Iranians in Southland Flex Political Muscle

Southern California’s Iranian Americans, reclusive and apolitical since the U.S. hostage crisis two decades ago, are beginning to use their considerable numbers and wealth to influence policy inside and outside Iran.

No longer do they call themselves “Persian” or “Middle Eastern” to escape American animosity born when militant students laid siege to the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979.

Nor is this community of 600,000 willing to wait for others to reshape what members call a repressive theocracy that sent many of them fleeing.

In recent months, they have started using shortwave radio and satellite television to influence Iranians back home. They are also seeking help from lawmakers who represent them, such as Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks).

If approved by the Senate, an amendment offered by Sherman that passed recently in the House would cut World Bank funding by $10 million to rap the agency’s knuckles for deciding to resume lending to Iran.

Despite many religious, ethnic and political differences, Iranian Americans agree that, united, they could wield considerable influence, not only over American policies toward Iran, but also U.S. domestic politics. Their community in Southern California is two-thirds the size of the Cuban American population in south Florida.

“We have an opportunity to make change. And we should learn from other immigrant communities, like Cubans, Vietnamese, American Jews or Italians,” said George Haroonian, coordinator of the Council of Iranian American Jewish Organizations here.

A traffic-stopping demonstration July 8 in front of the Federal Building in Westwood was a powerful reminder of the fact that the world’s largest Iranian expatriate community lives in Southern California.

They have transformed parts of Westwood Boulevard in West Los Angeles and Ventura Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley into neighborhoods reminiscent of Tehran, complete with restaurants, shops and businesses labeled in cursive Persian script.

“Say it in English. No one understands you otherwise,” protesters told each other as they later marched to UCLA to commemorate the Iranian student uprising a year earlier. Soon, chants of “Death to the Islamic Republic” in Persian became “United Nations, pay more attention!” in English.

Hoping to Help Iran’s People

The growing political voice of Iranian Americans is spurred by increasing unrest among Iran’s 62 million residents over intense economic hardship and a burning desire for an end to conservative clerical rule. As a result, dozens of liberal candidates have been swept into the 290-member parliament or Majlis in recent months, although there has been more talk than action on reforms.

Before the reform movement, Iranian Americans “felt they had zero effect on the conditions in Iran. Not only were they not helping, but they were told not to help because the situation would get worse,” explained Homa Mahmoudi, a clinical psychologist based in Santa Monica who helps Iranians adjust to American life. Now, “We feel both an obligation and a real need to be of service to the people of Iran.”

For Iranian Jews, the catalyst was more personal. Questionable arrests and convictions by an Islamic court of Iranian Jews on espionage charges in the past year have galvanized his community into speaking out at protests and vigils, Haroonian said.

If Iranian Americans organize and get involved, “they can elect mayors, city councilmen or congressmen,” Haroonian added. Rep. Sherman agreed.

“When there are 815,000 people in this country who are Iranian American, it makes sense to pay attention to them. I have and will” do so, said Sherman, who maintains close contact with the Iranian Jewish communities in his district.

Their concerns are prompting him to make what he quipped is a “no justice, no caviar,” move this month on the House floor, where he is introducing a proposed ban on the few non-oil Iranian exports currently allowed into the United States until Iranian officials “stop supporting terrorism, respect human rights and respect the rights of religious minorities.”

Iranian American affluence is equally hard to ignore. A group often seen driving Mercedes-Benz and BMW sedans, most live in tony neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley, on the Westside and in Orange County. They are college professors, businessmen, engineers, doctors and lawyers.

Even Iranians back home are getting to know “Irangeles,” courtesy of a handful of expatriates who say they are investing millions of privately raised dollars to bind their communities together.

Broadcasting to Iran by Shortwave

One such tie is a talk radio show that would do Rush Limbaugh proud, with its barbs aimed at those in power. Since spring, the two-hour program in Persian has been broadcast via shortwave to Iran from a closed-circuit Santa Monica radio station. (The station, KRSI or in Persian, the “Voice of Iran,” just moved to Beverly Hills.)

During a recent broadcast, impassioned host Saeed Ghaem-Maghami read aloud a blistering letter from an imprisoned university student leader sent to Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. The letter, apparently unpublished by Iran’s media, criticized the president for his silence after the conservatives’ crackdown on pro-reform students and newspapers, of which 19 were closed.

“You should see it,” Ghaem-Maghami said during a break in the broadcast. In Iran, “the streets are empty during our show. Everyone is sitting together at home, listening.”

An exaggeration, perhaps. But Iran’s appetite for outside views and entertainment is growing, if the dozens of callers who light up the switchboard during the radio show’s call-in segment are any indication. “Mr. Ghaem-Maghami, may you not be tired,” said one student protester who called from Mashhad, using an Iranian greeting reserved for an appreciated friend or relative. “You are an inspiration to us.”

Also popular are Persian television programs, featuring news, entertainment, self-help and cooking tips. They are beamed to Iran daily from a private station in North Hollywood to an uncounted number of satellite dishes banned by the Islamic government, but tucked between rooftop air-conditioning units or behind bamboo curtains.

“Iran has to move toward democracy. You cannot paint all the windows black or put up boards and tell your children ‘don’t look outside.’ They are going to pull away the boards and see what the other kids are playing outside,” said Zia Atabay, who founded and runs National Iranian Television.

