{"id":223689,"date":"2026-03-17T13:13:32","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T13:13:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/223689\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T13:13:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T13:13:32","slug":"iranian-americans-in-los-angeles-react-to-iran-war-with-mixed-emotions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/223689\/","title":{"rendered":"Iranian-Americans in Los Angeles react to Iran war with mixed emotions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!\n <\/p>\n

LOS ANGELES, California \u2013 Los Angeles \u2014 home to the largest Iranian population outside Iran \u2014 has become a focal point for the Iranian diaspora as tensions surrounding the conflict in the Middle East intensify.<\/p>\n

Thousands of people gathered in the streets of Los Angeles following the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran<\/a> that reportedly killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For many in the community who remember life in Iran before the 1979 revolution, the news brought a moment they said they had waited decades to see.<\/p>\n

Roozbeh Farahanipour, an Iranian American who was just 7 years old when clerics took control of Iran, said he couldn’t believe it.<\/p>\n

“I grabbed a bottle of champagne, opened it, and drank it up,” Farahanipour said. “It was the moment we waited for, for many, many years.”<\/p>\n

IRANIAN AMERICAN COUPLE FROM CALIFORNIA SPEAKS OUT AGAINST ANTI-WAR PROTESTS: \u2018IT IS A RESCUE MISSION\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Roozbeh <\/p>\n

Roozbeh Farahanipour was involved with opposition movements against the regime before fleeing Iran. (Courtesy of Roozbeh Farahanipour)<\/p>\n

Farahanipour participated in student protests in Iran in 1999<\/a>, events that eventually forced him to flee the country after authorities arrested him. He recalled learning that his execution had been announced in a newspaper before his trial, prompting him to escape Iran.<\/p>\n

IRANIAN-BORN SCHOLAR WARNS REGIME WAS AN ‘AGGRESSIVELY PATIENT THREAT WAITING TO POUNCE’ ON AMERICA<\/a><\/p>\n

“[The] night before my trial, they published my execution judgment in the newspaper, day before back to trial. That\u2019s the last day I was in Iran,” Farahanipour\u00a0recounted.<\/p>\n

\"Roozbeh <\/p>\n

Roozbeh Farahanipour said he fled Iran after reading his execution judgment in the local newspaper. (Amalia Roy)<\/p>\n

While he initially supported the U.S. and Israeli strikes that targeted senior leaders of Iran\u2019s government, he now worries the military operation has continued longer than necessary.<\/p>\n

“Minute one, after starting the war, they killed the head of state. They should announce the victory at minute two,” he said.\u00a0“Why should we stay there and make it more complicated?”<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

Mohammad Ghafarian left Iran in 1972 to study, before the revolution. He doesn’t plan on returning, but Ghafarian has siblings in the country he has not heard from since the conflict began. (Amalia Roy)<\/p>\n

Mohammad Ghafarian, who left Iran years before the revolution to study abroad, now runs a grocery store in Los Angeles. He said he has not heard from his family in Iran for nearly a month and fears for civilians caught in the violence.<\/p>\n

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP<\/a><\/p>\n

“I would love for the governments of America and Israel to overthrow the regime,” Ghafarian said. “But when they are bombing our country \u2014 facilities, power plants, water reservoirs, houses \u2014 they can\u2019t divide the people from bad to good.”<\/p>\n

Despite concerns about the ongoing conflict, some Iranian Americans believe the strikes could open the door for Iranians inside the country to challenge the regime<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Amalia Roy joined Fox News in 2025 as a Multimedia Reporter based in Phoenix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! LOS ANGELES, California \u2013 Los Angeles \u2014 home to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7,24604,19378,48,52,51,47,50,49,9066,99258],"class_list":["post-223689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-california","tag-fox-news-multimedia-reporters","tag-iran","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-middle-east","tag-war-with-iran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223689","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=223689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}