Voices from the Iranian diaspora in Canada

0:00This year, the Globe and Mail is hosting Intersect 26, our signature business and policy event across four cities, Toronto, Calgary, Halifax, and Vancouver. Here Globe journalists in conversation with government, industry leaders, and policymakers on Canada's action plan for growth and renewal. Intersect 26 is your access point for key business insights, networking, and future planning. Register today at tgam.ca-slash-intersect-26-desible. The first bomb in a war is like a pebble and a pond. The suffering ripples out to unexpected corners, like to a restaurant in Toronto called Erby. Hello. I'm good, how are you? I'm Rachel. I'm here from the Globe and Mail. Oh yeah, the ship's covered. Hello. Oh, I'm sorry to disturb your breakfast. Good morning. Hi, nice to meet you. I was getting on my text set up.

1:01It's lovely. Are you alone? Sorry? No one? Just me. Just me. Yes, just me. Have you had breakfast? Have I had breakfast? Uh, I...no, I have not had breakfast. Okay, then be a kiss set up. Oh great, sure. Thank you. Let me just take... Erby is an Iranian restaurant owned by chef Javad Zahedifur. He came to Canada nearly 20 years ago. I immigrated here 2006, October 2nd. I never forgot this day. It was a very memorable day for me. Here is my country now. He still feels a connection to his home country, Iran, especially through the food he makes for his customers. He uses recipes from his hometown and across Iran, and he serves lots of stews, rice dishes, and dips. When I went to the restaurant, it was brunch, and he and his wife were eating a spinach and feta omelette with sesame seed flatbread and coffee. Many of my customers

2:08when they come in here to die in this restaurant, and when they see our handmade stuff or the environment of the restaurant, they say we back to Iran. The Iran they are brought back to in Javad's restaurant is a memory of a different time, a different place. The Iran of today is facing daily strikes and suffering immense damage at war with the United States and Israel. When I go to bed, every hour I wake up and I look at the clock and I check my phone what happened for the Iran. Now they said they want to do help for the people,

3:09but they are cheating the people, they are destroying all our factories, airports, and sometimes the schools and the hospitals, and they all are on the world, the people help us to stop the war. Today we're bringing you voices from the Iranian Canadian diaspora. The people we spoke with will share their complex feelings about the war, what they fear most, and what they allow themselves to hope for. I'm Rachel Levy McLaughlin filling in for Sheryl Sutherland. This is The Dispel from the Globe and Mail.

4:10For musician Niko Mansurifad, her world changed with the ping of her phone on the morning of February 28th. So in the morning I woke up, I was making up the kids, getting breakfast ready for them, and I opened my phone and one of my friends asked me, how are you family? And I was like, what's happening? Niko's mother had been staying with her in Halifax for six months but had recently returned to Iran. She wanted to be home with Niko's father and her sister. So I opened other social media and then they realized, okay, the war has technically started. They have attacked. I didn't have any news from them till the next day they could call me. They were frightened, although faith, physically faith, but mentally, emotionally, that's really good. Everybody is frightened. Her family's home is close to a besiege facility, which is the volunteer force of Iran's revolutionary

5:17guard. That means their home is close to a building that would be on the US and Israel's target list. That building was hit three times in one night. The blast shattered her family's windows. And I bet you cannot imagine how it feels when there is a racket going in your neighborhood. My name is Donia Ziai. I live in Montreal and I left Iran when I was a teenager with my family. When I heard about the attacks on Saturday, it was like a nightmare was actually coming to life. They talk a lot about precision bombing and the fact that these are targeted attacks, but we're talking about highly dense urban areas like Tehran, where as we've already seen,

6:17it's impossible to avoid civilian casualties. My uncle's family has already had to pack up and leave their home in Tehran after their windows shattered from the sounds of the bombardments, and the loss of life that we're hearing about and the images that we're seeing are just devastating and unfathomable. The war has killed at least 1,230 people in Iran. That includes Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Hamani, who is killed on the first day. Some people celebrated his death. Journalist Samir Moyadin, who left Iran many years ago, had a different reaction. I was afraid my first reaction was fear. When I saw people on the streets of Iran, I became happy for them, but then I knew what was to come. Because I'm old enough to remember when Hamani died, who was the first supreme leader. I was 14 at the time and it actually fell