It began broadcasting in March from a satellite truck. Although he insisted that his station features apolitical programming, Atabay said he hopes the shows will speed up the process of government reform in Iran.

Officially, Iran does not object to the growing expatriate chorus, even when it’s critical. In Germany last week, where thousands marched to protest a visit by Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, the Iranian leader said people should be able to express themselves nonviolently.

And Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, the highest-ranking Iranian official in the United States, described the KRSI and NITV efforts as a “cultural exchange.”

“Wherever they live, they are members of our country. Their successes are our successes, their concerns are our concerns, too,” said Ambassador Hadi Nejad Hosseinian. “Iranians abroad could also be a major force in narrowing the gap of understanding between Iranians and other nations.”

Besides, unsanctioned Persian programming that criticizes Iran and is broadcast from abroad is nothing new, Hosseinian said, referring to the Voice of America, the Voice of Israel and BBC broadcasts.

What is new is for Iranians to be financing such programs and controlling editorial content, said Reza Pahlavi II, the exiled crown prince and son of the late shah.

“There is a tremendous amount of talent, expertise and knowledge among expats,” said Pahlavi, referring to Iranians living around the world. “Many of them were the cream our society,” said Pahlavi, who lives in Maryland.

How effective this elite group can be in influencing Iranians and their politics is another matter. Thousands of years of history have molded Iranians into a passionate, diverse people, not only in religion and ethnicity, but also in their political beliefs.

And unlike other exiled communities, Iranian Americans opposed to Islamic rule have not had the American government solidly behind them.

“A heavily anti-Castro sentiment enabled Cubans to have an incentive to speak out loud, whereas everything has been done to appease the Iranian regime,” Pahlavi said. At the same time, American leaders largely ignored Iranian opposition calls for support.

“There’s a lot of negativity out there, a feeling that no matter how loud we shout or how loud we cry, no one pays attention to what we have to say,” Pahlavi said.

Unpleasant social contacts with Americans isolated new Iranian arrivals even further, Mahmoudi adds.

After the U.S. Embassy siege, “Iranian children were getting attacked in schools” here, she recalled. “There were even rumors that Iranians were going to be gathered and put in camps like the Japanese” Americans during World War II.

Like Cuban Americans who toasted “Next year in Havana,” Iranian expatriates also had a saying about living with packed suitcases, because they expected the Islamic government to be overthrown by citizens back home within a few months.

Some Shift Focus to Life in U.S.

That saying is rarely used now. Some Iranian Americans, such as Sara Amir, say they gave up trying to change the Iranian leadership or its practices and have refocused their efforts on making a difference in their adopted countries. Several have run for federal, state and local office in California and Maryland, among other states.

“People who live in Iran have to bring about changes, not me,” said Amir, a former candidate for lieutenant governor who is running for the 42nd Assembly District seat on the Green Party ticket, a party she chose because of Iranians’ attachment to nature.

Her comments were echoed by Hosseinian, who said expatriates should limit their influence to subjects other than internal politics.

Still, “it is very important for Iranians living abroad to maintain and reinforce their cultural bonds with their motherland and to be informed of reforms and developments in Iran,” he said.

That knowledge seemed to be lacking at the recent protest in front of the Federal Building in Westwood, said Soroush Mazhoom, a Drexel University student from Philadelphia who came to watch. “They are out of touch,” said Mazhoom, who travels frequently to Iran and was in Tehran during last July’s student uprising. “Most of the students fighting the regime are still loyal to the regime and loyal to Khatami.”

The sometimes heated divisions were also evident at the rally, despite the great lengths to which event organizers went to keep it nonpartisan.

Those who travel to Iran and those favoring reform rather than an overthrow of the cleric-led government largely stayed away. “It isn’t a good idea to be seen at a rally shouting ‘Death to [Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei’ and then head to Mehrabad Airport” in Tehran, explained one participant, who asked not to be identified.

Others who cannot go back to Iran because of their affiliations were more outspoken, many shouting “death to” slogans in a style reminiscent of Islamic revolutionaries. Appeals from some of the speakers and participants for more positive chants went largely ignored.

Even those in agreement on a need for Iran to separate church and state were divided between people who supported the revolution against the shah and those who opposed it.

With all the bickering, “Iranians have done very little to directly inform the world community and obtain their support,” said Mohammad Parvin, co-founder of the Mission for the Establishment of Human Rights in Iran, a Palos Verdes Peninsula-based organization that launched a petition drive to make U.S. relations with Iran contingent on that nation’s attention to human rights.

“They have been widely divided and mostly concerned about their own parties or interest groups and have not been able to attract people to take part in the political process and form an organized opposition,” he said.

But many Iranian Americans are optimistic that a more cohesive, vocal expatriate community will ultimately evolve.

“They will come to the conclusion that this regime will not help people as it is, and they will finally put their heads together,” said Alireza Morovati, president of KRSI radio. “Everyone will sit together and think for Iran, only Iran.”

*

Times researcher Steve Tice contributed to this article.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Iranian Immigrants and Their Southland Destinations

*

Los Angeles County

Total: 63,769

*

Orange County

Total: 10,106

Ventura County

Total: 1,071

*

Source: INS

Researched by RAY HERNDON and PAUL J. SINGLETON / Los Angeles Times