Iranian Americans on What's Happening Inside Iran and What Comes Next

There's about half a million Californians who are Iranian-American and now there is a major conflict happening with Iran and Iranian government. Our guests today are Iranian-Americans who some live in California and will tell us what they are seeing behind this conflict and their thoughts on the future. I'm Siamak. Welcome to California Insider. Khuman, it's great to have you on. Welcome. Thank you very much. Great to be here again. You're an Iranian-American doctor surgeon in Los Angeles in the Beverly Hills area. Right now there is a lot happening with Iran. Can you tell us what you are seeing in the community in this area? I was born there and I came here when I was 12 and a half, so I lived under that oppressive regime. So I experienced who these people are for what they are, basically. It's like we say somebody who has a mental problem, like we agree that in the United States or anywhere people who have a mental problem, they're a danger to themselves or something. Over there, this is a religious mental thing with them. They are willing to die for their cause. When they say death to America, it's not a slogan. It's a real thing. They just don't have the means yet, but everything they do is to destroy the United States because it's incompatible with their version of Islam. So everything they've done is to one day basically pull a nuclear 9-11 United States. So this attack, I feel it was not just helping the Iranian, but to help the security of the United States because it was a matter of time before we have another nuclear 9-11 2.0. So right now with everything that is going on, you have two things people don't understand. There's an IRGC, which is about 150 to 200,000 of these fanatics basically that protect the Islamic regime. And then you have the Iranian military, which is not part of exactly the regime. They are kind of more political. They're not like ideological basically. So right now from, I have family there, you know, we know what's going on is obviously the Americans and the Israelis have taken control of the sky. People are very happy. I can tell you at least 80% people are like joying there. Every time there's a bomb, people are like celebrating. You see videos showing pro-regime supporters. I would say ignore that because those people have the free will to get out. They're not worried about getting killed because right now they're still kill people. If you get on the street and try to protest against the regime, they'll kill you. They still have the besieges, the oppressive forces, they will still kill you. So that's why you don't see people actively protesting. And president Trump said also, don't go yet. Stay in shelter, stay in that. People are like listening to that. They're getting it basically. So the operation, it seems to be going well. People are very happy and they're very hopeful we can get rid of this regime, not just for Iranian, for the world. And there was a lot of Iranians in LA who are celebrating because of this war. Can you tell us more about that? Well, like me, we feel like we were kind of kicked out of our motherland, you know, exiled. You know, we had to escape literally, but I escaped with our lives. You know, we're, I mean, we're happy that the United States gave us a home here. We're indebted to the United States for everything, but we still care about our country and what happened there. So we've been trying to correct the mistake. You know, I can tell you like people like my father back in the day, they wanted the Shah out because they thought something better was going to come. Many people, like many well-educated people made that mistake. But now people realize how bad it was. We want to undo it because look what's happened to the country, to the world. Go back pre-1979. We didn't have any, there was no terrorism. There was no suicide bombing. We didn't have anything of this. There was no war in the Middle East going on. It was like fine. But look what's going on now. So we're hopeful, like we're joyous that God, or we got to basically get back the country back and save the world. You mentioned your father was involved with the revolution. Can you tell us more about that? So my father was a scholar, like a very prominent physician in Iran. And, you know, he wanted the, you know, he was one of the people out there protesting to get rid of Shah. We want democracy. You know, they fell for the lies basically that, you know, you're going to get free this, free oil, free gas, free water, free electricity, and all this is going to be democracy. But obviously the whole thing was a lie. They came, took over and a totalitarian regime immediately got installed. My dad eventually was in the Ministry of Health given his position. And as I had talked before, he was jailed because they were trying to bribe him to change hospital rankings. And my dad would not change the rankings because these hospitals, for example, if you have dirty gowns, you don't wash the equipment, you know, bad quality food, you know, patient care is bad. You know, your ranking gets lower, so you don't get, you get less money. You get punished. Basically, it's like a punitive system. You know, hospitals have to obviously do the best. So they were trying to force my dad to change some of these rankings and he wouldn't do it. So they