7:18on my sister's birthday so everybody was like a double celebration. But the next day, you know, people were still living under the same repression and it made no difference. So I'm under no illusions what the assassination of Hamani meant. Unfortunately, though, I think that they really made a mistake. They made a martyr out of him by killing him the way they did. I have an uncle there. I have six cousins and many, many friends. They're worried. You know, Iran is under siege. That sort of euphoria or jubilation that anybody might have felt at the killing of Hamani was quickly dissipated. Gone. Since Hamani's death, the regime has installed his son, Moshdebah Hamani, as the country's new leader. The US and Israel continue to strike Iran, and the Israeli government says its aim is to overthrow the regime. Over the weekend, Israel also struck one of Iran's oil depots, choking Tehran in black smoke and turning the

8:23sky orange. Oily rain poured down and Iranian authorities told people to stay indoors. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump initially said that the US intends to continue its bombardment for at least four to five weeks with the goal of destroying Iran's missile capabilities and all aspects of its nuclear program. But on Monday, as oil prices spiked over a hundred US dollars a barrel, Trump seemed to walk that back and said that the US strikes were, quote, a short-term excursion. Watching what's happening in Iran on the ground is devastating. I don't think many of us are sleeping right now. I'm getting about four hours of sleep at night. That's Samira again. And seeing the wanton destruction is just crippling. And I'm just wondering what the end

9:23game here is. What is the objective? Because what it looks like right now is just chaos. The chaos of the war has overwhelmed Mechdi Falahi, who lives in Ottawa, and left Iran in 1990. These days I cannot work. I don't know what to do. I come to my home office in the second floor. I go back to the kitchen and make a coffee, but my coffee doesn't taste as good as always. I don't know what I want. I want to know about, well, no. I was going to say I want to know about my family, but even if I hear that my all my family members are safe, I don't want to be that selfish. How about the other people who are kids? I think confusion is the best war that can

10:25describe me and this moment. On the other side of Canada, in Vancouver, Golis Orch Pazeshkzad shared similar feelings. It's hard to explain. I'm over the moon that the supreme leader is out. I can't explain. I can describe how happy I am. I'm a 30-year-old woman and you've got to imagine how brutal this man, this 87-year-old man was that I thought I would never see the day he leaves this planet. That's how bigger than life of an evil he was to me and to everyone that I know. It's something that I've been looking forward to my entire life, but at the same time, I'm beyond worried frame of some people. What really scares me is that the city has destroyed people are affected and there's no make for public space and power. That's what really, really is scary me to my core. I myself and I think almost all Iranians are full of all emotions at the same time.

11:29That's Halifax musician Miku again. Angry, happy, sad, depressed, emotional, everything altogether and sometimes we cannot manage it. Sometimes we unconsciously start crying, but even we ourselves don't know why am I crying. What's happening inside me? Miku is a mother of two daughters aged seven and five and she's finding it challenging to shield them from all of the feelings she's having about the war. So I had to keep up myself and pretend everything is normal. I don't tell them about the war. I don't talk about it at home because I cannot explain war for them. They are still little and even they don't have any idea what happens for people when they die. So I'm not explaining them that there is a war,

12:30your beloved ones, your grandma, your grandpa, they are in danger. I cannot tell them that because they don't understand it and they keep questioning me and they get stressed out and they might get nervous. So I'm not doing that. One of the questions we asked people from Canada's Iranian diaspora is what other Canadians are misunderstanding about this war. Here's what Mariam Mazrui said. She's a war photographer, journalist and artist who left Iran in 2022. She now lives in Vancouver.

13:31Mariam said that choice of either living under the regime or asking foreign nations to help overthrow it was taken away from them after the Islamic Republic's brutal crackdown on protesters earlier this year where thousands of people were killed. This idea that the war is desperate but necessary is something we heard from others as well. Thank you. Go to understand the sheer desperation of a nation to call for bombs. It's sheer desperation. This is Goulazar in Vancouver again. For Iranians there's no other there was no other option. We've tried diplomacy, we've tried mediators. Everything has already been proven itself to be not working. War is not the best option. It has not worked in so many cases in the past but it has worked in so many cases in the history.

14:33We are in a very confusing situation. On one hand people do not want this regime. That's Mechdi from Ottawa who says it is people who are caught in the middle. People hate this regime and the people want this regime to go. On the other hand people have done everything without any result. They have organized the most beautiful demonstrations and they have been tortured and killed. What can we do? You understand my frustration and now we are being hit by the US and Israel. Of course we are happy that the Supreme Leader is gone. We are happy but on the other hand in the very first day at the same time that the Supreme Leader and some of his people were hit and elementary school was hit and 168 very young children were murdered.

