The Iranian Diaspora Is Fracturing Over Trump’s War |
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The Iranian Diaspora Is Fracturing Over Trump’s War
Friendships have ruptured. Families have bitterly split around the kitchen table. Violent speech has become the dominant mode of discourse.
A demonstrator from the Iranian diaspora rallies near the White House on March 7, 2026.
“LOL why was a military base next to a school? Dige to bozorg shodi oonja [after all, you grew up there]. You know how the regime operates.”
That message arrived on Instagram from a childhood friend on March 1, as parents clawed through the rubble of a school in Minab, Iran, searching for the bodies of their children in the wake of a US bombing. This friend, like me, no longer lives in Iran. She was responding to something I had posted in protest of the US/Israeli war on Iran, the country where we both were born, raised, and where much of our families still live. She added that someone close to her in Iran had texted to say that even if a bomb struck their home, we should keep celebrating the war outside Iran. There was, in my friend’s view, no other choice.
Reflecting on this exchange, what strikes me is not merely the normalization of the war that the US and Israel started on February 28, but the expectation that it be celebrated. For this person, the bombing of Iranian cities, the destruction of their civilian infrastructure, and the murder of children were not received as a catastrophe but as part of the necessary precondition for freedom. This position does more than justify violence; it redefines its meaning, collapsing the distinction between foreign intervention and democratic mobilization and recasting external force as a vehicle for liberation. In this framing, a war is not a tragedy to be resisted but a condition to be embraced.
Regrettably, this logic is not peripheral in the Iranian diaspora. The grotesquely branded Operation Epic Fury is deeply unpopular around the world, yet support for the war persists across significant segments of the diaspora, often articulated not just eagerly but with a sense of moral clarity. (It should be noted that early polling at the beginning of the war showed that support for military intervention was evenly split amongst Iranian Americans. More recent data suggests the support has dropped to 33 percent, which still represents a statistically significant bloc.)
Backers of the war have formed a highly visible bloc, amplified by powerful right-wing networks. The beleaguered minority of diaspora voices who vocally oppose the war, on the other hand, are routinely smeared as terrorists or fifth columnists working for the Iranian military. I have lost count of how many times I have been accused of colluding with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, with some on social media even calling on the FBI to monitor my activities.
These fractures have also reached into the private realm. Friendships have ruptured over support for or opposition to the war. Families have bitterly split around the kitchen table, acrimoniously debating whether the path toward freedom can be paved with fire. Violent speech has become the dominant mode of discourse within a community that once prided itself on its intellectual and cultural pluralism. In the process, the space for political nuance has severely narrowed.
It wasn’t always like this. While strong opposition toward the Islamic Republic has never been uncommon in the diaspora, there was nevertheless a rough consensus around supporting measures that could materially improve the lives of people in Iran. Millions of Iranians across the globe organized in support of the 2009 Green Movement protests, even though the explicit goal of the movement was not one of regime change. Similarly, when the framework for a nuclear deal was introduced in 2014, the diaspora overall felt unified by the possibility of a thaw in hostilities between Iran and the US, even though the deal was a boost for the Iranian government.
In recent years—and particularly since 2025, when the US and Israel began repeatedly bombing Iran—this fragile solidarity has publicly shattered. As American belligerence in the region has intensified, diaspora radicalization has also accelerated. The fantasy of regime change has so powerfully saturated this community that many now openly cheer the bombing of their homeland, convinced that its destruction will resurrect a mythologized era of past greatness. It is a........