jailed him. So he was in jail for four and a half months. And then eventually he was released with a lot of public pressure. Basically, they released him. And interestingly, they gave his post back to him because a lot of the workers under him, everybody wanted my dad back because he was like the main boss. But my dad said no. And that was part of the reason we decided at the time. I was also getting to be 12 to leave Iran because otherwise get drafted into the Iran-Iraq war. So that's why we left. We escaped. You mentioned a lot of people regret letting the Pahlavi regime go. And now it looks like a lot of people are, they want the Pahlavi regime to come back. What are your thoughts on that? I think people are trying to undo the mistake because I tell you like my mother-in-law sometimes tells me like when they're in Iran, like they're in a taxi, young drivers, they say, you know, it's because of you guys, your generation. This is what's happened to me. Now my young generation is suffering because of what you guys did. You know, you guys took our youth away from us. I mean, they're not saying it. I mean, they're just expressing their opinions about it. So they want that back basically. But also if you look at the, it's not really to bring Shah back the way it was, you know, to make it more, use his policies, but govern more in a democratic way. If you listen to Shah's son, I mean, listen, he's been here 40 years plus, you know, he's tasted the American democracy and the freedom we have here and how a good democratic society can work with excellent policies. So his dad had amazing policies, but it was more of a iron grip. So he wants to bring the good policies, but use the American democratic value, which is a win-win. And among the groups you're seeing outside of Iran and in Iran, who do you think has the biggest chance to lead? Who is the most popular right now? I think the most important question is that we, who are the groups we don't want to see lead Iran because you don't want to go from something this to something just as bad, because that's the fear. Like, you know, the MEK they call them, so the MEK is a very totalitarian. It's like basically the same version of what is there right now, but add communism to that too. So it's like, we don't want that. These people, they have agents, they have lobbyings, they have been lobbying senators, democratic, Republican, doesn't matter. They're starting to get support that they want to be the next leader. And you see their leader, Maryam Rajavi, she's on X, you know, they're paying a lot of money, like to secretary Pompeo, Rudy Giuliani, they're out there nonstop advocating for them. This is something very important. That's the absolute no, it should not happen. These people, as I said, they're not just a fanatic Islamic, but they're communism on top of it too. So it's like you're getting the two worst worlds like into that. So that you don't want that, you don't want that happening now, going who you want. I think Shaw's son, you know, he's been the Prince. Yeah. The Prince crown, you know, he's dedicated his life to the betterment of the Iranian country. And from what I understand, he's got a good group of like highly well-educated entrepreneur, Iranian business people from all over basically that are willing to be a part of the team to go back there. In fact, I got an email about something. If I'm interested in a position, I personally, I got 50 years later, like my dad was the ministry of health. If I can go do something in the health division to help with that, the country to improve the health aspect of the country, which are really suffering, there's the healthcare is very bad. So I think there are people that, you know, we have many successful Iranian people who care about the country and we can, I have no doubt we can easily turn this around very quickly. Would you go back if you were asked to? 100%. I would dedicate it. Yes. It would be an honor. And do you have any message for other Californians that may not understand what's going on in Iran and they might see this war and they might not like what they're seeing? Yes. They might not want this war. So first of all, I think it's very wrong that our politicians, especially I just saw Governor Newsom speak out like very badly. And, you know, we've had an Iranian Congresswoman, Yasamin Ansari in Arizona. We've had other democratic senators who are speaking very badly, ill will against this war. First of all, this is not good because we have service members there. We have U.S. military there. We should care about them, about their lives. Number one, because they're American citizens after all. They're, so we should not be putting them down. Number one. Now about this war, they're saying we're not eminent threat. Iran was not an eminent threat. It didn't attack us. Let me remind people, go look at history. In 1941, we had protests in this country, people with big signs, Hitler didn't attack us. Why should we attack Hitler? Now imagine if U.S. did not get involved in that war. What would have happened to, you know, with Germany? And imagine if U.S. would have gotten involved sooner before Pearl Harbor happened. Like we could have prevented Pearl Harbor. Imagine if U.S. would have involved, not all this Holocaust as bad as it was, would not have get this bad. Millions and millions of lives would have been saved