Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh was born in the United States, but her Persian identity has colored every aspect of her Jewish experience, including her decision to become a rabbi. “It’s intertwined with who I am as a Jew and who I am as a human,” the Los Angeles resident and vice president for Jewish engagement at the American Jewish University told eJewishPhilanthropy. 

Like many members of the Iranian Jewish diaspora in the U.S., she’s been closely following current events in Iran. “Watching these brave women and men and humans just march, unarmed, completely fearless, they’re just super inspiring, and it’s a part of who I am in my DNA, I think,” she said. “I just want to meet them.”

The marches, initially in response to the collapse of Iran’s national currency and faltering economy, drew millions into the streets when they began in December, but quickly morphed into a more general uprising against the regime in Tehran that has been in power since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. In the weeks since, the regime has brutally cracked down on the protests, reportedly killing thousands of protesters and arresting tens of thousands more and imposing an internet blackout and high levels of surveillance. 

Initially optimistic, many Persians in the diaspora experienced the crackdown as a gut punch — one raising concern for remaining family and friends in the country, and serving as a reminder of their own exile. 

“It’s heart-wrenching,” Farhad Novian, president of Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, Calif., and son of Iranian Jewish immigrants, told eJP. “When you see the faces of the people protesting, it brings me back to my roots.”

“I think they’ve reached their boiling point and beyond, and they want a change. So it’s very painful to see all of this happening, to see their dead people, see them crying, to see the bloodshed, see the protests,” he said.

Recent developments have made the future even murkier. President Donald Trump has pledged that “help is on the way,” with the United States convening significant military assets in the region; but the outcome of negotiations between U.S. and Iranian officials in Oman, which are scheduled to begin today, could determine whether the U.S. intervenes or whether the sides reach a deal. If a deal is struck, many worry about the fate of the protesters and the Iranian people.  

“At any moment you could be hopeful, and literally, within the next three minutes, you could read a headline — today it was that [Special Envoy Steve] Witkoff is meeting with [Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi,” Sharon Nazarian, vice chair of the board of directors of the Anti-Defamation League, told eJP on Monday. “I mean, and that again, is like, oh my god, are they just going to do a deal? Are they going to really betray all the thousands and thousands of young Iranians who went into the streets and gave up their lives? So it’s really from moment to moment, and that’s very difficult. Between hope and despair.” 

The Iranian Jewish community traces its roots back approximately 2,700 years to the Babylonian exile. Those remaining in Iran are estimated at roughly 8,000-10,000, a steep decline from the 80,000-100,000 who lived there before the revolution. Most expats now reside in Israel and the United States.

According to Nazarian, who is a philanthropist as well as a political scientist by training, concern about potential repercussions for the Jewish community in Iran has chilled the speech of many Iranian Jews and Iranian Jewish organizations on the current conflict. 

“They’re worried that the price will be paid by the Jewish community in Iran,” she told eJP. “While we know that as individuals, they share both the sadness and the hopes of the broader Iranian diaspora community, I think they’re more reluctant to be public about it, out of fear that maybe the Jewish community of Iran will be held accountable.”

In the aftermath of the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June, many members of the Jewish community were accused of being Mossad spies and arrested, a pattern that has reportedly continued following the recent wave of protests. 

“The difference is that if [Iranian Jews] are arrested, they have even fewer rights than other Iranian citizens,” said Nazarian. “Whatever the price for every Iranian citizen demonstrating against his regime today, the price for, not just Jews, but other religious minorities as well, is even higher. Because they can be accused of even more sedition or disloyalty, or whatever, against the regime.” 

Nazarian left Iran when she was 10 years old. In the year before the revolution, she described a growing sense of insecurity in the Jewish community as political demonstrations increased, both in frequency and intensity. She attended a Jewish day school close to the University of Tehran, where demonstrations were frequent. Her father, a target because of his work with Israeli manufacturing companies, warned her that their car could be attacked and not to sit close to the classroom windows. Months prior, a bomb had been placed in his showroom. Within the year, she and her father left the country on an El Al flight to Israel. 

