By Caroline Wilburn, Breaking News Reporter
June 25, 2025
Members of Houston’s Iranian community said they have mixed feelings about the ongoing conflict involving Iran, Israel and now, the U.S., as they continue to hope for peace and a successful revolution against the country’s powerful regime.
Iran and Israel agreed to a ceasefire Tuesday after President Donald Trump said both countries violated a previous ceasefire that was agreed to Monday following 12 days of attacks exchanged by both countries. The U.S. joined the conflict late Saturday after Trump directed strikes on three Iranian nuclear and military sites — a move he characterized as necessary to halt the country’s nuclear program.
Houston is home to a large population of Iranian immigrants, with at least 10,000 living in the city as of 2022, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
News of the U.S. attack left Iranian-American Mandy Dehghan feeling both heartbroken and hopeful for her home country, she said.
Before immigrating to the U.S. more than four decades ago, Dehghan said she was involved in the Iranian revolution alongside her classmates, many of whom were executed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. A majority of her family still lives in Iran, and she said she’s struggled to reach them amid communication blackouts since Israel launched its first surprise attack on June 13.
Dehghan said she hopes for peace, but not by way of war. She is scared of how the regime may retaliate against outside attacks in the coming weeks and months, she said. Nearly 500 people were executed by the regime in 2023, according to Amnesty International.
“When things like this happen, and they lose, then they’re going to start oppressing and arresting people and killing them,” she said. “I’m worried for the prisoners, the political prisoners. They are in huge danger.”
Though she is hopeful that the U.S. and Israel attacks weakened the regime, she said it needs to be left up to the people of Iran to lead a successful revolution.
“The resistance units in Iran, they are capable, they can change the regime,” she said. “And changing the regime is not only for the people of Iran. It’s for the whole region. This will bring peace and prosperity and safety to America and everyone in the whole world, in the Middle East and the entire globe.”
Prior to this week’s ceasefire, Houston’s Iranian community supported one another as Israel launched strikes on Iran’s capital of Tehran and elsewhere, said Parsa Aria, an Iranian American and recent Texas A&M University graduate.
“Whenever one of us gets any information, or is able to get information about what’s going on in certain cities … we can relay that information to another friend in Houston and try and reassure them that things are still OK,” he said.
Trump floated the idea of a regime change in Iran on social media over the weekend, but said days later he wasn’t seeking a change, the Associated Press reported. Aria said he sees no point in the U.S. negotiating with Iran and instead feels it’s up to the Iranian people.
“It’s the Iranian people who are charged with overthrowing the regime,” he said. “It’s only through the Iranian people will an overthrow be seen as legitimate. Whether people are for or against the Trump administration. Ultimately, negotiating with this regime is a dead end.”
Karim Zangeneh, another Iranian American living in Houston, said he has pleaded with his U.S. representatives for three decades about the country’s involvement in Iran’s ongoing turmoil. The U.S. should not get more involved, he said, and instead should support the Iranian people and the revolution they are leading against the regime.
Zangeneh serves as director of the Iranian American community of Texas, a pro-democracy group with affiliations with Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), which the State Department formerly designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. The group was removed from the Foreign Terrorist Organization list in 2012 after it publicly renounced violence and the U.S. found an absence of confirmed acts of terrorism.
Both Dehghan and Zangeneh said they are proponents of Maryam Rajavi’s Ten-Point Plan for the future of Iran, a plan that calls for a non-nuclear Iran based on the separation of religion and state, gender equality and abolition of the death penalty. Rajavi is the President-elect of the political group National Council of Resistance of Iran.
Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is strictly for peaceful purposes. And while some argue that it’s not harmful for Iran to simply e in possession of a nuclear weapon, like many other countries, including the U.S. and India, Zangeneh said the regime has proved why it should never have such a weapon.
“This regime is not what you think,” he said. “The bomb by itself, just like the gun by itself, is not the problem. It has to have a mind behind it to use it. This regime is a religious fascist regime that wants to wipe out a country. If you don’t believe that, then you have to be really naive.”
