After Decades Of Tyranny, Iranians Dream Of Freedom

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I'm David Asman, and this is The Fox News rundown.

Friday, March 6th, 2026.

I'm Tanya J. Powers.

The bombing campaign by Israel and the US is ongoing in Iran, as some Iranian Americans

try to absorb what this means for the future of the country decades after they fled.

I found me and I when we moved to the US to join my sister at the onset of the Islamic

Revolution, thought this is a momentarily thing, and then we're going to come back and live

life is normal.

We never thought that the country would change so drastically, and I never thought I'll

see the best day.

The leader of the Islamic Revolution would die.

This is The Fox News rundown, US, and Israel's strike Iran.

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Thousands have fled Iran and other Iranian cities, and it's also happening in Beirut's

suburbs and southern Lebanon amid the ongoing air strikes by US and Israeli war planes.

The conflict that began last weekend continues with President Donald Trump now appearing

to rule out negotiations with Iran in a social media post calling for its, quote, unconditional

surrender.

The campaign has taken out Iranian leaders, including the Ayatollah Khamanee, news that

some Iranians couldn't believe when they heard it.

I was in Mexico City when I saw the headlines that US and Israel had attacked Iran, and I jumped

out of the bed, and I woke up.

My husband.

Dr. Nazim Moyan has a PhD in Iranian studies from the University of Saint Andrew, and

his fourth coming book is Narratives of Grievance in Iran's Foreign Policy.

And since 2021, she has been an associate fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington

DC.

He was a little shocked what's going on, and I told him, and I ran into my computer to

see what's going on, and then everything unfolded right after that.

Then calls came in, and people from Iran wanted to get in touch with me.

It was a surreal moment, Tanya, if I can just wrap it up in one word.

I can only imagine, is this something that you have dreamed about, thought about, helped

what would happen, maybe didn't think it would happen, how did, process that for me,

if this is something you were like, well, I didn't think this would, I would ever

see this, or something like that, would that kind of come through your mind?

No, I never thought I'll see this day.

I have to be honest with you.

Iran has been a country at the crossroad of civilizations.

It's been rated by, I mean, I wasn't alive at the time, but historically, Iran has been

invaded by Mongolian Arabs, Turks, Afghans.

It's a tough neighborhood to be in.

So you know, you kind of get used to the idea of this is another blip in the radar of

Iran's ancient history, and this will go away, the Islamic Revolution will go away.

But you know, it's 47 years now, and I didn't think it lasted, it would last this long.

My family and I, when we moved to U.S. to join my sister at the onset of the Islamic

Revolution, thought this is a momentarily thing, and then we're going to come back and live

life is normal.

We never thought that the country would change so drastically, and I never thought I'll

see this day that the leader of the Islamic Revolution would die.

I want to talk a little bit more about your story.

You mentioned coming to the U.S. when was that?

What, tell me a little bit about your family, are they still in Iran?

Are they safe?

How did you get here?

Just kind of gives the backstory of you personally.

I was a youngster, it was 1980, we had, the revolution had already started, the lights

would go out very often at night, and you know, the chance of Aloeak, I would start as

soon as the darkness settled in.

And I remember it was by the light of a candle, our very European-looking, very forward-looking

cosmopolitan neighbors, who were before the revolution, completely in Western clothes

and Chanel outfits and whatever, because they used to vacation in Europe and Skinshton

and St. Maurice.

They were chanting alongside other Islamists, the Bazaarist intellectuals, Aloeak Bar, and

Long live Khomeini and Dan with the Shah.

And that kind of triggered something in my father.

We were listening to this, and I remember he looked up and he said, it's time for us

to leave.

And we left.

We basically just, you know, he procured three very, how do you call it, valid, but hastily

assembled together passports for us, for my mom, myself, and my brother.

And we left the country, we landed in New York City at JFK, it was a snowy day, I remember

and it was December 13.

We got on it in a mini bus to get our stuff to the next destination.

And I had a whole lot of dreams about coming to this wonderful land of Disney World and

Princesses and lollipops and the American culture that was so luring in Iran.

I was excited, but my mom's face was paint in grief.

We're having left her country behind and my father behind.

A lot of us, especially Jen Exer's, remember maybe vaguely 1980, the news about the Shah

was all over TV.

Even if you didn't follow politics and most, you know, teenagers at that point didn't.

So there's a whole swath of the population that remembers that maybe kind of on the periphery,

maybe not, you know, each detail of it.

But the fact that life in Iran was so different prior to the revolution and everything that

has come after it, you spoke a little bit about that.

Can you kind of give us a little bit more detail because I think everybody who is of a

certain age just only knows the way that Iran has been over the last, you know, 40-something

years and may not realize it hasn't always been like that.

No, it hasn't always been like this or anything remotely like this unless you went to visit

it very far away villages where the main character was the Friday prayer in mom and people

were religious and under her job by choice.

But Iran was a forward-looking modern country.

I would say after the showdown of 1953 with Musadeh and the Shah restored to the throne,

his vision was accelerated into making sure that Iran is on par with the European countries.

