1989. "The cops were in their SWAT getup and had anti-riot gear, but people were making them retreat by peacefully moving away. You could see the power of the people right there."

She said the demonstrators reflected "a people who are more educated and more informed than ever before. Their cultural values have evolved over the past 30 years" to include individual liberty and free speech.

Pooya Molavi, 23, who came to Philly in September to study electrical engineering at Penn, said last week's events were markedly different from student protests in Tehran in 1999, which were quickly crushed.

"This time, there's a more diverse movement: It's a coalition of student groups, the women's movement, and labor . . . something not seen since 1979," when an Islamic revolution toppled Shah Reza Pahlavi.

Javad Parvizi, 34, of Gladwyne, said, "I'm cautiously excited that after 30 years of repression and dictatorship . . . young people are voicing their opinions about the leaders of the regime and its lack of democratic" values.

To Parvizi, a professor at Thomas Jefferson University's Rothman Institute, this is the beginning of a new revolution.

"There is a homology between what is happening right now and the [Islamic] revolution that happened when I was a kid" in 1979, he said. "I mean, there were people chanting, 'Death to Khamenei!' This has been unheard of for 30 years."

Iran expert Hooshang Amirahmadi, president of the Princeton-based American-Iranian Council, a nonpartisan group that promotes better understanding of U.S.-Iran relations, said: "This was a radical event. A very important event . . . a turning point for the country." While the demonstrations may subside, he said, the demand for freedom will not.

Strafford resident Faézé Woodville said that violence or not, it's too late to squeeze the toothpaste back into the tube. "The people have already registered to the government that there is tremendous dissatisfaction in the country," Woodville said. "You can't undo that."

Iranians are a tiny group in this region. According to a 2003 study by the Washington-based advocacy group National Iranian American Council, of the roughly one million Iranians in America, from 9,500 to 10,000 live in the Philadelphia area.

They compose a very diffuse, loose-knit community consisting mainly of long-term emigres, many of whom are naturalized U.S. citizens, and young Iranians here on student visas.

Professionals older than 40 privately hope Iran is on the verge of a radical change. However passionately they feel about recent events, though, they stay clear of discussing Iranian politics in public.

Darvish said younger Iranians were more politically conscious and had organized rallies in support of the protesters. (There will be a candlelight vigil from 6 to 8 tonight on Rittenhouse Square.)

Paradoxically, many hide their faces and names, lest their actions invite reprisals against family and friends back home.

"Of course, we want a free Iran. A vast majority of younger Iranians are concerned by freedom-of-assembly and freedom-of-speech issues," said a Center City venture capitalist who spoke on condition of anonymity, "but my concern for people's safety is a primary issue."

A naturalized citizen who was 18 months old in 1976 when he moved with his parents to Philadelphia, he called members of his family in Tehran several times before and after the election.

"My aunt says she waited an hour and a half at the [polling center] to cast her vote," he said. But other relatives "refuse to discuss politics at all because they are afraid of wiretapping."

A 27-year-old doctoral student in economics at Penn also feared that he might be punished for expressing sympathy for pro-Mousavi protesters. "My parents and sister are still in Tehran. . . . And I plan to go back once I finish my degree," he said. "Most of the other [Iranian] students around America I've talked to are freaking out."

Woodville, founder of Dialogue International, a consulting firm that promotes academic exchanges between American and Iranian scholars, said, "Cautiousness goes with the average Iranian psyche," natural for a people who have lived under years of repression.

She said the Iranian regime's own paranoia - saying the demonstrations were the work of foreigners - may have some basis, because Iranians are aware that in 2007, President George W. Bush authorized a covert destabilization and disinformation campaign in Iran.

"I really haven't heard anyone in the media" discuss that campaign in connection with the demonstrations, she said. "I don't want to be paranoid about it, but given the history of U.S.-Iran relations, even pro-democracy meddling from America is still meddling."

Woodville said her long-term hope was that "people in Iran [attain] their right to self-determination. . . . There's no question that there is a movement toward democracy. But I don't think it's the work of one day or 30 years to topple an entrenched regime."