and Pearl Harbor would have not happened. So when they say they're not eminent threat, it's like, okay, when are you going to do something about it? When they have 10,000 missiles, when they have 20,000 missiles, when they have intercontinental missiles, when they get a nuclear warhead, is that when you're going to act or are you going to wait until they're going to detonate a dirty bomb? What people don't understand, as I said, these people have this jihadist Islamic mentality. They're willing to die for their cause. You're not, you guys are not willing to die for your religion. You know, you don't, you guys don't think like that. I lived there. I shouted death to America in school till I was 12 and a half years old before we escaped. Every day. Imagine six days a week, death to America. It's not a slogan. They want to do something very badly. They just didn't have the means to come all the way here. Now, imagine this is what I say. Imagine if I was your next door neighbor and every day I said death to CMI, death to CMI every day. And then you see me come with a truck of guns every day, HA-47s, military gear. After a week, like this guy is saying death to me. I mean, I don't think you're going to be like, go about your day. You're like, I got to do something like something. There's something wrong with this guy, you know, something. So this is the reason people feel comfortable is because, oh, it's 10,000 miles away. It's not here on that. Trust me, you will get here. They just haven't had the means yet. If somebody says, I want to kill you, but they don't have the means, they will kill you when they get the means. So this is more as much about the United States security. You've got to take out the enemy before they can get the power to kill you. You have to take him out. And this was the time to do it because the people were uprising, weakened the regime to attack them at the time. You don't want to wait until they have so much power. They have hypersonic missiles. They're about to get hypersonic missiles. I mean, you want to go to war with that? You don't have any casualty. Like again, look at the Germany. I say, had the U.S. been involved sooner, we could have prevented so much of the bad stuff that happened. So this is my message to people in California or the United States that are thinking it's not our war. No, it is the war because it's coming here. If you don't do something, only one condition I feel that has to happen is if the Iranian military basically breaks away from the regime and joins the people. That's the only way I feel that ultimately this regime can collapse and we can get a regime change for the betterment because the military can establish law and order basically. That's what happened during the Shah. If you go back, the reason Shah was ousted because the military broke away from him, joined the people. And when the military took the people, when the Islamic Ayatollah came, law, everything was established. Everything was calm. There was nothing bad going on, no civil war, no craziness. Everything was like business as usual basically. They established order. That's what, I don't know, that's the wild card here. The IRGC, their terrorist organization, forget about them. But the Iranian military has the capability to basically put an end to this. At some point, I'm hoping they say, you know what, this is not worth it because they're not ideological. They're not willing to die for this jihadist cause. They are the military people like you and I. They're just serving the country basically, really the people. So I'm hoping that would happen. It's over. The president mentioned that among the current people that are leading in Iran, there might be some that are popular with the public that could potentially lead. It depends. As I said, there are some people who are just there getting a paycheck. They don't care about this jihadist as long as they're not part of this fundamentalist death to America slogan regime, death to Israel, the great Satan, the proxies. They're not into that. They want to basically establish a relationship with the United States and democracy. Establish basically what Iranians want, a secular country in order to basically use the get the country back up. We used to be the fifth biggest economy in the world in 1979. And if that's what their vision is, then I think people are okay with that. But if there are any part of the hardliners, no, it's not going to work out. Now we go to Lisa Daftari, who's not only been studying Iran, but she's been a Middle East analyst for many decades. What are you seeing right now happening in Iran with this war? It's of historic proportion. One cannot really overemphasize how important this is, not just for the Iranian people, but for the region, the Middle East, how it is completely pivoting to a new future, a new way of living. I know here in California, we have so many Iranian Americans who are also sharing in that experience because it is something that has been 47 years in the making. With regards to politics, culture, society, it is so important that we are experiencing this revolution for the Iranian people who have tried to tell us their story for almost five decades. You mentioned this revolution. At the same time, there is a war. How do you see this come together, the revolution and the war? Yeah, hopefully the two do come together. Hopefully this will be a partnership between the United States and Israel on one side and the Iranian people on the other. The Iranian people came out onto the streets bravely, courageously. 