{"id":149701,"date":"2026-03-02T14:58:03","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T14:58:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/149701\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T14:58:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T14:58:03","slug":"new-yorkers-respond-to-death-of-ayatollah-khamenei-with-mixed-emotions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/149701\/","title":{"rendered":"New Yorkers respond to death of Ayatollah Khamenei with mixed emotions"},"content":{"rendered":"

As U.S. politicians and protesters roundly condemned the nation\u2019s major attack on Iran<\/a>, New Yorkers of Iranian descent expressed a mix of joy and trepidation Sunday after Ayatollah Khamenei was killed in the American and Israeli forces\u2019 military strikes.<\/p>\n

Milad Hour, 40, said he traveled from his home in Connecticut to Ravagh Persian Grill<\/a> on Madison Ave. near E. 33rd St., where Persian flags bedecked the premises, \u201cfor celebrating,\u201d noting: \u201cThey killed Khamenei. So we are so happy about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is kind of complicated,\u201d acknowledged Hour, who teaches marketing at Fairfield University, has lived in the U.S. for about seven years and participated in protests in his native Iran. \u201cWe are asking the U.S. or Israel to attack Iran while we are Iranians. Because the thing is \u2026 we don\u2019t consider them \u2026 the government,\u201d he explained, adding: \u201cThey are extremists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hour said he was perplexed by his liberal friends expressing their condolences.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I don\u2019t understand is that I\u2019m receiving a lot of messages,\u201d he said. \u201cI mean, I hear a lot of \u2026 other people who are liberal, from [a] liberal party, but what they are saying is that we are so sorry for this problem that you currently are in, this situation that [the] U.S. is attacking Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing is \u2026 we are happy about it because we asked for help,\u201d Hour said.<\/p>\n

Mayor Mamdani, in a post on X<\/a>, called the attack a \u201ccatastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression.\u201d<\/p>\n

About 400 protesters<\/a> marched from Times Square to Columbus Circle on Saturday in demonstration of their opposition to the attacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are celebrating,\u201d said Yosef Baheri, 38. Baheri, a Ph.D. student in computer science at Stony Brook University, who is an Iranian Jew and came to the U.S. four years ago.<\/p>\n

Baheri was thrown in prison for three days for protesting the Iranian regime in 2009, during which time government agents broke two of his fingers, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that this is for peace and benefit for all American, all Jews, all over the world,\u201d Baheri said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you, America. God bless America. God bless Donald J. Trump,\u201d he exclaimed.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

AP Photo\/Adam Gray<\/p>\n

A person holds the old flag of Iran as people take part in a rally in reaction to U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran and in support of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran\u2019s last shah overthrown during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, on Sunday in New York. (AP Photo\/Adam Gray)<\/p>\n

Khamenei, 87, who had been in power for more than three decades, was viewed by critics as a repressive authoritarian responsible for the mass murder of thousands of protesters<\/a> and other human rights abuses.<\/p>\n

Some at the restaurant had a more measured response.<\/p>\n

Sepehr Zunoubi, 17, a high school senior who was born in the U.S. but whose parents are from Tehran, wandered into the restaurant after visiting New York University.<\/p>\n

Sepehr said he wanted the regime to end, but thinks the outside military action could undermine Iranian autonomy, and pave the way for U.S. and Israeli control of the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, it\u2019s really unclear to give a solid answer. But I\u2019m not too confident in this move just quite yet,\u201d Sepehr said. \u201cI would want to see it play out and see how we\u2019re going to, you know, strive to get a democracy there. I think that\u2019s what we want the most.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t definitively say that the Persians inside of Iran feel the same way that I feel right now, so I can\u2019t really speak for them,\u201d Sepehr said. \u201cBut I can speak for my own views. I think fundamentally, it\u2019s a right step in the correct direction, but I just have to see it being executed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully, the country can get its democracy back that we used to have,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"People<\/p>\n

Leonardo MUNOZ \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

People hold signs during a “Stop the War on Iran” protest at Times Square on Saturday. (Photo by Leonardo MUNOZ \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Erin Amar, 58, a Boston resident visiting a New York City friend, told the Daily News the attack was \u201cdepressing,\u201d adding: \u201cI can\u2019t believe that as a society, we\u2019re still murdering people worldwide, that wars even exist, that aggression like this exists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amar\u2019s friend, Heidi Cron, also 58 and an interior designer in the city,\u00a0 said, \u201cI think that we should be working toward a world of peace and not a world of war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brooklyn resident Darwin Sealey, 55, said he found out about the attack on social media \u2014 and wasn\u2019t surprised, though he\u2019s suspicious about its timing.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo here it is now, we have wars,\u201d Sealey said. \u201cSo [the president] is avoiding the vote, the midterms, all of that, because once you\u2019re at war, he\u2019s going to remain in that position.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As U.S. politicians and protesters roundly condemned the nation\u2019s major attack on Iran, New Yorkers of Iranian descent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[85,267,75,84,83,9,24,264,10,12,63,1076],"class_list":["post-149701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-new-york-news","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}