15:42Can I be happy? Do I have the time to be happy? For Dr. Roya Dehrban she has to explain to her patients why she is not upset that the US and Israel are attacking Iran. It was really interesting because most of them they come and they ask me how your parents are and how your family is and then they say sorry that this has happened. I tell them not to be sorry because you are actually happy that this has happened. We all wanted to request Netanyahu and Trump to help us out. When you are in them down in the well some very you know you are caught there then you want people to come and help you get you out of there. So people have been actually they have been occupied for so long now that people wanted this to be over.

16:46To begin to understand the complex emotions people are feeling, Mariam says you have to understand what it was like to live under the Islamic Republic's regime. She is the war photographer and journalist who left Iran just a few years ago. And after that you are asked to go outside the country like acquiring the passport like custody of your children you don't have that everything. The point is about Iranian women despite all of this they are really educated, they are active people, they are not

17:51we don't like to be victim or we don't consider ourselves as a victim at all. We are so like we have this agency. Mariam was working for an international newspaper during the 2022 protests over the death of Masa Amini. Masa was a 22 year old woman who was arrested by Iran's morality police for not wearing hijab properly. She later died in police custody, sparking months of civil unrest in Iran, dubbed the woman life freedom protests. Like Masa, Gullizor was arrested by the regime's morality police. They arrest you, they put you in a van, they kicked you to this headquarters they have on Wabada street, I think all Iranian girls who have lifted to her, I don't know that place. That is the same building that Masa Amini was killed in. Gullizor was arrested and detained because like Masa, her hair was showing and because her dress was not completely buttoned up.

19:14There were these women who controlled your dresses to see if you properly closed and I was stuffed by them every single day on my way inside the university. During the woman life freedom protests, Mariam was arrested and imprisoned after officials figured out that she was working as a journalist. Then our security agent, that they were wondering who is sending this all of this information to outside life. They understood it, that's me and they actually captured me. It was one month but since solitary before that I was back and forth in detention and I wasn't in official prison, I was in an underground detention center that is far worse than like official prison because no one knows where you are. After she got out she managed to escape to Turkey and eventually made her way to Canada in 2024 but the regime's violence has continued to affect

20:20her family. She says they killed her cousin during the protests in January. The last photo of him before he was shot. He had this jacket, it's when I saw his photo, I was like he's so happy because of his jacket, he was 22 and they shot him in the heart and they went on the street because they wanted to, they wanted to have a normal life you know. We'll be right back. This year, the Globe and Mail is hosting Intersect 26, our Signature Business and Policy event across four cities, Toronto, Calgary, Halifax and Vancouver. Here Globe Journalists in conversation with government, industry leaders and policymakers on Canada's action plan for growth and renewal. Intersect 26 is your access point for key business insights, networking and future

21:24planning. Register today at tgam.ca-intersect26-desible. Canada has a significant Iranian population scattered across the country. According to the 2021 census, there are just over 210,000 people in Canada who are born in Iran. Ontario and British Columbia are home to the largest communities, but every province and territory has people who listed their ethnicity as Iranian in the most recent census. Some of these people are recent immigrants to Canada, like the war photographer Mariam. Others are the descendants of Iranian immigrants. And then there are those who have been living in Canada for decades, like Danya, who came to Canada as a teenager with her family. Danya stressed that the diaspora is not a monolith. I think it can be very confusing for Canadians to watch all of this go on because for months, our media has been saturated with stories about Iranian

22:30Canadians taking to the streets in places like Toronto to purportedly call for foreign military intervention and regime change in Iran. And I think what has been missing in a lot of this coverage and discussion is that just like any other community, the diasporic Iranian community is diverse and it's divided. That division extends to how people feel about Donald Trump. Here's Golizor from Vancouver. This man, this Trump man, is all of these things that I despise, and now he's defeating my enemy. How am I supposed to feel about it? I don't know how I feel about people waving American flags of thanking Trump. It's conflicting. His intentions, does he want the best for the people of Iran at all? Samira, the journalist, does not believe Trump is acting with the best interest of Iranians in mind, especially when he calls on them to rise up,

23:34which he did in the first hours of the war. How can a people that are faced with two thousand pound bombs rise up? What do you want them to do exactly? These are the sort of delusional fantasies that people have about regime change. That's, you know, bombs are going to fall from the sky. People will take over and democracy will be there. Bombs don't fall with democracy at the tip of them. They kill people. Bombs kill. They don't bring freedom. Opinions are vast in the diaspora. Roya, the doctor, believes that freedom will only come if the U.S. and Israel are successful at overthrowing the Islamic Republic. She'd like to see the son of Iran's former monarch, or Shah, leading the country. And having this crown prince, a reservoir pallaby helps because he's a very unifying feeder. And he's a very democrat person, secular, and everything. And that is going to help us, you know, have hope that something is

