Michiganders with ties to Iran are left wondering about the safety of friends and family after the U.S. military launched airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend.
Michigan’s Republican lawmakers expressed support for curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions, while Democrats voiced concern over the use of military force without congressional authorization.
Camron Amin is a professor of Middle East Studies and Iranian Diaspora Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and a research director for the Inclusive History Project-Dearborn. He is also Iranian-American himself.
Amin said that public perception of Iranian-American identity has evolved in concert with U.S. policy toward the country.
“It was uncontroversial, maybe less controversial, to be from Iran than to be from anywhere else in the Middle East,” he said of his experience prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
But after the 1979 Revolution, Amin said, the perception of Iranian-Americans in the U.S. shifted. And Iranian-Americans' own opinions about the future of their homeland have shifted as well throughout the years, according to surveys Amin has conducted with Iranian-Americans. Most recently, Iran's suspected involvement with the October 7 Hamas attacks have complicated perspectives across the U.S., and throughout the Iranian diaspora. Amin noted that there are a large number of Jewish Iranians that live both in Israel and in the U.S.
Ultimately, Amin said, many Iranian-Americans wish that their relationship to their homeland could be a little less complicated.
“Most people in the States who have heritage elsewhere, they don't want to deny that part of who they are…” Amin said. “You know, summering in the old country, retiring to the old country, visiting the old country… Iranian-Americans are no different in wanting that kind of relationship with their country. But it's hard to see when that will be possible, really, for people.”
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