WASHINGTON - At a recent “No Kings” rally outside the U.S. Capitol, a few demonstrators waved a large Iranian flag.
The U.S. and Israel had launched the war in Iran exactly one month earlier. As protestors chanted, a woman, carrying the old flag of Iran — from before the 1979 revolution — approached the bearers of the modern flag and yelled “traitor!” They then repeatedly hurled insults at each other, yelling “traitor” back and forth.
Since the war’s start, a sharp political schism has grown among the Iranian diaspora. While many Iranian Americans have fervently opposed the war, worried about the destruction it has caused in Iran, some have welcomed it, often viewing it as a necessary vehicle for regime change.
Many of those who support the war are part of a growing movement calling for the restoration of the shah, the monarchy that ruled Iran before its 1979 revolution. As the war broke out, many in this movement celebrated in the streets, waving the pre-revolution flag, which for many has become a symbol of Iran’s former monarchy. The two sides have reacted differently to the 2-week cease-fire announced by President Donald Trump on Tuesday.
Fatemeh Keshavarz, an Iranian American writer who strongly opposes the war, said she breathed a “sigh of relief” when the cease-fire was announced. Earlier that day, in a post on Truth Social, Trump had warned that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if a deal between the warring nations was not reached by 8 pm. He had threatened to bomb large parts of the country.
However, Keshavarz remained skeptical of the cease-fire.
“I am worried that they would just use that time to replenish bombs and guns,” said Keshavarz. “They have done this before to other countries.”
Ghazal Jahanshah, who demonstrated at an anti-war protest the day after the cease-fire was announced, echoed a similar sentiment.
“My sister called me yesterday [before the announcement], and she said maybe it’s the last time we talk. I don’t know,” she said. She expressed joy that Trump didn’t carry out his threat but said, “I don’t think a cease-fire means a cease-fire.”
However, many who had supported US intervention, such as Ben Kristof Jamshidi, were disappointed by the cease-fire. They felt that the Trump administration had abandoned its promise of regime change.
“I was like, they’re leaving us with this regime?” Jamishidi said. “If they give the regime some room to breathe, they’re just going to mass execute people.”
After the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the beginning of this war, his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, took over. Many analysts expect him to continue his father’s hardline approach.
However, notably, both supporters and opponents of the war expressed doubt that the cease-fire would hold. Despite Jamshidi’s initial disappointment in the cease-fire, he now expects another advance by Trump to oust the current regime before the two-week end date. He said this brings him a sense of relief.
“First of all, for my own mental health, that’s what I’d like to believe. But at the same time, has he ever revealed his plan to the whole world before doing anything?” Jamshidi said.
He explained that he has spent nearly half his life under the regime’s dictatorship, and knows “how bad it is.”
“We really want it gone by any means necessary, and if that means bombs, then so be it,” he added.
Others who want another shah in Iran argued that the war needs to start again.
“We don’t see this war as a war,” said Peyman Bakhshayesh, who supports the shah’s return. “It was rather a rescue operation.”
Niki Akhavan, an Iranian American professor at Catholic University, attributed the rise in pro-war sentiment among Iran’s diaspora to the thousands of peaceful demonstrators the Iranian regime killed during mass protests in Iran in late December and January. She explained that, in her view, a sense of hopelessness combined with what appeared to be online propaganda campaigns propelled the rise of the pro-shah movement.
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) commissioned Zogby Analytics to conduct a mixed-mode online and live-operator telephone survey of 508 Iranian-Americans between March 24-27, 2026. www.iranianamericanpoll.org
NOTE: Based on a confidence interval of 95%, the margin of error for 508 is +/- 4.4 percentage points.
A recent poll conducted by the National Iranian American Council found that nearly a third of Iranian Americans supported the war. That was a decrease from the first days of the war, when 49% of Iranian Americans surveyed said they either strongly or somewhat supported the war. At that time, 49% also opposed the war, marking an almost exactly even political division just over a month ago.
The same study found that the primary reason for this decline in support was the “killing and injuring of innocent civilians,” with 61% of participants citing this. According to the U.S.-based human rights group Human Rights Activist News Agency, around 1,600 innocent civilians were killed before the cease-fire.
The world now looks to an uncertain future for Iran. The sharp divisions within its diaspora continue, although they have diminished. Still, for many Iranians like Jahanshah, one desire for their homeland remains across ideologies.
“Whatever will happen, I hope that it comes from the people. That’s all,” she said.
Jamie Gareh is a graduate student at Medill.
Demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court as justices hear oral arguments on whether President Donald Trump can deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
Luz Angela Nuñez with her daughter Aisha Quershi Nuñez at their home in College Point, Queens. Photo: Mia Anzalone for Documented.
Kimberly Alvarez, 25, with her daughter Evangeline and her husband John Alvarez in Medellin, Colombia. Photo courtesy of Kimberly Alvarez.Alvarez arrived in New York City in February 2024 with her husband John Alvarez as asylum seekers from Venezuela. In April 2025, Alvarez found out she was pregnant with her first child, a baby girl. Her first reaction, she said, was fear.“How am I going to keep her alive?” she said. “That’s what I was thinking. ‘How am I going to be able to take care of her?’”At the beginning of Alvarez’s pregnancy, she said she was aware of the immigration enforcement occurring around the country, but vowed not to let it deter her from showing up to her doctor’s appointments.“When you went out, you were always on alert because you didn’t know if [ICE] might be around. I never saw anything suspicious,” Alvarez said. “But of course, you feel scared.”In October, when Alvarez was six months pregnant, her husband was detained by ICE agents at 26 Federal Plaza. When the immediate shock wore off, she obsessively checked the Online Detainee Locator System to find out where her husband went. A day later, she discovered that he was being kept at Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey. Alvarez quickly set up an account to pay for phone calls, and every two days, she would pay about $10 for a one-hour call, updating her husband about the baby, her appointments and how she was doing.“Crying was the only way for me to release the tension,” said Alvarez, who worried that her lack of sleep and bad diet were impacting her baby. “Crying was the only way for me to release the tension.”—Kimberly AlvarezThat tension built up day by day, week by week following her husband’s arrest. Alvarez had stopped her work as a cleaner in the neighborhood’s synagogues two weeks before her husband’s detention because of her pregnancy. The plan, she said, was to rely solely on his income as a maintenance worker for “the food, the rent, everything.” Left with few choices, Kimberley had to rely on her mother’s income as a cleaner. The older woman had moved to New York from North Carolina to assist with Alvarez’s pregnancy. “I feel like I’m supposed to help my mom, not the other way around,” Alvarez said. “I felt powerless because I couldn’t do anything.”On Dec. 9, Alvarez gave birth to a daughter, Evangeline. While her baby was healthy, Alvarez’s anxieties did not go away. While she returned to cleaning synagogues a few months after Evangeline’s birth to help make ends meet, Alvarez and her daughter rarely left home. Alvarez said she felt paralyzed, getting frequent alerts from a neighborhood WhatsApp group when ICE was spotted nearby. One day, she said, ICE arrested her friend’s husband in Sunset Park, in an area where she would sometimes take Evangeline for walks.“I’m so afraid that I’ll go out and run into one of them and that they’ll take her away from me,” Alvarez said. “That’s my biggest fear, that someone will take her away from me and I won’t know where my daughter is.”In March, her husband decided to voluntarily remove himself from the United States and move back to Colombia, where he is originally from. It was a family decision, but it was not a happy one — hiring immigration lawyers was too expensive, Alvarez said, adding that staying in the U.S. felt too uncertain.