So he had a beautiful wife, he had this storied life, he was Western educated and that's

what he did.

He used the oil windfalls to modernize, bring industries, elevate education, create universities,

emancipate the Iranian women, the Iranian women were given the right to vote.

Even before Switzerland changed family laws, bring agricultural industries into a much

higher level with the help of Israelis and Americans.

It was a time of upward moving, proud moments for Iranians and also a time of dissatisfaction

and fear for the mullahs and ayatollahs in Rome who were watching this from their pulpit

and wondering if the end of the road for this country, and I'm using their terms in quotes,

is a godless corrupt thievery country that we prostitute our women and girls.

We allow them to work, we allow them not to be married beyond the age of 13.

Anything against Sharia was considered with the sting from Rome and Rome is the holy city

in Iran, it's like the Vatican.

So there was this pool and push I was going on for years when the Shah launched his modernizing

initiative.

But until this Islamic revolution of 1979, we were completely westernized and for good

reasons.

I wouldn't put my scholarly hat on here, Tonya, I'm paraphrasing an important philosopher

by the name of Suru, she's an Iranian philosopher who has this wonderful sentence that I always

go back to.

He says, Iran is a progeny of three distinct cultures, Persians, Shiite and Western and

all these three forces are always interacting with each other.

So what happened during the reign of the Shah and his father, Rizshar the father of

Palabhi dynasty, if you consider this a then diagram and overlap with all these traits,

the Persian trait, the Zerastrian culture of egalitarianism and speak the word good words

and do the good deeds, it was a very peaceful religion before Islam arrived, took the most

part of this one diagram.

And the Shah really pushed it that way, the Shah made a clear line between the fabled kings

and empires of 2500 years ago and the Palabhi dynasty because he thought in his own head

and for all the good reasons that they glorified Iran, they gave Iran the opportunity to shine

among all the empires of 2500 years ago, they had the first Bill of Rights, they were also

emancipating Jews.

And he was the child of the same thoughts and he wanted to make sure that that line continued

from 2500 years ago to him.

So from the acumenity to the Palabhi dynasty, we in Iran growing up, we're giving all

kind of opportunities to grow with the country, education was free for a lot of people, food

and shelter was free, the Shah had these five pillars that he wanted to uplift the Iranian

people, food, shelter, health, education and I don't am clothing, I think.

And he sent thousands of Iranian students, gifted Iranian students to the best universities

around the world, MIT, Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford to get their PhDs and their higher education

degrees and come back and help Iran grow.

I'm really glad that you kind of broke all that down because I think a lot of people may

not realize sort of how we got to where we are at this point, speaking of where we are.

I know there have been protests, obviously there will be more protests, some are already

planned for the coming days here in the US especially.

Folks have been pushing back against the military action that we are seeing in Iran.

How do you feel about that?

I'm not going to lump you in and say how do Iranians feel about that because you are one

person.

So I'm going to ask you what your feelings are about that and about the campaign that

is ongoing and what that means for the whole region.

I know that's a big question, but I know you have a lot of background in this academically

especially and can speak to that.

Sure.

And that's a right way of asking all these questions because there's so

interconnected.

You can't just ask one without bringing all the other points.

So I'll answer it the way I see it.

I hear on the news and from the naysayers about this campaign, Epic Fury, that this has

been a war of choice.

That US dragged the American people into another and this war in the Middle East.

And worse than that is that Israel dragged US to drag the American people into another

endless war in the Middle East.

So they framed that as a war of choice.

It is a war of choice, but whose choice?

It's not our choice.

Iran was given so many exit ramps to reform itself, not only by us, not only by us sitting

in EU parliament or here in American Congress, but by Iranians themselves.

They took to the street in 1999.

It was a student riot.

They were shot in thousands and some of the bodies never were recovered.

And if they were recovered, the Islamic regime would ask the parents of the students for

the cost of the bullets that they killed their children.

That's how heinous and brutal that regime was in 1999.

That was only almost 20 years after the revolution.

They took to the streets again in 2009 asking for their vote.

That was called the Green Revolution.

They said, hack with Ahmadinejot have won with so much support for the other candidates.

This is obviously a rigged election.

They were again moved down in thousands.

They took to the streets again in 2017 and 2019.

I basically never went home because the subsidies were cut.

So not only they didn't have social freedom, religious freedom, economic freedom, but the

little bit of help that the regime was giving them was cut.

And what were they cutting?

They were cutting cities in oil and petroleum.

A country that is one of the purveyors, one of the biggest oil reserves in the world

was cutting subsidies for its own people on oil and petroleum.

And then again, in 2022 with women life freedom movements and now.

So it's not like we sat on our hands and said, you know, it's a good idea to just change

this regime and get it over with.

The Iranians have been wanting to this.

And the best evidence for that is that they took to the streets with empty hands willing

to list Mr. Lives so that they could let the elite know, the regime elite know that they're

not wanted.

And hoping that they would just pack up and leave, which is a naive hope, but I understand

that when you are young and idealistic and brave and you want to do something, this is

what you do.