30,000 to 40,000, if not more of them were killed in wholesale fashion with military-grade weapons. They were telling the world, come rescue us. At the same time, this is not just a rescue mission for the Iranian people. It's also a rescue mission for the global community. Since 1979, the Iran regime has been a threat to the community, wanting to export its brand of Shiite radical Islam throughout the world. For the United States in particular, since 1979, they have taken hostages. They have said death to America. They have burned American flags. They have killed our service members in the region and beyond. They are the number one state sponsor of terror. Inside, they are the number one executioner, every month killing hundreds of Iranians for something as simple as a Facebook post, for being an athlete, for being a journalist, for being a dancer. So this is the regime that we are dealing with. When Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu launched this war, Donald Trump looked into the camera and he spoke directly to the Iranian people. He said, we're not in the business of regime change. We will launch this campaign because it meets our strategic imperative for this regime not to have nuclear weapons, for this regime not to have ballistic missiles, for this regime not to fund its terror proxies in the region. Once we reach the level of regime collapse, we will pass the baton to the Iranian people who will then determine their future with regime change. That's how the revolution and the military war hopefully will meet at that point where the Iranian people can determine their future going forward. When do you think that would happen? Is that, I know this is a military operation, it's hard to predict, but how do you think that will look like? When do you think that would happen? Yeah, I wish I had a crystal ball, but we will say this, a lot of patience is required. This regime did not build itself overnight and it will not disappear overnight. We know the strategic priorities of the United States and Israel. We know that according to the military, they are ahead of schedule. That is what Secretary Hekseth and Donald Trump and Marco Rubio have reiterated several times. At the same time, we know that again, it will take weeks to achieve the different layers of this campaign, taking out Khamenei in the first 24 hours. I mean, that was a huge moral win for the Iranian people as he is symbolic, as obviously the head of the snake, as we have called him many times. But again, we're not dealing with a situation like Venezuela. You can't compare Maduro to Khamenei and say because he is now gone, that equates to regime change. It doesn't. So there are different layers. You have to go through the IRGC, the Basij fighters, the local military, the police, the different security apparatuses to get to what we believe would be regime collapse. Again, we want to go down the list of the military priorities for the United States. And again, that's the ballistic missiles program to get to the launchers if they destroy the launchers. They can't shoot off these missiles into everywhere. They're shooting them everywhere. They're landing in Turkey, Azerbaijan, all the Persian Gulf Arab states. Nobody is safe in the region. So the faster they get to these launchers, the sooner that we will see that collapse. I do want to say that we heard yesterday that there has been an 85 or plus percent decrease in their firing of ballistic missiles in this war and a 70 something percent decrease in their firing of one way lethal drones in this war. So already we are seeing a significant degradation of their military capabilities. And that is the goal, to see how we can layer by layer peel away the might of this regime as soon as possible. And now the president mentioned that he would rather have somebody that's in Iran that has popularity, that people like to continue so that the whole system doesn't fall apart. What are your thoughts on that? Are there such candidates out there? There may be. Either they're in Evian prison or they're not going to introduce themselves because that would be putting a target on their heads. And the same breath, you know, Donald Trump may say, you know, we would love someone from the inside. Perhaps we would want, you know, somebody who can take Iran into the next chapter. In the meantime, he has met with Reza Pahlavi, who is the son of the former Shah of Iran here in the United States, who has positioned himself as a transitional leader, somebody who can perhaps lead the Iranian people to free elections. And then they can choose from inside whomever would be the best candidate. The point being, the Iranian people have made their choice. The next leader of Iran will not come from this regime. It will come from something new, someone who is secular, democratic, and the way of governing, whether it's republic, monarchy, it will be up to the people of Iran. And that specific leader, whomever she or he may be, will be chosen by the people of Iran. And what's the impact of this war on the Middle East? Because you've been studying and you've been analyzing what's going on in the Middle East. Can you tell us what you're seeing