Iranian Americans in SoCal watch Iran protests with a mix of hope and ‘visceral dread’

Tabby Refael’s messages to Iran remain unanswered.

For weeks, he called, texted and sent voice notes to loved ones in Tehran, where large crowds demanded the overthrow of the country’s authoritarian government.

Are you ok? Refael, a writer and Iranian refugee living in West Los Angeles, texted repeatedly. Do you have enough food? Do you have enough water? Are you safe?

No answer.

When the protests, initially sparked by economic woes, began in late December, Refael received a steady stream of responses. However, these blackouts stopped last week when Iranian authorities implemented a near-total internet blackout, while calls to landlines were not connected. Videos roaming online Show rows of body bags. Human rights groups also say the government is waging a deadly crackdown on protesters in Tehran and other cities. more than 2,000 was killed.

Like many in Southern California’s large Iranian diaspora, Refael, 43, is glued to his phone, constantly refreshing news from Iran; He fears “a wholesale massacre could occur there in literal darkness.”

“Before the regime completely shut down the internet and electricity in many places, there was an exciting sense of hope,” said Refael, a leading voice in the Iranian Jewish community in Los Angeles. But now, as the death toll rises, “that hope has been devastatingly diminished by a visceral sense of dread.”

Refael’s family fled Iran when he was 7 years old due to religious persecution. Born a few years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, she said she grew up in a time when headscarves were mandatory and people had to adhere to “the anti-American and anti-Semitic policies of the state.”

Refael never returned. Like other Iranian Americans, he said he feels “a sense of guilt” about being physically distant from the crisis in his homeland, watching with ample internet and electricity, living among Americans who pay little attention to what’s happening on Iran’s streets.

The demonstrations, which started on December 28, were sparked by the catastrophic depreciation of Iran’s currency, the rial. Protesters have since spread across the country’s 31 provinces as they challenge the rule of 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

People pass by the damaged Tax Affairs building on January 10, 2026 in Tehran. Some parts of the capital have been heavily damaged during the ongoing protests.

(Getty Images)

One post on social media website On Tuesday morning, President Trump wrote that he was canceling planned meetings with Iranian officials who he had previously said were willing to negotiate with Washington.

“Iranian Patriots, CONTINUE TO PROTEST, TAKE YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” wrote. “Hide the names of the murderers and abusers. They will pay a high price. I have canceled all meetings with Iranian officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOP. HELP IS ON THE WAY.”

Trump repeatedly swore If he kills the demonstrators, he will hit the Iranian leadership. On Monday, he announced He said countries doing business with Iran would face a 25% tariff from the United States “effective immediately.”

This frame, taken from video circulating on social media shot between January 9 and January 11, 2026, allegedly shows images from a morgue containing dozens of bodies and mourners on the outskirts of the Iranian capital Kahrizak.

(Associated Press)

Few places in the United States are following the crisis more closely than Southern California, home to the largest population of Iranians outside Iran. An estimated 141,000 Iranian Americans live in LA County Iranian Diaspora Control PanelHosted by the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies.

In Westwood, the community’s epicenter, where its namesake boulevard is lined with storefronts covered in Persian script, it’s hard to miss widespread opposition to Iran’s rigid theocracy.

This week, a clothing store window featured ball caps with the words “MIGA / Make Iran Great Again” next to a lion and a sun, symbolizing the country’s flag before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. A hand-painted sign behind the register at a nearby ice cream shop read: “Stop oppressing our people in the name of Islam.” There was a banner reading “Regime change in Iran” in the window of the bookstore across the street.

Thousands of people were marching in Westwood on Sunday in solidarity with anti-government protesters in Iran when a terrified man plowed into the crowd in a U-Haul truck carrying a banner that read: “No Shah. No Regime. USA: Don’t Repeat 1953. No Mullahs.” The sign appeared to reference a 1953 US-backed coup that toppled Iran’s prime minister, consolidated the power of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and sparked the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

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Police announced Monday that the driver, Calor Madanescht, 48, was arrested on suspicion of careless driving. He was released Monday afternoon, according to L.A. County sheriff’s inmate records.

