Los Angeles City Councilman Adrin Nazarian, who was born in Iran, shared his thoughts on the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran Saturday, agreeing with the need for regime change but lamenting that the Trump administration didn’t wait for political and economic pressure to prompt the change more organically.
“There’s no question about the need for the regime to change. This regime has kept Iranians in the dark for the last 50 years,” Nazarian told City News Service in an interview Saturday afternoon.
“Just to provide some context, my mother and I fled in 1981 and my father (much later). It took my family six or seven years to finally be reunited in Los Angeles,” he continued. “Many folks who went through that experience harbor a great deal of resentment. So there’s no question (the prospect of regime change) brings people great joy. “But that being said, when you look at it from the perspective of the Iranian public, millions of people, since ’78, ’79 when their revolution was in full swing, there’s been continuous hardship and death.”
Nazarian stressed that for the first 10 years of the regime, Iran fought a brutal war with neighboring Iraq, and said “Since then, there’s been one uprising or revolution after another, and each one has been violently quelled by this regime.
“If you were born in Iran in the 1970s, all you’ve witnessed over the course of a lifetime has been one devastating war after another. It’s a difficult circumstance of living, raising a family … and I really feel for the Iranian people for having gone through that, because Iranians are a very peaceful-natured people,” he added.
While he wants the current regime of Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei — who was killed in the U.S./Israel strikes — deposed, Nazarian said Saturday’s military action wasn’t the best way to go about it.
“I would have hoped it would have been more surgical,” he told CNS. “I would have preferred us to continue putting economic and political pressure on Iran so that there would be an internal implosion, rather than putting our people in harm’s way. … and potentially creating another generation of people who hate Americans.”
Nazarian said he doesn’t have much contact with anyone in Iran these days.
Asked if the City Council might issue a resolution on the matter in the coming days, he sounded skeptical.
“What is a resolution in the city of Los Angeles going to do except to make a handful of people happy that something was said?”
Nazarian serves the council’s Second District, representing the eastern San Fernando Valley and parts of the Crescenta Valley. The 52-year-old Democrat previously served in the state Assembly from 2012-22.
The large-scale strikes were carried out early Saturday, hitting the capital city of Tehran and several other cities. Khamenei’s death was reported by Israel and multiple U.S. and international news outlets. He had been Iran’s supreme leader since 1989, making him the longest-serving head of state in the Middle East. He was previously president of Iran from 1981-89.
Iranian officials said one strike killed dozens of people at a girls school.
Iran launched a counteroffensive, attacking Israel and U.S. military bases located in allied Arab nations across the region, including in the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq and Jordan. Many of the missiles launched at Israel were intercepted by that country’s air defense system.
“The United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests,” President Donald Trump said in a message to the nation Saturday. “We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground.”
The president accused Iran of attempting to rebuild its nuclear program after the U.S. carried out a massive attack on it last summer that Trump said at the time had left the program “completely and totally obliterated.”
“The Iranian regime seeks to kill. The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war, but we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission,” Trump said Saturday.
Southland Democrats condemned the Trump administration’s attack, calling it an illegal action taken without authorization from Congress.
Demonstrations were expected Saturday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles and near the Federal Building on Wilshire Boulevard in the Westwood area, which is home to a large Iranian-American community and has been the site of multiple weekend demonstrations recently in support of Iranians protest against their government.