of the impact of this war on the Middle East? I mean, it's tremendous. More than any one of us could have ever predicted, and I'll tell you why. So from 1979, the Iran regime started this Shiite attack on the world. They wanted to influence. They actually wanted to be the first Islamic state. We worry about ISIS, ISIS, ISIS. This regime wanted to be the Shiite caliphate. They wanted to be the original Islamic state. So they created proxies. They created Hezbollah. They started spreading their influence. Obviously, Saudi, the rest of the Gulf Arab states, Persian Gulf Arab states, were not going to stand for this. They started trying to counter this influence with Sunni influence. Now, put this all on pause. You had Donald Trump's first term. He came up with the idea of the Abraham Accords together with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in order to flip the script on the Middle East and say, we're not all enemies here. We all want to move forward. He sensed a shift in the Middle East that totally would sidestep the Israel-Palestinian issue and would focus on commerce over chaos. And that's exactly what he did. He got Arab states to become signatory to prosperity deals with Israel, with the United States, and to completely shift from that direction of, obviously, Iran's regime and to move forward towards the West and towards Israel. Now, what the Iran regime has done in this war to fire off missiles into these moderate Arab countries that have, some of them, played footsie with Iran's regime in the last couple of years, making some sideline deals, like Saudi, like Qatar, funding terrorism, by shooting into their territories. We're looking at the UAE. We're looking at Bahrain. We're looking at almost every single Persian Gulf neighboring state. They have pivoted. They will completely work against Iran's regime and will want it gone. So now we have really a lot of unity in the region. And I think after this war settles, we will be looking at a complete reset of the region, one that, again, will be looking to rid itself of terrorist elements, of insurgencies, and one that is, again, forward-looking, looking towards the West, looking towards Israel, looking towards private and public deals, and what is led by prosperity and not by these old tropes of I'm against you or you're my enemy, but more so towards how can we work out a deal. What about China's impact in all of this? Because China has been supporting the Iranian government for many, many years. It's pretty much Iran. Iran's government is a proxy for the Chinese Party. Yes. So as we know, yes, China's definitely in bed with the Iran regime, with Venezuela. These are all the bad actors that have worked together in the last decade or so in order to bypass sanctions, in order to stick it to the United States. But you also have to remember that China is an equal opportunity opportunist. They have taken advantage of the oil prices by purchasing that from Iran. But there is a wake-up call here for the Chinese. And that was a masterful move by Donald Trump. The Russians are watching. The Chinese are watching. North Korea is watching. Look what happened in Venezuela. We can pull your president overnight and look what's happening with the Iran regime. A president that campaigned on not starting any wars saw an opportunity, an opportunity to launch a military campaign that would remove one of the biggest political obstacles on the global stage in order to move forward with a better future. China's watching. China didn't get involved in the 12-day war in June to come to the regime's aid, and they're not going to come to their rescue right now. They're actually very worried that the Iran regime would close the Strait of Hormuz. They have warned them several times not to take action, but they are going to suffer. They're going to suffer because their friends are being removed one by one on the global stage. And I think it's a good warning for China to behave. A lot of Californians are wondering why we are in the middle of this. Why should the U.S. get involved? Do you have any thoughts for them? Yes, and I've been saying this ad nauseum for the past week since this war started. Nobody wants to be in a war. Nobody wants American casualties. Nobody wants our resources to go to a Middle Eastern conflict. But I want to remind people that this is not just the Iranian people's conflict. This has been our war since 1979. I wrote an op-ed on this for Fox News as well. Donald Trump didn't start a war. He is attempting to finish one. From 1979, there have been so many American casualties at the hands of this regime, and there will be many more to come. Look at what the regime has done without nuclear capability, and imagine what it could do to the United States with nuclear capability. They have fired at us in the Red Sea with their Houthis. They have killed us in Lebanon with Hezbollah. They will continue to kill Americans and target American assets in the region. So this has been a long time coming. We can't stand for any more bloodshed at the hands of Iran's regime. And I do think that Donald Trump saw an opportunity where the regime was so incredibly weak that defanging them and degrading them militarily was going to be a better option than allowing them to continue their reign of terror on the Iranian people, on the region, and on the global community for