The Trump administration attacked Iran over the weekend, bringing the US into a now-widening conflict in the Middle East. Airstrikes have killed leaders and senior officials in Iran, including the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Gatherings were held in Portland over the weekend to both protest and celebrate the military action in Iran.
On Saturday, protesters gathered to condemn the U.S. involvement in a war in Iran. On Sunday, hundreds of Iranian people in Portland gathered to celebrate the death of Khamenei and to support the US and Israel’s military action against the Iranian government.
Samira Sahebi is the secretary of the board of directors at Free Iran PDX, a community support organization for Iranians living in Portland. Sahebi joins us to discuss the Iranian community in Oregon’s response to the ongoing conflict.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We start today with an Iranian American perspective on the U.S. war against Iran. The attacks began over the weekend and have killed the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with other senior leaders.
On Saturday, protesters gathered in Portland to condemn the war. One day later, hundreds of Iranian Americans came together to celebrate the death of Khamenei and to support the U.S. and Israel’s military actions against the Iranian government.
Samira Sahebi joins us now to talk about all of this. She’s the secretary of the board of directors of Free Iran PDX, a community support organization for Iranians living in Portland, and she joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.
Samira Sahebi: Thank you for having me.
Miller: You came to the U.S. in 1985. Why did you leave Iran?
Sahebi: I was a very strong-willed child. I was raised an atheist, and it was increasingly harder to hide my views in schools. And they were detaining children. It was a time where everybody was spying on everybody else and it was dangerous. And I also was falling into depression and had a lack of will to live. So I asked my father if he could send me away. I asked for years, and as soon as the borders opened, he trusted that that was the best decision for me – which was very brave of him because I was only 14.
So he sent me away and I was able to live with that decision. I was able to pay the price for freedom, to just leave my family and just live on my own, and honestly, I started thriving.
Miller: It’s fascinating that you say it was brave of him to let you go. It seems that it was brave of you too, even if everything you knew was squashing your spirit and making it hard for you to see a life for yourself there. I imagine it still took bravery to leave.
Sahebi: It didn’t feel that way as a child. I think as children we don’t understand consequences of what we want. We want it at any price. So there were kids who asked for what I got, and then they couldn’t take it and they went back. But I wasn’t willing to do that. I wanted my freedom.
Miller: So you thrived.
Sahebi: I was thriving, yes.
Miller: How much family do you still have in Iran?
Sahebi: I have a fair bit of family. My parents are deceased, but some aunts and lots of cousins.
Miller: Before this weekend, what was communication with your family in Iran like? How possible was it?
Sahebi: Well, outside of when they shut off the internet ... So there’s two levels to services in Iran. One is internal, so that you can order a ride, order food or go to the banks. And then there’s another level that is communication with the outside world. As soon as there’s unrest, they shut that off. And a lot of times we communicate through Telegram or WhatsApp, so that gets shut off. In January, it was shut off for a long time. So it was really hard.
Miller: And during a period where, according to some reports, more than 30,000 protesters were killed by the regime.
That is some pretty recent context. Obviously, we could talk about decades and decades of repression. But what went through your mind when you learned that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed?
Sahebi: I’m a deep thinker. So, it’s just complex. Because of course it feels good. This man, he not only literally massacred people, but he indirectly orders the massacres of people. So he’s got a lot of blood on his hands. And he’s very power hungry, he clawed his way to the top. So for someone to kill your bully, it feels amazing on some level.
But it also was complex, because he was dying. He was 86 years old. He chose not to go to the bunker. In June he was hiding and this time he said “I’m not going.” He created a narrative that “if my people can’t go to bunkers, then I’m not going to go.” But it’s really a show. He wanted to be martyred because he’s had prostate cancer for years, so he’s kind of at the end of his life. And he got what the Shiites value the most. He got martyred and now he’s eternal. He knew that that would cause unrest in various Muslim countries that have Shiite population, and we’re seeing demonstrations now in different parts of Asia.
Miller: I was struck by a quote that a PSU professor named Anousha Sedighi told to an OPB reporter over the weekend at that protest, or celebration in some ways, on Sunday. I think she was talking broadly to non-Iranian American Americans, is my reading of this quote. She said, “We know you’re tired of the U.S. getting involved in other countries. But there’s nothing like the lived experience of a people. I hope you never know the sheer desperation of a people praying to be bombed, only to be free.”