Video shared by attendees to The Times shows protesters trying to force him out of the vehicle and continuing to punch and attack him as police detained him.

Inside a statement Sent Sunday to X, First Assistant U.S. Attorney. Bill Essayli said the FBI was “working with the LAPD to determine the driver’s motive” and that “this is an active investigation.”

At a meeting of the Los Angeles Police Commission on Tuesday, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said he did not expect federal charges and that there was no apparent “link to terrorism.”

The atmosphere was tense in Westwood this week following a U-Haul incident that police said did not cause serious injuries. As journalists went from store to store, few store owners wanted to talk. Although many Iranian immigrants hope for the overthrow of the theocratic regime in Iran, they said they fear for the loved ones they left behind and prefer not to be in the public eye.

Among those willing to speak was Roozbeh Farahanipour, executive director of the West LA Chamber of Commerce and owner of three restaurants on Westwood Boulevard.

Roozbeh Farahanipour and her young son wave a pre-1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution flag outside the Delphi Greek restaurant in Westwood in this June 2025 photo.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

At Mary & Robb’s Westwood Cafe, whose walls are adorned with decorative plaques featuring American movie icons such as John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe, he conducted interviews about the Sunday protest in Westwood, where he was among the crowd all morning, just feet from the path of a U-Haul.

Farahanipour said Iranian Americans have mixed views on what should happen next in Iran; including whether Reza Pahlavi, the exiled crown prince and son of the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, will take a leading role.

“I believe that right now everyone should focus on overthrowing this regime. That’s why I participated. Many people from different backgrounds participated,” he said, adding that he was “not a monarchist” but that “the opposition is united against the regime.”

Farahanipour was 7 years old when the Islamic Revolution took place. He remembers going to school with his mother and listening to “people executed by the regime” on the radio. One day, his mother’s cousin’s name was read in the publications.

Although his family was not Catholic, Farahanipour, 54, attended a Catholic school. He has fond memories of football matches between children and priests playing in their long religious robes. He said that after the revolution, the government attacked the school and executed the principal.

Farahanipour was jailed and beaten in Iran for his role as a leader of student protests against the government in 1999 before seeking asylum in the United States. He said he had been repeatedly threatened by the government over the years, including with death.

In 2022, the Persian Gulf Café in Westwood was vandalized after sharing and its glass front door was broken. Images on Instagram A monument erected in the cafe commemorates the Iranian women who took part in the anti-government protests that year. He said he was impartial.

He said he dreams of returning to Iran for a case against Khamenei, now a US citizen and “officially retired from his role in the Iranian opposition”, and to help “seek the maximum sentence for him”.

Sam Yebri, a 44-year-old Iranian Jewish refugee whose family fled the country when he was 1 year old, said he spent the past two weeks constantly getting updates on what was happening in Iran on social media and reaching out to elected officials, imploring them to speak out on behalf of protesters.

Yebri, an attorney and former Los Angeles City Council candidate, grew up in Westwood. He, a longtime Democrat, said it was “so maddening to see so many friends and activists who are comfortable discussing other issues remain absolutely silent and absent from this fight.” He said he saw this as “the greatest moment in world history since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

“The regime must go,” he said, adding that he hoped Trump would “do everything prudent to ensure that the Iranian people overthrow the brutal mullahs who have their boots on their throats.”

Yebri said he had not returned to Iran since his family fled when he was a baby. She hopes to do so one day, to visit the beautiful places her parents described, where they honeymooned on the beaches of southern Iran and skied in its snowy mountains.

Alex Mohajer, the 40-year-old vice chairman of the Iranian American Democrats in California, was born in Orange County, where he was raised by a single mother who immigrated from Iran. When he was 14, he visited his family there and was “very proud” to see that “Western depictions of the country were far from reality, that it was a very warm and loving country, that its people were very hospitable, and that it was very clear that they were living under oppressive rule.”

Mohajer, who ran unsuccessfully for the California State Senate in 2024, wants a future where he can freely travel back and forth to visit loved ones in Iran. But more urgently, he wants to know they’re okay. Their messages also remain unanswered.

Times writer Libor Jany contributed to this report.