decades to come. Now we go to Shahzad Ghani, who is the editor of the Farsi edition of Epoch Times. She's going to tell us what she's seeing on the ground. Shahzad, what's happening right now with the people of Iran? Yeah, the history goes actually back to 1979 revolution. So it's not that it started right now or just recently something has happened. We are talking about uprising after uprising that happened inside Iran. And all these uprisings were in response to economical, political, social restrictions and limitations and very, very limited civil liberties that happened. And we heard just a month ago or two months ago, they killed over 40,000 people in the streets because of another protest that happened. But this again has a history. So the protests were, I would say one of the, I'm just talking about the major ones, one happened in 1999. It was Tehran University protest that they were throwing the students from the top of the buildings while their hands and feet, they were tied. And then there was another one like 2009 Green Movement, which was a national wide protest. And another one in 2017, 2019 protest. And then it came to 2022, which was Massa Amini uprising after the death of a young Kurdish girl in police custody. And that was a turning point when people decided that, okay, that's enough with the Islamic Republic and the Islamic Republic is not reformable. And what they ultimately wanted was a regime change. They were asking for a regime change, very determined to do that. And in all these protests, some demonstrators were killed, either they're being shot or they were, it happened through different other forms of repression to the protesters. And in the most recent protest, which I just talked about, it was two months back, or I think it was in mid-January, they killed these 40,000 people with firing live ammunition at protesters right in the streets, or as President Trump says, with snipers. So IRGC, I just want to give you an example of the brutality is that today, an authority from the IRGC said on television that families would be held responsible if their children stay or express any source of support for the United States and for Israel. So he is trying to warn the children, the parents about their children because they know that these young generation are strong enough or they're fearless. They don't have thinking at the previous generations. So they're trying to warn parents that be careful what your children are supporting or what they're saying on any source of support on social media or other places. Sharza, this is very similar to the Chinese Communist Party. They use this methodology to scare family members. And this is, do you think there's parallels here between what Iran is doing using the playbook from the Chinese Communist Party and persecuting these people? Absolutely. Iran is considered some sort of ally of the, I mean, the Islamic Republic is considered an ally to Chinese Communist Party. And I tell you some interesting things I've learned recently is that Ali Khamenei was selected as Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic on June 4th, 1989, which is the same day as Tiananmen massacre happened. And one month before that, yeah, Khamenei made an official trip to China. So people inside Iran right now know that the Islamic Republic has been responsible for much of the suffering and hardships that they've been like toward Iranian people, which the same similar thing is for China and Chinese Communist Party. Just there are certain differences, like people, Iranian people are so determined that they no longer want the Islamic Republic. Chinese people are a little bit hesitating right now through the propaganda that CCP has. But the brutalities are very similar. The Islamic Republic is being the RGC and Basij forces. They're being trained by the Chinese Communist Party for so many years. They've been the head of police that traveled to China in 2024. And according to reports, they've been received trainings from Chinese Communist Party. And then there was back in 2005, again, we know about the true reports that they also received intensive training from Chinese Communist Party. And sadly, the recent reports are saying that there have been some organ harvesting happened on some of the protesters. Some parents came out, talked about it. Friends, families who received somebody said there were scars on the parts of the body, like for hearts and kidney, when they received the body of their loved ones, which is very similar to what Chinese Communist Party is doing right now on Falun Gong practitioners in China. Since 1999, they are doing it very systematically. And at this point, we don't have any solid evidence. But all these feedbacks and reports from families shows that it has happened for some years already. And there's a lot of protesters that are being disappeared. And we're talking about large number, not about just a few. We're talking about hundreds, hundreds of protesters are being disappeared, which can be said that they might be target of the organ harvesting in Iran, which the Islamic Republic learned from Chinese Communist Party. We're going to watch the situation in Iran. And thank you so much, Shahzad Ghanei, for telling us what's happening there. You're the editor of the Persian Republic Times. Thank you for being on California Insider. Thanks for having me.