What do you make of that statement?
Sahebi: I know her, she’s very bright. And I think she’s right on. She’s right on. Like I have stated before, Iranians are traumatized people. And even as a child, just to give you an example, as the revolution happened, I was seeing photographs of people being executed on the front pages of newspapers, where every child can pass by a stance or see the newspaper. The prime minister was shot, and his dead body was laying there for everyone to see. It was just so disrespectful and irreverent. They would have public hangings in plazas, and people would take their kids to watch.
It was just a level of violence that, when you’re living in it, you don’t understand it. But when you leave, you’re like, “Oh my God, that was so messed up to do that to a society and to children.” The experience of having people knock down your door, come and kidnap one of your loved ones, and for you never to see them and hear that they’re executed. And for the government to come to your door and say, “Your son was executed, you need to pay for the bullet to claim the body.” It’s horrific. This is a government that tortures its people.
So of course we want intervention. But it’s not really so much what we want, because a lot of us are pacifists, a lot of us who’ve been living here for decades are tired of these wars and we don’t want our tax dollars spent on that. But the people of Iran have been fighting for decades to overthrow this government in every way they can, and they’ve been paying for it dearly. And after the economic unrest that happened in January, this time they not only shut off the external internet, but they shut off the internal systems so people couldn’t get money out of the banks, because they were trying to hide some things that have happened. So people took to the streets and they were massacred.
At that point, they’d had enough. They preferred death to the life they’re living. So they’ve asked for help. This is a rescue that many of them have asked for. It’s unfair to say all 92 million want this, of course not. There’s about 10% to 15% of Iranians that like the regime. And among the rest, most of them want the regime gone. But whether or not they want war, I can’t assign a percentage.
Miller: But even among the vast majority that was against the regime, there are different regional and ethnic groups in Iran, including Kurds, Azeri and Arab separatists, other groups. How concerned are you that, in a potential power vacuum, there could be at least civil unrest and maybe a civil war as factions fight?
Sahebi: So I am not aware of a separatist movement. As you probably know, Kurdistan was a country that was divided into four countries, and a part of it has been in Iran, and they’re in an ethnic minority that have been very much persecuted by the Islamic regime. So if they wanted their independence … We hear mixed reports on that, many Kurdish people feel absolutely Iranian. But I’m not aware of a separatist movement personally. But that is a fear, of course. We don’t want Iran to fragment. Foreign powers would have the power to cause that.
Miller: I’m curious what lessons, if any, you took from the U.S.’s earlier attack in Venezuela, where the U.S. grabbed the leader, but then it seems just made a deal with the existing repressive regime, said, “We’ll also get the oil,” and then it seems that we’re more or less washing our hands of that operation. I’m curious if you see a possible analog for our approach to Iran going forward?
Sahebi: Absolutely. In all the years I’ve lived here, I don’t feel we generally leave a country better than we found it. We cause a lot of destruction a lot of times, and we leave. And even the people of Iraq, who were so excited and welcomed American troops when they overthrew Saddam, are not happy with the state of their country. So I am very wary of that.
I can’t compare Iran to Venezuela. The Iranian government has its tentacles in so many countries and has exported billions of dollars in these holdings in Western countries. And so in essence, a lot of the West is profiting from this government. They are very well established in the Middle East, and they have a lot of proxies.
Also, this is a government that has been prepared for this because they’ve observed that Israel decapitates leaders. So after June, they set up a system where for every vital position, there’s four people to take over after them. They try not to be in the same place at the same time. They’ve been ready for his death. I think this government’s not going to go down. And because they’re an ideological government, they are willing to go down and burn the whole place down with them, because for them this is a holy war.
Miller: Given all that, what are your hopes for the future of Iran right now?
Sahebi: My hope is the minimum amount of bloodshed leading to the government’s demise and for a democracy where people of Iran get to choose what’s next for them – not the diaspora.
Miller: Samira Sahebi, thanks very much.
Sahebi: Thank you.
Miller: Samira Sahebi is secretary of the board of directors of Free Iran PDX. That’s a community support organization for Iranians living in Portland.
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