Exiled Iranian Americans in real estate watching deadly protests from afar may not agree on a path to peace, but they’re united in seeing this moment as an opening for democratic change in Iran.
Demonstrations began across the country starting on Dec. 28 when Iranians took to the streets to protest economic conditions, namely inflation. The protests quickly spread with demonstrators numbering in the millions in just a few days. The Iranian government responded with an internet blackout that provided cover to security forces killing protesters; days later, the death toll is in the thousands. President Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene.
Iranians who fled to the U.S. during the 1979 revolution, many of whom settled in California, New York and Texas, haven’t been able to return. Among them is Mehrdad Moayedi, the founder of Dallas-based firm Centurion American Development, who left Tehran in 1976 and moved to Fort Worth at the age of 15. He’s been in North Texas ever since.
Moayedi, who started with a small landscaping business and became the region’s most prolific single-family lot developer, credits his success to the freedom and business friendliness of Texas and the U.S., which he calls “the greatest country in the world.”
“I don’t want anything more in my life than to see Iran become more democratic, like the United States,” he said when asked about the protests. “Having said that, I think we’re at a crossroads and we need some help.”
A fervent supporter of President Trump, Moayedi approves of his response to the crisis. From his perspective, the U.S. should provide weapons to unarmed Iranians, and Israel should intervene “because it has the infrastructure.”
Moayedi sees the conflict as similar to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, except “those people are armies.” In Iran, protesters “don’t have any way of protecting themselves.”
Jewish Iranian developer Shahab Karmely, who operates in New York and South Florida, agrees with Moayedi. His father, who was in the rug business and owned real estate in Iran, was put on a death list but managed to escape with the family in 1978. Karmely, after being deported from the U.S., was taken in as a refugee in the U.K.
“The west needs to understand there’s no negotiation [with this regime]. I think President Trump has woken up to this,” Karmely said. “The bloodshed is beyond anything we can imagine. The same way the Nazis had to go, this regime has to go.”
Though he stopped short of advocating for a direct invasion, Karmely said “the time for action is now,” adding that “the streets are literally awash in the blood of young people.”
While Austin-based developer Ari Rastegar has never visited his father’s homeland, “My entire life has been these conversations and the trauma that ensued from it,” he said. Born in Austin in 1982, Rastegar, who founded Rastegar Property Company, grew up listening to stories from his grandfather, who was the shah’s doctor.
Like Moayedi, he’d like to see Iran’s leader be someone chosen by the people of Iran, but Rastegar is skeptical about the involvement of superpowers, favoring grassroots leadership that’s “authentically Iranian.” And, like the diaspora at large, they disagree on how exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi should be involved in the process.
Pahlavi, the son of the last shah of Iran, moved to the U.S. at age 18 in 1978 for pilot training as a cadet in the Imperial Iranian Air Force. A face of opposition to Iran’s government, he has encouraged recent protests.
Moayedi is optimistic about Pahlavi, suggesting he could lead Iran through transition until the country can elect a leader.
Rastegar disagrees, “You don’t know anything about running a global government, one of the oldest countries in the history of mankind,” he said about Pahlavi. “Let’s find somebody that knows what they’re doing.”
Moayedi and Rastegar, men from different generations who were born in different countries, agree the conflict shouldn’t be used to fuel Islamophobia.
“Islam doesn’t teach that kind of stuff,” Moayedi said. “These are just goons and gangsters killing people left and right.”
Islam is a “very peaceful, beautiful religion,” echoed Rastegar. “This is a dictator fuckhead thing. This is not a Muslim thing.”
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