Golden Gate Bridge (opens in new tab)<\/a>, for regime change in their motherland. <\/p>\nBut now that the U.S. and Israel have been at war with Iran for a week, killing the country\u2019s spiritual and political leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along the way, some are starting to celebrate \u2014 and are starting to challenge anyone who believes regime change at the hands of the American military is unjust.<\/p>\n
It remains unclear as to whether the Islamic Republic government will be brought down as a result.<\/p>\n
Over the course of the afternoon, several San Francisco police officers descended upon the plaza to create a line between the two groups as yelling matches became increasingly combative.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The counterprotestors waved \u201cLion and Sun\u201d Iran flags dating to before the 1979 revolution, with some also holding Israeli and American flags. Antiwar protestors also flew contemporary Islamic Republic of Iran and Palestine flags, while some covered their faces with keffiyehs. <\/p>\n
Speakers denounced the \u201crich man\u2019s war\u201d and argued taxpayer dollars would be better spent on jobs and education. While these antiwar speakers lamented the horrors of the bombings in Iran over the past week, counterprotestors took the opposite tack. They likened the military operations of the last week to \u201crescue\u201d and \u201chumanitarian\u201d missions.<\/p>\n
Armin S., a 44-year-old who migrated from Iran 22 years ago, suggested that if Iran\u2019s current government would stop committing acts of terrorism and massacring their own people, there would be no war.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s how we can get rid of these people who are monsters,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019ll kill everyone \u2014 every last person on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Similarly, an Iranian woman named Sara J., 44, who also declined to give her last name, said the hope for a regime change inspired this week couldn\u2019t have happened without American involvement \u2013 and hoped it would end as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no sense of freedom in Iran in the past 47 years,\u201d she said, noting how women have been punished for showing their hair, or drinking alcohol, which is officially illegal in Iran.<\/p>\n
As the antiwar protestors made their way south on the Embarcadero before marching along Howard Street, one of the counterprotestors, Aidin Tavakkol, accused them of being paid actors, few of whom have real ties to Iran.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re protesting to save the Ayatollah so he can continue killing our people,\u201d Tavakkol said. \u201cThey\u2019re taking our oil money and spending it on Hamas and Hezbollah and all those people that these people like.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the antiwar protestors had drifted out of view, the counterprotestors, who will hold another demonstration Sunday afternoon on the Embarcadero, stuck around the plaza to dance in celebration of the accomplishments of the last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just hate Trump so much and they hate Israel so much,\u201d Tavakkol added, \u201cthat they can\u2019t see the humanitarian aspect of it. It\u2019s really sad to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mahla Shaghafi, an Iranian-American woman who said she\u2019s never voted for Donald Trump, nevertheless found herself wearing a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[25728,19378,7361,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-209822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-embarcadero-plaza","tag-iran","tag-protests","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}