You say I'm going out to the street knowing that they will be killed.

So it's one of this bothers me that it's a war of choice by American Israel.

I want the American people to understand that if it was not an imminent threat, it was

a solidly, aggressively patient threat, waiting to pounce at any moment to do great damage

to American interests.

It had done so in Iraq, it had done so in Syria, it had done so in Afghanistan.

It would do so in this country.

And unfortunately, we like to dismiss threats because we don't like to deal with them.

Well guess what?

They are dealing with us every morning that Khamenei woke up, according to Amid Sigel,

the Israeli journalist, he would ask himself, how do I eliminate Israel?

That's profound.

Why do I not upgrade our military activities or cyber activities in the United States?

What are the other ways that I can bring this country down to its knees?

We may not have liked to go war to war with them, but they were very willing and gradually

very capable to do great damage to us.

This is a justified war to safeguard the American people.

We've been speaking with Dr. Nazim Moynihan, an associate fellow at the Middle East Institute

in Washington, D.C.

More after this.

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I know that you have been, you went on void for some Jewish non-profit organizations.

You have served on the board of trustees of the Jewish Museum in New York City.

You've written for the Jerusalem Post among a lot of other outlets.

Are you concerned that when we lose service members in this war and US service members

start returning to Dover and we see the caskets and we learn about the families and the

identities of these brave men and women who have sacrificed everything for the US, are

you worried that people will say, okay, well, we are in this because of Israel and any

subsequent potential for a rise in anti-Semitism because of that.

I am more sad than I'm worried, Tanya, that's the profound question.

We're all mothers, sisters, connected family members, great friendships, all of us.

Humanity is an interconnected cause of people and beings.

And to see young, able-bodied people die for a cause that really is not in their immediate

view.

It might be something that they haven't even, they were not grown up with.

They did not, none of them remember Islamic revolution because they were not alive then.

It broke my heart.

It broke my heart with the first news of the four and the additional and unfortunately

the president said there will be more and obviously it's war, war is hell, there will

be more.

Again, to think that Israel made all of this happen even as a Jew, I struck my shoulders,

I just said that this is a president that likes to win, that likes to change the regime

in Cuba in Venezuela, was Israel behind those.

I guess not.

I take it at this point, I take it with a grain of salt.

I'm used to anti-semitism, I know that no matter what the Jews around the world do, how

many Nobel Prizes they win, what cancers they cure, what technology information they developed

so that it benefits humanity, they're still hated by a lot of people.

Whether we rise to the best occasion and exceed the expectations they're hated and whether

we don't were hated.

So if you're asking me if I would stop being a Jew for wanting a better world for myself

and humanity because I think anti-semitism will be empowered, I don't care.

I will believe in the values of Judaism that says to save a life is to save a world.

And I think that speaks to the success in all fields of life, in academia, sciences,

finance, media, to the success that Jews have historically had when they were given the

opportunities.

They don't have a sense of victimization and they don't think they ever will.

They know that the best is when they put their foot down and they manage to excel in

whatever field they are so that they can benefit humanity.

It's called Tikkun Alam, it saves the world.

I'll explain, is there a question that you feel we should be asking in this moment or

something that we should be looking at that is escaping people's attention at this point?

I don't have a question, I have a comment though.

I want the American people to remember General Lafayette for the American Revolution.

A French citizen who sacrifice everything in the cause of the American experiment.

I also want people to know about three Americans, Morgan Schuster, Arthur Misbaugh, and most

importantly Howard Baskerville, who at the turn of century, 20th century went to Iran

to make Iran a better place, completely on their own evolution.

They were invited to come, but they stayed and they ended up loving the Iranian people

and they wrote books about it.

Howard Baskerville was a 19-year-old Princeton student who wanted to just uplift and educate

the Iranians and handed up supporting the constitutional revolution and being killed

for it in tabris in northwestern city of Tehran.

He is remembered as the Lafayette of Tehran, I know, and you can also, and there is a statue

for him commemorating him in tabris to this day.

Getting ourselves involved in wars that are far away from our shores, I think it's an

imperative that must be taken.

More seriously now, our borders are poor, the distances are shrinking because of cyber,

space, ideologies, and beliefs, Islamism, and jihadism and communism and other kinds

are all over the internet.

We are not safe until the purveyor of Islamism, jihadism, and communism is gone.

And until then, I think the world needs to focus on where this menace was not threatening

the region, its own people, and now the entire world, the entire western world.

We have to be able to envision that, to understand why we're doing what we're doing.

I really appreciate all the time that you've given me today and any time that you would like

to come back and be on the podcast or talk to us again, we would so appreciate that because

your knowledge is deep, and it is so appreciated that you're sharing it with us.

Nazi Moynihan has a PhD in Iranian studies from the University of St. Andrews, and her

forthcoming book is Narratives of Grievance in Iran's Foreign Policy.

Since 2021, she has been an associate fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington,

DC.

Thanks for joining the Fox News rundown.

Thank you, Tonya, for asking all the right questions, and thank you for giving me the

opportunity to share it with your listeners.

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