Eric Randolph

I’ve been thinking a lot about how so many Iranians in the diaspora have not been to Iran for decades, or if they are younger, have never been to Iran at all. We can call them the distant diaspora. Many of the loudest calls for military intervention came from people who had recent experience of repression at the hands of the Islamic Republic. Their calls for war were motivated by the intensity of Iran’s crisis. They felt the potential benefits outweighed the potential harms—something had to change. But I believe that for those who have been distant from Iran, a different dynamic mattered, one that was less about weighing the benefits and harms. For many in the distant diaspora, a lack of familiarity with the place made it inherently easier to call for military intervention—Iran did not feel real and the idea of the country being in a war was necessarily abstract. But I also believe, that at some subconscious level, many of these same people welcomed the war because they knew it would be destructive. It would be easier for them to remain alienated from an Iran that had been destroyed, than to grapple with the fact that they have been unable or unwilling to remain connected to a place of such profound beauty and meaning. For many Iranians, it has been difficult to admit that Iran remained beautiful and joyous despite the repression of the Islamic Republic. They told themselves that the Islamic Republic had destroyed the country, but the resilience and vitality of the true Iran was still clear in the stories told by friends and family or the images that would seep through on social media, piercing through all the dark news. By believing that the Iran they loved ceased existing in 1979, they could mourn its death. This mourning was easier than the daily, needling grief of exile, whether forced (as it often was, at the hands of repressive leaders) or self-imposed. For people struggling with these feelings, the prospect of Iran being destroyed by war and beset by insecurity may represent a kind of release. If Iran is a failed state, many in the diaspora will feel less regret about not being there. It will be easier to let go, or at least not to reach out. In the aftermath of this war, the question of why they do not go to Iran will no longer hang over the distant diaspora in the same way—they always said Iran was a ruined country, and it will finally be so. The war will make it easier to justify their alienation from their homeland and this alone will feel like a kind of freedom. I don’t say this with any judgement—ultimately, I am describing a kind of coping mechanism that allows people to deal with very heavy feelings of alienation and powerlessness. But I do think we need to understand why the diaspora pushed for actions that brought so much destruction to Iran. It was not out of naivety, at least not entirely. Many knew destruction would come and they were seeking its release.