By Wa Lone
TORONTO, April 30 (Reuters) - With fighting between the United States, Israel and Iran at a fragile standstill, Iran's large North American diaspora is divided over what should come next.
Demonstrators at a rally in Toronto on Sunday said they hope U.S. President Donald Trump will continue with military intervention aimed at regime change in Tehran. Others, while opposed to the Islamic Republic, said the war has only deepened suffering in Iran without delivering democracy.
The split highlights
a long-running debate among Iran's diaspora over whether foreign military pressure can and should help dismantle Iran’s decades-old clerical leadership given the potential costs to friends and family still in Iran, or whether political change must come from within.
Up to 5 million Iranians live abroad, the majority of them in North America and Western Europe, according to Iranian government data. Iranian media has put their numbers closer to 10 million. People who have fled Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution are overwhelmingly opposed to its clerical rulers, but opinions over foreign military involvement diverge.
A recently extended ceasefire has paused U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran that began on February 28, but no agreement has been reached on terms to end the war. The conflict has killed thousands of Iranians and sent oil prices surging, adding to inflation pressures and clouding the outlook for global economic growth.
At the rally in Toronto, home to one of North America's largest Iranian communities, around 300 protesters waved U.S. and Israeli flags and called for an end to the theocratic system in Tehran, which they blame for decades of repression.
Earlier this year, hundreds of thousands attended anti-government protests in the city. Many carried the pre-revolution Lion and Sun flag, often used to show support for the opposition figure Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran's last shah.
“The Islamic regime is our main enemy. We want countries like the U.S. and Israel to help us bring this regime down,” said Ali Daneshfar, an operations coordinator with Cyrus the Great, a Toronto-based Iranian group. Daneshfar said repeated protests inside Iran had been violently crushed, leaving Iranians with few options.
Nasser Sharif, president of the California Society for Democracy in Iran, expressed a sharply different view, welcoming the ceasefire and warning that bombing Iran would only strengthen the authorities’ grip on power. Los Angeles is home to the world's largest Iranian expatriate community.
“We believe that bombing the regime is not going to bring democratic change in Iran,” said Sharif, who supports the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition coalition. “The regime is using the war to suppress more, execute more people and terrorize the population inside the country.”
Sharif said the ceasefire could give space for Iranians to organize again after weeks of conflict, arguing that sustainable change must be led by Iranians themselves rather than imposed from abroad.
“That is the least costly option, without foreign troops and without prolonging the suffering,” he said.
IRANIANS STRUGGLE WITH UNCERTAINTY
The killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of the war, and the elevation of his wounded son, Mojtaba, have left the Islamic Republic standing but ushered in a different order dominated by commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Sharif said the IRGC remained inseparable from the ruling system, with no meaningful change in the structure of power despite the removal of some figures.
Divisions among Iranians living abroad run deep, said Akaash Maharaj, a fellow at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs who studies diaspora politics and authoritarian regimes.
"On the one hand, what they're concerned about is the well-being of people in Iran, their friends and their relatives who are often collateral damage to politics and to conflict. On the other hand, they want to be seen and to be understood as being patriotic citizens of the new countries, which they now call home," Maharaj said.
Mohammad Solehi, an Iranian living in Toronto, said friends and family inside Iran told him the war had left many people feeling trapped.
Friends in Iran said daily life had become increasingly uncertain, with neither war nor peace offering relief, according to Solehi.
“People expect fighting to resume at any moment and have no idea what comes next.”
(Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Nia Williams)