24:37going to happen. And he has got a plan. Everything is like prepared beforehand. Well, the risks compared to what is happening now, we don't see any risk. You see, like everybody is thinking it doesn't matter, even if I'm killed, I don't mind. As long as we know the next generation is going to be at least free, be free, and be able to live. Because right now, there is no life. Everybody is dead man walking. Prime Minister Mark Karney has issued several statements about the war since it started. On the first day of the war, February 28th, he said in a statement that, quote, Canada supports the United States, acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security. End quote. A few days later, he clarified, Canada stands with the Iranian people in their long and courageous struggle against the regime's

25:38oppressive rule. Which is why? We support efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security. Because Canada is taking the world as it is, not passively waiting for a world we wish to be. We do, however, take this position with regret because the current conflict is another example of the failure of the international order. Donia was not impressed by the Prime Minister's remarks. As an Iranian Canadian, I'm feeling very distraught because I'm deeply ashamed that the Canadian government is choosing to back this illegal war that has already killed hundreds of civilians. He has the power and the obligation to call out the violation of international law that's happening here, that the UN Secretary General and other international human rights bodies have

26:39already condemned. But instead, he's choosing to vow his support. And that's really troubling. And I think shameful. She would rather see Canada take a different approach. You know, Iranian people are really faced on the one hand by their own murderous regimes. And now, by these other murderous regimes, we're dropping bombs on their heads. And real solidarity with the Iranian people right now looks like stopping this war immediately. Nothing else matters until this war is over. And it is only people themselves who can build for themselves a Justin Democratic future and a way out of this impasse that they find themselves in. And it's the duty of our government, the Canadian government, to be a strong voice globally for peace. Peace feels far away for the people we spoke to. Many of them, like Niko, the musician,

27:42are pessimistic about the future. I personally don't see the future very positive. I don't see it because of all their hardness. And because of everything, people have tolerated during that past 47 years. These people are tired. It won't be good. No war ended good. In all the history, if we study, none of the battles ended good for the people. There were changes, but not really the best for now. Samira, the journalist, is worried that one of the results of this war might be more war. I'm very afraid of what is to come. My biggest fear is that there will be a civil war in Iran. This government has shown the Iranian government has shown that it will do anything to stay in power,

28:45which means killing its own citizens. I think the question of hope at this point is a bit of a fantasy. I don't have a lot of hope from what I'm seeing because the people who are waging this war on Iran have never had the Iranian people's interests in mind. The hope is an ideal thinking of these people go away and people can rule their own destiny. And democracy comes back to my country. That's messy from Ottawa again. They do whatever they want. Just people of Iran. That's my hope. But unfortunately, I don't see right at the end of the tunnel very clearly at this point. For those who do allow themselves to hold on to a little hope,

29:47some of their dreams for Iran are big. Chef Javad wants to see democracy in Iran. First, I hope the regime has to change for a democratic regime. And I believe that Iranians can do this, not other countries. We should have a democratic country with very good friendship with all countries around the world, like Israel, US, Europe, and other neighbors, everywhere. Others like Niko want to see Iranians afforded the same dignity as Canadians. We hope for them. I hope for them to be safe, to feel the safety, for the kids, to have the opportunity to learn and believe that the world can be a safe place

30:48for their ideas, for them to show up. You know, when I came to Canada, my friends were asking me what do you like about it. I was saying that the most thing I love about Canada is that people are respected as they are humans. I wish, and I hope for my country, Iran, to get to the point that every person is respected as a human. And for War Photographer Mariam, she just hopes for safety. And believe me, when Iran is safe, the Earth is safe. It's a fact. If Iran becomes safe and gets rid of this brutal bloodstream regime, the region will be safe, the world will be safe. We believe in that. And we will help to build that country again.

31:57That's it for today. I'm Rachel Levy McLaughlin, filling in for Shell, South Island. Special thanks to reporters Alanna Smith, Erin Anderson, Kelly Grant, Christie Kirkup, and Marcus G, who contributed their interview recordings for this episode. I produce the show along with Madeline White and Michal Stein. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer. And Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks for listening. This year, the Globe and Mail is hosting Intersect 26, our signature business and policy event across four cities, Toronto, Calgary, Halifax, and Vancouver. Here, Globe Journalists in conversation with government, industry leaders, and policymakers on Canada's action plan for growth

33:01and renewal. Intersect 26 is your access point for key business insights, networking, and future planning. Register today at tgam.ca-intersect-26-desible.