Pistachio and date-filled cakes glisten under a glass cloche as customers drinking cardamom tea settle into brightly tapestried pouf chairs at the Pouya café and cultural center in Paris. This small slice of home provides a respite to owner Abbas Bakhtiari, who otherwise has been glued to his phone as he worries about his sister, as well as countless cousins and friends, back in Iran.
“Before, we watched war in movies. Now we’re living it,” says Mr. Bakhtiari, staring despondently out toward the Saint-Martin canal. “Of course I feel powerless.”
Since the end of Israel and Iran’s 12-day offensive, during which the countries exchanged strikes, word is that life in Tehran is starting to return to normal. The internet is slowly coming back as residents head home. A fragile ceasefire between the two countries, announced by U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday, appears to be holding.
Why We Wrote This
The 600,000 Iranian expats living in Europe are torn over the now-paused, deadly conflict between Iran and Israel. For while it endangers a religious regime they largely despise, it endangers their family and friends back home.
But for the nearly 600,000 Iranians living in Europe, concerns about loved ones back home have been mixed with complex feelings about how to view the recent attacks. Like Mr. Bakhtiari, much of the diaspora is opposed to the Iranian government, and a significant number live in exile with no hope of returning.
Some see Israel’s ambush as a possible way forward to overthrow Iran’s suffocating regime. Others say they have been fooled before and that war is not the answer. Caught between hope for the future and horror over the attacks, Iranians in Europe are finding themselves in a new emotional limbo.
“This is a war between two leaders [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei]. This is their war, not the people’s war,” says Azadeh Kian, an Iran specialist and sociologist at the Université Paris Cité, who has been unable to make contact with her family in Iran. “Even if we understand the reasoning behind these attacks, the result is the same: It’s the Iranian people who are paying for it.”
Understanding for Israel
Since Israel launched its first attacks against Iran’s nuclear sites and infrastructure on June 13, Ehsan Djafari has felt conflicted.
As a teenage activist for democracy in the 1980s, he was told to flee Iran by his mother, who was terrified he would end up in prison. Now in Berlin, where he runs an independent Iranian cultural center, he feels physically safe. But he is opposed to the Iranian authorities, because, he says, of the way they suppress freedom of expression, inflict imprisonment and torture on dissidents, and have left much of the country in poverty.
And he understands why Israel feels threatened. In 2005, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stirred controversy by saying that Israel should be “wiped off the map.” And while Iran has insisted that it is not building a nuclear weapon, its scientists have enriched uranium to 60%, a short technical step from weapons-grade at 90%.
“We’re dealing with a regime in Iran that, for 46 years, has openly threatened Israel’s existence,” says Mr. Djafari. “Some call it rhetoric, but we’ve seen what this regime is capable of – in the region, and at home.”
Still, he is not reassured by what’s going on back home. His two brothers still live in Iran with their small children, and he hasn’t been able to reach them because the regime shut down the internet.
Mark Sappenfield/The Christian Science Monitor
And he worries that the Israeli airstrikes, which damaged three of Iran’s nuclear plants, military facilities, and part of its notorious Evin Prison, will do nothing to motivate the Iranian regime to protect its people going forward – and may even make matters worse.
“The regime will likely respond by tightening its grip even more,” he says. “More arrests without due process, more executions, and even harsher repression of dissent.”
In central Paris on Sunday, around 400 Iranians from the diaspora gathered to protest the violence on both sides. Simin, a local artist, decided not to attend.
“I didn’t go because I didn’t know who to scream against,” says Simin, who left Iran over a decade ago and hasn’t been back for four years. Out of concern for her family back home, she asked to use a pseudonym. “I’m against this regime, but not for [Israel] erasing Iranian people.
“I still dream of going back, but every time I’m about to go, something happens in Iran that makes me not want to return.”
Mixed feelings
In the week leading up to Israel’s attack on Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency warned that it had been unable to assess whether Iran’s nuclear program was “exclusively peaceful.” One day earlier, the United Nations-backed watchdog had declared that Iran was not complying with its obligations regarding nuclear nonproliferation. Talks between the U.S. and Iran had recently stalled.
Still, some question the timing of the attacks, and whether Israel truly acted out of a sense of immediate danger.
“Why do this when negotiations were underway?” says Ms. Kian, the Iran specialist. “If the idea was to make the [Iranian] regime fall, it failed. If it was to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, it failed. What I see is Benjamin Netanyahu losing popularity because of what’s taking place in Gaza, and an attack against Iran is a way to turn attention away from that.”
The whole situation invites strong opinions and deep convictions, especially within the Iranian community. But for Jasmin Sepahzad, that only makes it harder to sort through the narratives and come to a reasonable conclusion. Her father immigrated from Iran, but she grew up in Germany.
“It makes for a really confusing situation,” says the freelance facilitator in rural Wangelin, Germany. The debate “seems to be put into what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad.’ There is pressure to turn everything black and white.”
Experts in the Mideast say that the current ceasefire remains fragile, and that any hope of progress will necessitate deliberate negotiations. Otherwise, war could resume.
That’s a frightening prospect for Mr. Bakhtiari. As another group of customers wanders into the Pouya café, sitting down for saffron tea, he points to a collection of Persian sayings painted on the café walls. In times like these, they act as great comfort to him.
“We have an expression that says, ‘If you have nothing to lean on, come and rest on my shoulder,” says Mr. Bakhtiari. “We need this now more than ever.
“My father used to tell me, if we looked eye to eye with people, we’d never have war.”
