Iranians fight for Democracy
NEW YORK & SANTA MONICA, Calif (June 20, 2025) – The night was dark. I watched the fog roll in from the East River as I stood in the middle of 1st Avenue in Lower Manhattan in front of the United Nations Building.
The New York Police Department and DHS were doing a good job of securing the area ahead of the September U.N. General Assembly. The satellite trucks and drivers went through the usual security screening – dogs, wands, sniffers, and physical searches before they parked in the secured zone.
Everything was on a tight lock-down. Several Heads of State were scheduled to arrive tomorrow. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran was supposed to address the U.N. and give his usual speech in which he called for the overhauling of the UN Security Council as well as a more religious and faith-based approach to the U.N.’s activities in the Middle East.
A man walked out of the fog. He was tall. His grey hair was cropped close to his head. He wore a suit and tie despite the late hour. He looked lost.
“Do you own one of the TV Trucks?” he asked.
I did not know this guy from Adam. He was not a police officer. He looked like a businessman.
“What can I help you with?” I replied.
“I’m with a group of Iranians protesting Ahmadinejad’s visit tomorrow. We want to do a live broadcast tomorrow from Daj Hammarskjold. We have a permit from the city. Can you help?”
Over the next several years I became familiar with the Iranian diaspora in the Unted States. While they loved living in the United States and possessed American citizenship, they missed their home country.
During their permitted protests and meetings, their messages were always the same. The wanted to end the repressive Islamic government in Iran. The wanted the people of Iran to have access to employment and opportunity. They wanted freedom of expression and the right to choose how they dressed, what they studied, and how they lived their lives.
Since the Ayatollah’s regained power in Iran, the instability in the region increased. Tony Blair, former PM of the United Kingdom urged caution when dealing with Iran because of Iran’s belief that the West, specifically the United States (The Great Satan) and Israel do not share common values with Iran. Because of the differing ideologies and belief systems between the West and Iran, there would be a clash between the two.
Blair further argued that Iran promoted the idea that Israel was an “illegitimate, oppressive, and usurping entity created in the heartland of the Muslim world.” Blair wrote that Iran is committed to the eradication of Zionism and Israel because Iran wants to stop the West from subjugating “the entire Muslim world.”
Here we are today. Everything has changed but nothing really has.
The world is interconnected. People have immigrated to every point of the globe. In the United States, people from all over the world live here. Some have assimilated and some have not. If people move to a new country, they are expected to adapt to the culture of the new country.
On June 12, 2025, at 8:00 PM EDT, Israel bombed Iran. Their stated goal was to end Iran’s nuclear program. Iran responded and launched their own missile attacks targeting Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem according to CNN.
The centuries-old conflict in the Middle East is spilling over to the United States. Yesterday, Politico reported that Rep. Max Miller said his car was run off the road by a man waving a Palestinian flag. Miller is a Republican and member of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Last year, there were demonstrations against Israel’s war with Gaza. Some demonstrators protested the continued bombing of Gaza that was heartlessly killing children and non-combatants. They called for action against Israel.
On the other side, protestors spoke out against Hamas’ bloody attack at the 2023 Nova music festival where 260 people were killed and over one hundred people were abducted.
Just yesterday, an Israeli American returned home to New Jersey after being held captive by Hamas for 584 days, reports ABC.
The reality is that global events impact our lives here in the United States. We can choose to engage or not. We can actively decide to bring the “old” problems from “the old country” to the United States. Or we can decide to not bring the “old” problems to the United States.
Most of us agree that immigrants are important to the United States. Most of us agree that immigration laws need to be reformed.
Maybe, we should have a conversation about how immigrants integrate and assimilate into the fabric of U.S. society. Maybe, we should examine our shared values as humans and look for ways to capitalize on them for the betterment of the country.
Some referential content courtesy of Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, CNN, AFP, Google Images, The Open Internet, and ABC.
