The Iranian community in the US, caught between euphoria and criticism: A political solution is needed'

"This isn't an attack against Iran. This attack is for Iran. It's to help the 90 million people who are being held hostage by a group with a brutal ideology. They use our wealth, our money, our country just to enrich themselves and mass-murder anyone who doesn't subscribe to their narrative."

"Mike Oveysi's family arrived in the United States in 1994, fleeing the ayatollahs' regime. Mike's father was a pilot for Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last monarch of Iran, dethroned by the Islamist revolution in 1979. He spent seven years in prison before escaping to Turkey."

The recent U.S.-Israel military strikes on Iran generated mixed responses from Iranian Americans. Some members of the diaspora, particularly those who fled the Islamic Republic, view the attack as beneficial intervention against what they characterize as a repressive regime. Mike Oveysi, a restaurant owner in Virginia whose family escaped Iran in 1994, represents this perspective, arguing the strikes target the regime rather than the Iranian people. His father, a former pilot under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, spent seven years imprisoned before escaping. Oveysi has become an outspoken critic of the ayatollahs' regime through activism and social media. Conversely, other Iranian Americans expressed concern about the unilateral military action undertaken without Congressional consultation or international coordination. Over 400,000 people of Iranian descent reside in the United States, with significant populations in California and the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.

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