LAST UPDATE | 29 Jun

IN THE LAST two weeks Iran has been thrust into the spotlight, and in Ireland, a small diasporic community has watched on through the headlines, struggling to get in contact with their loved ones due to internet blackouts in Tehran during the 12-day war with Israel.

Several Iranians living and working in Ireland have spoken to The Journal about what the last two weeks have been like, how they are feeling now that a precarious ceasefire is in place, and about the faded talks of regime change pushed by the US and Israel.

Their names have been changed to protect them, as they are still worried about the impact that speaking out could have on their immediate family members who still live in Iran.

It’s a country of over 90 million people, but it is widely believed that over eight million people live abroad.

Amir, an academic who came to Ireland in 2016 and now lives in Cork, explains that leaving Iran is not easy, but it is essential for those who hold dissenting views against the rule of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who controls the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that run the Islamic Republic.

“You will be at best socially isolated, at worst imprisoned.

“If you want to meet intellectuals in Iran, look in the prisons, I can say that some people have been held hostage there for 40, 50 years,” he said.

Amir first left Iran twenty years ago at the age of 27. He refers to his home country as Persia.

“It’s something many of us do to separate ourselves from the regime, which is in my view, worse than a dictatorship. It’s a regime that blinds girls who protest, that shoots them in the eye. It’s a regime that arbitrarily detains its citizens. We, the Iranian people, are not the regime,” he said.

Amir lived in the middle of Tehran and worked in software engineering. He says that what he experienced through the education system amounted to brainwashing.

“We were taught bad words for other countries, and that one day they would attack us, and we should be ready for that, we were taught that at the age of ten,” he said.

For the lecturer, one key incident in his childhood summed up the control that people in Iran live under.

“I was nine-years-old, eating strawberry icecream with my mother in the city. We were laughing, it was staining her lips, she was holding my hand. A car pulled up and two men and a woman got out, and one of the men ran up to my mother and asked why she was wearing makeup. She said she wasn’t, and pulled out a tissue to wipe her lips and show him, and he just said, ‘You are a bitch’.

“I felt so helpless in that moment, because we are taught in our culture to protect the women in our family, but I could do nothing to protect my mother,” Amir said.

He has felt a similar kind of helplessness watching the news from Cork, while his mother and family were in Iran, which was bombed repeatedly during the 12 day conflict with Israel.

“I was worried for them and I was worried for my country. For Iran to be free, there needs to be a revolution from the people, not change implemented by another country,” he said.

“I want to thank the Irish people for their understanding, and for welcoming me,” Amir added.

However, he added that once Iran is under attack, his priority is the preservation of his country. 

“We will not allow any country to take a piece of Iran or even touch its borders in any attempt at fragmentation. If you think you can, you will first have to go through the 8 million Iranians living abroad and the 85 million living inside,” he said.

Azadeh lives in Ireland, she’s been here since 2013, having moved after meeting her then partner, who was Irish, in Tehran.

She has found the last two weeks extremely distressing, as her immediate family is still in Iran.

“I cannot stop crying. I grew up during the Iraq-Iran war, so my first experiences were shaped by the threat of bombing, and I will admit when the news first broke of Israel’s strikes, I thought ‘thank god I am not there right now’, but my family are.

“I have managed to keep in touch with them despite the internet blackouts, and they tell me they are ok, but you know when you are in this situation, with missiles overhead, you are not okay, mentally, you are screwed,” she said.

Azadeh said that life in Iran is shaped by the regime’s control, but most people are going about their normal day-to-day lives.

“It’s not like what you see in the media. In private, in their homes, many people are actually very secular. They wear the chador on the way to school, but once inside, they take them off,” she said.

Mashad in Iran, in 2018, the last time Ava was able to visit.

Azadeh stressed that women in Iran have good access to education, and that many are thriving in STEM, even compared to other democratic countries.

“One of the girls in my school year got married at 15-years-old. Her dad was in the IRGC. We thought it was odd enough that she got bullied by the other girls in school. I don’t think it occurred to us that it wasn’t her decision at all, we didn’t have any idea what she was going through, I still think about that sometimes,” she said, however.

Azadeh said that Ireland, where an estimated 3000 Iranians live, is not historically a place for Iranians to emigrate to.

“People don’t really know a lot about Iran here, and when I first moved, there were xenophobic comments, I couldn’t get any viewings for apartments, so eventually my boyfriend started to be the one to contact agents, then we did get viewings,” she said.

Azadeh said that the lack of freedom of speech in Iran has a continued impact on people who leave the country.

“I could be imprisoned for speaking out like this. I could get the death penalty for doing this interview. If I went home to see my family, and they knew about this, there is a chance they’d prevent me from leaving again. That isn’t an irrational fear on my part. That is something that happens all of the time,” she said.

Azadeh said that even in Ireland, she’s found it hard to publicly oppose the regime.

“In the wake of the Women Life Freedom movement protests in Iran in 2022, when women would go outside in Iran without a head scarf, some Iranian women in Ireland protested on O’Connell Street.

“I watched them from across the road. They had sunglasses on, but even then, I was worried that I would be identifiable if I joined them. It made me feel like a coward, women in my home country are putting their lives on the line, and I couldn’t do it in Dublin. But the risks are real, and I have my family to think about,” Azadeh said.

Ava lives in Cavan with her partner and their children.

She is Iranian-German, and only lived in Iran briefly in her teens.

“We went back when I was about 13 for a few years, we thought things had gotten better, but of course, they hadn’t,” she says.

She moved to Ireland in 2016 from Germany.

“I’ve been so depressed for the last few weeks. It’s not just about my family in Iran, it’s about all the Iranians suffering under that horrible, horrible regime that hijacked the revolution in the 1970s. People are suffering, and the world watches on,” she said.

Ava said that people are struggling to afford basic items in Iran.

A photo from Shiraz in Iran, from Ava's last visit.

“My two aunts are in Tehran, and everything has gotten so expensive for them. They can’t really even afford bread, eggs, and meat anymore.

“Their sons are really talented with music, but they don’t have the freedom to explore it, they can’t leave the country to go to competitions they get invited to, because of the sanctions.

“Women there are fed up. It’s not just about having to wear a hijab. It’s about living in a country that belittles you because you are a woman. Some people thought with the election of Masoud Pezeskian in 2024, there might be some reform. That hasn’t happened,” she said.

Ava added that she longs to bring her two sons and her daughter, who were born in Ireland, to Iran.

“I want to show them my home country. The people are so friendly, the food is amazing. Iran is amazing, we have skiing in the North, we have beaches. It’s a place with so much potential, but we cannot go there right now, and it makes my heart bleed,” she said.