For Iranian expatriates, it came as a rude and shocking awakening.
On February 28, following the joint US and Israel attack on Iran, Iranian expats experienced what lovers of Israel have been subjected to since October 7. While it is true that over recent months there was very little sympathy in the media or the liberal world for Iranian protesters slaughtered in the streets of Iran, they were able to shrug it off.
There were some shouts asking “where is the outrage” and “why is there no liberal support for the protests against the Iranian regime?” but those shouts were not mainstream. And they were almost always followed by “why was public opinion so forcefully in favor of Hamas and so lukewarm in favor of Iranian protesters dying on the streets of Teheran, Isfahan, and Shiraz?”
Nothing prepared them for the support they saw for the tyrannical Iranian regime. The reality was jarring.
Support for the murderous regime came from people these expats thought of as sources of support for their cause – not supporters of the regime. Iranian expatriates always expected that their neighbors and liberal comrades would support the ousting of the murderous regime. Instead, they discovered the truth.
West defends Iran's tyrants
They watched in utter disbelief as people whom they had always considered to be friendly were now defending Iran’s tyrants. They listened and heard those same people condemn the United States and Israel for attacking and killing the mass murderers who were attacking and killing their own family and their friends still living in Iran.
Overnight, the world turned frighteningly upside down for Iranian expats living in the West.
What Jews and lovers of Israel living in the United States discovered in the immediate aftermath of October 7, 2023, Iranian expatriates living in the United States discovered on February 28, 2026.
They discovered that people were suddenly openly, wholeheartedly, with no compunction and with very loud voices, streaming out in full and forceful support and embracing the mass murderers, not the victims. Iranian expats felt that punch to the gut by their supposed colleagues-in-arms just as wrenchingly as had liberal lovers of Israel.
It was devastating but it was true. They had been abandoned.
The saddest aspect is that it had nothing to do with Iran. It was hatred toward US President Donald Trump and hatred toward Israel that propelled pro-regime support. Hatred so visceral and so deep that it does not matter what true good Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu do, it will always be considered evil. Hatred that radiates from political corridors and from city street corners.
The responses of several US politicians and public citizens after the United States and Israel struck Iran are chilling. Zohran Mamdani, New York City mayor, said: “Today’s military strikes by the United States and Israel mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal act of war of aggression.” “Bombing cities. Killing civilians. Opening a new theater of war.” “Americans do not want another war in pursuit of regime change.” “Getting involved in Iran could replicate the devastating consequences of previous interventions.”
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) said: “The president has taken this country to the brink of a regional war without authorization from Congress.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) said: “We cannot allow the president to drag us into another endless war in the Middle East.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) said: “This is how wars start – without debate, without strategy, without Congress.”
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) said: “The American people deserve a say before we enter another war.”
And UN Secretary-General António Guterres posted on his personal X account: “I call for an immediate cessation of hostilities and de-escalation.”
At a protest in Lafayette Square, outside the White House, organized by Answer and the Palestinian Youth Movement, there were shouts of: “Hands off Iran,” “No War in Iran,” and “Illegal War” as speakers urged the crowd to protest “as loud as you possibly can against this attempt to destabilize the Middle East.”
In New York City’s Times Square, protesters shouted the same exact slogans and held up and waved the same signs – “Hands off Iran” – “No war with Iran.” It happened again a few days later, on March 2, at a rally in San Francisco held in Embarcadero Plaza, and then again at a protest outside City Hall in Los Angeles.
There were identical protests in at least 14 cities across the United States.
Of course, Iranian expats are upset and enraged. Theirs is the correct reaction. Their colleagues are siding with evil over those trying to defeat sait. Some of them, the enlightened ones, now realize how wrong they themselves were when they so blindly supported Hamas’s murderers after October 7.
They finally realize that these supposed liberal thinkers are really shills for ideological extremists who despise Trump, his vision and Israel. That they want to destroy Israel because it is a Jewish state; that these ideologues believe that destroying Israel would be the solution to all the issues in the region.
It is their Final Solution.
It is a hateful, warped and wrong solution.
The writer is a columnist and a social and political commentator. Watch his TV show Thinking Out Loud on JBS.