For Armin Assadi, married and a father of five girls, Minnesota is now home.
But he’s thinking this weekend about family and friends in Iran.
“I mean, you go through all the emotions, it’s war,” Assadi declares. “There’s no way to avoid innocent lives being lost.”
Now 44 years old, Assadi, now living in Blaine as a sales director for a California-based construction company, says he has family spread across Iran, with no idea who is alive and who may have perished since the fighting began a week ago.
“You have mixed feelings of sadness, grief, and mourning, but excitement, gratitude, and hope that Iran might actually be free again,” he says.
Has Assadi been able to communicate with family there?
“Not a chance, they have the entire internet blackout, so that people couldn’t communicate during the protests,” he explains. “Every conversation is listened to; every letter is intercepted.”
It’s been a long journey for Assadi.
He says his family fled from religious persecution in Iran in 1988, when he was 7 years old.
Assadi says on his father’s side, the family was “deeply ingrained” with the monarchy in the Pahlavi dynasty, the ruling class of Iran.
He says military leaders, those loyal to the monarchy, and anyone not a Shiite Muslim were targets after the Islamic revolution.
“Reza Pahlavi is now the Crown Prince, his father was the shah, and my grandfather served him for 23 years,” he notes. “After the Islamic revolution had taken over, there’s three different types of people that they were looking to exterminate, if not banish.”
Assadi recounts how his family crossed the desert and mountains into Pakistan, living there as refugees for 17 months, before joining his sister and other family members in Minnesota after receiving asylum in the U.S.
“We went from jumping on a pickup truck that did doughnuts for a mile and a half straight, kicking up dust so the military couldn’t see us,” he recalls. “And then you have to climb a mountain with no mountain gear, and you make your way eventually over to Pakistan, and you hope to survive.”
Assadi’s family did survive and eventually settled in White Bear Lake.
He and his wife, Ashlee, originally from a small town in Wisconsin, met in church.
She says she’s heard stories from the Iranian community in Minnesota about concerns for their home country.
“For us, for me, this is not political, it’s deeply personal,” she says, of the military operation in Iran. “But it’s also mixed with deep, deep emotion because they know there will be casualties, especially with war taking place.”
Assadi, who says he, his parents, and his siblings are all now U.S. citizens, believes there eventually will be regime change in Iran.
He hopes a parliamentary-style government, much like in the UK, can be formed in his home country.
“Anybody who doubts the Iranian people have no idea who they are doubting,” Assadi declares. “These are some of the most educated, hard-working, determined human beings you will ever meet in your life.”
