Why Iranian-Americans are cheering the war — and thanking Trump

Crowds filled Westwood Boulevard on the night the war with Iran began, on February 28 — not in protest, but in celebration. 

Iranian-Americans danced in the streets of what locals call Tehrangeles, waving the red, white, and green Lion and Sun flag of pre-revolutionary Iran alongside American and Israeli flags, chanting for a free and secular Iran. 

The scene was, by most accounts, the most emotionally charged the neighborhood had seen since the community first took root here after 1979.

Almost everything about California’s Iranian diaspora runs back to 1979.

California is home to roughly 500,000 Iranians, making up half of the entire U.S. Iranian population, concentrated in West Los Angeles, Irvine, and the San Fernando Valley. 

The overwhelming majority came here, or were raised by people who came here, because the Islamic Republic made staying in Iran impossible. 

They were teachers who lost their jobs, businesspeople whose assets were seized, political dissidents who fled execution orders, religious minorities who faced systematic persecution. 

Their story, with variations, is the same story: they are here, because that regime is there.

This is the context that American policymakers and California’s progressive political establishment have consistently failed to absorb. 

For the Iranian community, the question of whether to support military action against the Iran regime is not a foreign policy concept. It is personal. And the answer, for most, has always been yes — if the alternative is another 47 years of the same.

Iranian-Americans are feeling a sense of gratitude, directed specifically at President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Crowds in Westwood carried signs reading “Thank You Trump for Freeing Iran.” 

The political alignment reflects years of disillusionment with Democratic administrations that pursued nuclear diplomacy with a regime this community regards as irredeemably criminal. 

The Obama-era JCPOA was seen not as pragmatism but as appeasement. The Biden administration’s attempts to revive it were viewed with open criticism. 

When Trump launched airstrikes and framed them explicitly as a path to freedom for the Iranian people, Tehrangeles heard a U.S. president speak their language for the first time in decades.

Many in the community are Iranian Jews whose families were driven out after 1979. Others are Muslims or secular Iranians who see Israel not through the regime’s propaganda lens but as a fellow target of the same theocratic enemy. 

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The alliance between Trump and Netanyahu, reviled in much of California, reads to this community as the correct strategic alignment against a shared adversary.

Clearly, war has its consequences, and the enthusiasm is not without its anxieties. Many in the community have family and friends still inside Iran.

While there is concern, it does not translate into opposition to the war. The community is also clear about the risks of a prolonged conflict, or one that degraded the regime but leaves remnants behind. Many point to Iraq after 2003 as the cautionary model — a decapitated regime replaced not by democracy but by chaos and competing militias. They do not want that for Iran. 

But they are equally clear that the status quo — a theocratic regime executing protesters and building nuclear weapons — is not a stable or acceptable alternative. “

Ask across Tehrangeles who should lead Iran after the regime falls, and the answer that comes back most consistently is Reza Pahlavi. 

The exiled Crown Prince, who has lived in the United States since the revolution that exiled his father, has spent years positioning himself not as a king seeking restoration, but as a transitional figure capable of stabilizing the country long enough for Iranians to choose their own system through a referendum and free elections.

The community’s support for Pahlavi is not just monarchist nostalgia. Iranians, clear that the only way forward is through a secular, democratic Iran, believe standing behind Pahlavi is their best chance at a smooth transition. Pahlavi, in their view, is the bridge to that outcome.

The congressional districts covering Westwood, Beverly Hills, Encino, and Irvine are represented almost entirely by Democrats. Those Democrats have, since February 28th, walked a careful line acknowledging the regime’s brutality while criticizing the strikes as unauthorized and strategically unclear.

Their Iranian-American constituents are disheartened. In the community, some voted for Trump and some did not, but the majority backed the strikes. Now, watching their representatives waver, the Iranian community has concluded the Democratic Party does not represent its most fundamental interests.

What makes the California Iranian diaspora’s relationship to this war unique is the specific nuance in its hope.

These are not pro-war hawks cheering a distant conflict. They are a community of people who came here because they had no choice — and have never stopped believing the country they left might one day be free.

Lisa Daftari is a foreign policy analyst and media commentator based in Los Angeles.