Sharon S. Nazarian’s neighborhood in West Los Angeles is the largest community of Iranians outside of their home country. A few weeks ago, people there were dancing in the streets after President Trump reported that military strikes had killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the longtime Iranian leader.
On Tuesday, the president’s ominous post to Truth Social, saying that “a whole civilization will die tonight” unless Iran meets his demands, left her fearful instead of joyous.
“This only achieves his goal if the goal is to confuse the whole world,” said Ms. Nazarian, a philanthropist and political scientist whose Jewish family fled Iran nearly a half-century ago. She worried that Mr. Trump’s ultimatum would only embolden the current regime and endanger Iranian civilians.
“I wish this president would talk less,” she said.
Like Ms. Nazarian, more than half a million U.S. residents are at least partly of Iranian descent, according to census data. Many were members of oppressed minorities in Iran — Jews, Assyrians, Baha’i, Christians — who fled after the overthrow of the nation’s last shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in 1979.
Many have supported Mr. Trump’s efforts to bring about a regime change that might finally allow them to revisit their home. But in much of the Los Angeles community, colloquially known as Tehrangeles, the initial excitement has tempered.
“What’s the end game here?” asked Nazanin Boniadi, a Tehran-born activist and actress who posted on social media that the president’s threat “empowers the regime, reinforces its propaganda, and betrays a people who have long been America’s natural allies.”
Adrin Nazarian, a Los Angeles city councilman whose Christian Armenian family fled Iran in 1981, said Mr. Trump’s hostile response was going to inflict more damage on innocents.
“You’re talking about a civilization that’s existed for more than 5,000 years, and you’re going to bomb it out of existence?” Mr. Nazarian said, adding, “You can’t keep up with him — it’s a threat a minute.”
Shawn Hubler is The Times’s Los Angeles bureau chief, reporting on the news, trends and personalities of Southern California.
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