“The remnants of what stays with me is to be forced into exile; to not be able to choose to leave but to have no option but to leave,” she told eJP. “My father would have definitely been executed had he stayed, and he was blacklisted right away.” 

“That trauma gets triggered every time something really horrible happens,” she continued. “On Oct. 7, I can tell you that day when I spoke with my family and my friends, all of us had the same kind of anxiety and fear of what had happened during the revolution, the horrors of that…these trauma reactions are just there, and I think we feel it now.”

For many Iranian Jews who left the country quickly, often unaware they would not be able to return, the possibility of visiting Iran again or showing it to their children for the first time if the regime is overthrown has been a widely shared dream since the protests began. 

“I seriously believe that the Persian Jewish Diaspora and the non-Jewish Diaspora are holding hands, and believe, hand-in-hand, that there should be a change,” said Novian. “We’re all here, and we’re here as a consequence of what happened there; and I think, for a lot of us, we’d like to go back. I’d like to go back and take my children there. A lot of people would like to go back and just see what they grew up with.”

The Persian Jewish community has, for the most part, been swept into the larger Iranian diaspora’s movement, Rabizadeh told eJP. “Rumblings” do arise on occasion about the presence of Israeli flags at rallies, she said. Located in Los Angeles, she’s been regularly attending Sunday marches in support of the Iranian people in Westwood and has found solace in being surrounded by the community. 

“Being around Persian chants and Persian signs, and witnessing Persians in the diaspora want to go back to their home country so badly is just so inspiring,” she said. “There’s a whole world of Iranians in the diaspora who are longing to go home,” 

Matthew Nouriel, a Los Angeles-based social media activist and director of community outreach and engagement at the nonprofit Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA), perceives a growing “kinship” between the Iranian, Jewish and Israeli communities since the protests first started. 

“Jews are used to being the outliers and the ones who are alone in our struggle, or alone in our belief system, or alone, especially, in the region of the Middle East, and I think Iranians are feeling that level of aloneness as well. So there are a lot of things there that are parallel, that build this sort of kinship,” he told eJP. 

Nazarian has observed widespread Jewish communal support for the Iranian people, a “silver lining” of the current situation, she said. Jewish organizations — including the ADL, where she works — have taken “concrete steps” to show support for the Iranian diaspora, including advocating for the Iranian people with members of Congress and the executive branch, she said. 

Rabizadeh has found that many of her fellow rabbis, often outspoken about social causes, have demonstrated a lack of knowledge about and interest in what’s going on in Iran, she said. With the ongoing internet blackout in the country, there’s “no real way to raise money” for the people affected, she said, leaving public advocacy as a key form of support.

“We’re talking about 30,000 people being massacred over a couple days. I would have expected some more attention on it,” she told eJP. 

In non-Jewish circles and in the media, Nazarian has noticed a silence about what’s going on in Iran that she attributes in part to pro-regime and anti-Israel groups politicizing Jewish support for the cause, and conspiracy theories that the protests were seeded to benefit Israeli and U.S. interests.

“They have been using that and weaponizing and politicizing that and saying, ‘See, the Jews are supporting the anti-regime folks, or Israel is supporting the anti-regime folks, so this is not really an uprising against the regime. It’s an external influence by the Israelis, by the Zionists, to bring the end of this regime,’” she said. “We all know the narratives that the pro-regime folks around the world have used, and there’s nothing new. They’ve always blamed everything on Mossad. They blame everything on Israel.”

From Nouriel’s perspective, allowing the cause to be politicized and focusing on internal disagreements — whether a post-regime Iran should be a democracy or a constitutional monarchy, the suitability of the exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi as a transitional leader, the presence of Israeli flags at protests, whether U.S. intervention is wise — risks weakening support for the cause.

“Our job out here is to amplify what it is they want, and I think that that often gets lost in the shuffle of all of the noise and all of the heightened anxiety and trauma,” he said. 

CORRECTION 2/7/26: This article has been corrected to reflect that Sharon Nazarian is the vice chair of the board of directors of the Anti-Defamation League, a volunteer position; she was previously employed as the senior vice president of international affairs at the organization.