Diaspora Iranians and Jews share our struggles

I grew up in Iran, a country where you learned early what not to say. Words were shared carefully, often only with those closest to you, and even then, always with an awareness of who might be listening. Like many Iranians, I learned to live with two lives — the public one shaped by fear, and the private one where truth was kept indoors.

Even once we resettled as refugees in our second home, Australia, many of us carried with us habits formed under repression — caution about what to say and a sense that some stories were safer to avoid. Among the stories most often left untold was the relationship between Iranians and Jews.

It is a story that has been repeatedly distorted by a radical ruling elite whose primary foreign policy project has been anti-Western and, most significantly, anti-Israel. As Iranians have taken to the streets in this last week to reject this elite of the Islamic Republic of Iran and reclaim their future, many of us in the diaspora have been doing the same: standing with our fellow Iranians in protest, and telling our own story, free from the dogmatic narratives that were imposed on us.

Part of reclaiming that narrative came in the wake of October 7, 2023. For many Iranian Australians watching Hamas — funded alongside Qatar and armed by the Islamic Regime of Iran — carry out a massacre of Israeli civilians was a traumatizing moment. The attack stripped away any remaining ambiguity about how the regime uses proxy violence to project power and terror far beyond Iran’s borders. We immediately knew where we had to be.