JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Florida State Representative Dr. Anna Eskamani of Orange County is the first Iranian American elected to any public office in Florida. At age 35, she\u2019s only known Iran under the Ayatollah. She tells Action News Jax that she has mixed emotions regarding the death of the Supreme Leader. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no way that I could ever be happy about war,\u201d Eskamani said. \u201cWhen it comes to Ayatollah Khamenei, this is something that I\u2026that Iranians have been waiting for for a long time,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n Representative Eskamani did not expect what happened on Saturday. There were coordinated strikes by the U.S. and Israel on Iranian military and nuclear-linked sites. Iran\u2019s supreme leader, 86-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei, was killed. Iran launched missile and drone attacks targeting U.S. military facilities across several Middle Eastern countries.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a brutal dictator that has terrorized and massacred hundreds of thousands of Iranians,\u201d Eskamani said. <\/p>\n As for who should lead the country next \u2014 \u201cIt has to be self-determination for the people of Iran, but it\u2019s not as easy as it sounds,\u201d Eskamani said. <\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n That\u2019s because even though the Ayatollah is dead, his government is still in place. Eskamani says Iran\u2019s clerical regime still exerts a lot of power in the nation. As for further US action in the region, the Tallahassee Democrat is concerned about the president\u2019s war powers \u2014 just how much military action is permissible without congressional approval?<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t necessarily see this as a partisan issue. In fact, the War Powers Act at the congressional level is sponsored by a Republican and a Democrat,\u201d Eskamani explained. <\/p>\n The Iranian-American has a message for Americans about Iranians. <\/p>\n \u201cAll of my aunts and uncles and cousins are in Iran, and it\u2019s a beautiful country, and its people are not a reflection of the government at all,\u201d Eskamani said.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Florida State Representative Dr. Anna Eskamani of Orange County is the first Iranian American elected…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[344,347,82626,82627,82628,82629,28,82632,348,21539,82326,82633,82631,116,351,118,117,349,82630,350,346,345],"class_list":{"0":"post-174257","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-action-news-jax","9":"tag-cbs47","10":"tag-dr-ana-eskamani","11":"tag-eskamani","12":"tag-eskamani-iran","13":"tag-eskamani-orange-county","14":"tag-florida","15":"tag-florida-state-representative","16":"tag-fox30","17":"tag-iran","18":"tag-iran-strikes","19":"tag-iran-war","20":"tag-iranian-american","21":"tag-jacksonville","22":"tag-jacksonville-fl","23":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","24":"tag-jacksonville-news","25":"tag-northeast-florida","26":"tag-orange-county-representative","27":"tag-southeast-georgia","28":"tag-wfox","29":"tag-wjax"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}