Extra: Iranian Americans on Fleeing Tyranny and Iran’s Future

This episode is brought to you by Colaguard.

Do you know what's really scary, not screening for colon cancer when you turn 45?

The Colaguard test is non-invasive, requires no special proper time off work, and ships

right to your door.

In just three simple steps, Colaguard takes the scare out of colon cancer screening.

If you're 45 or older and at average risk, ask your healthcare provider about the Colaguard

test.

Colaguard is available by prescription only.

Learn more or request a prescription today at colaguard.com slash screen.

How can we help make stronger communities happen?

Well, at JPMorgan Chase, we invest in what's working, in businesses that create more jobs,

in hospitals delivering care where it's needed the most, in workers building new buildings,

bridges and roads, connecting what we need to where we live.

Make the green grass grow all around all around, make the green grass grow all around.

Make momentum happen.

Learn more at JPMorganChase.com slash impact.

This is the Fox News rundown Extra.

I'm Jessica Rosenthal.

This past week, we spoke with two Iranian-Americans, Dr. Human Hamadi, a board certified physician,

and Tabit Rafale, a Los Angeles-based journalist and activist.

Both remember why their families fled the Iranian regime decades ago, and the oppression

and fear they felt either fleeing from or living under the first Ayatollah.

They also shared their reactions to Operation Epic Fury, the deaths of Supreme Leader Ayatollah

Khamenei, and much of Iran's leadership, and explained why they have high hopes for

the country's future, and also feel immense gratitude to the United States.

We made some edits for time, and thought you might like to hear more of what they had

to say.

First, you'll hear our full conversation with Dr. Hamadi, followed by Tabit Rafale.

Thanks for listening, and if you don't already, please follow the weekday Fox News rundown

podcast.

Now, here's Dr. Human Hamadi on the Fox News rundown Extra.

I just wanted to ask you, we kind of want our listeners to know about how many people

live in the United States who had to leave Iran.

And so I just wanted to know, first off, are you feeling right now celebratory, are you

feeling cautious, like what's next, is it a big mix of feelings?

Yeah, I think I, and most of the Iranian Jewish community living in the US and anywhere

outside Iran is feeling the same things.

We are feeling extremely celebratory, but at the same time, very apprehensive because

nothing is finished yet, right?

The regime is still technically there and in charge, and they can still cause many, many

problems.

The people do not have a free government.

They don't have the ability to do anything they want.

Just last night, their video is online of regime soldiers and officials shooting at people

in their balconies who were chanting for the Crown Prince, Reza Palabito return, and

they were greeted by gunfire from the street below.

So there's nothing that has been achieved yet in terms of actually delivering that freedom,

but we're on our way there.

So we're, I'm cautiously optimistic.

They're cautiously optimistic, but it's a middle of a war zone right now.

So it's impossible to fully celebrate until things are final.

And there's a lot that has to happen between now and then.

Kindness of your story, human, when your family fled Iran, I know you actually have memories

of being there.

I do so on my earliest memories are of 1979.

I was three years old at the time.

We were living in an apartment looking right down on central Tehran, and we can see one

of the main streets, Yusuf Abad that would go right past our house and into downtown.

And I remember as a child, I would always sit on this little ledge looking out the

window, and my, literally, my earliest memory is of hearing of noises, chants, people marching

in the streets and seeing smoke from people burning tires in the streets.

And that was how the revolution started really coming about is with these people, crowds

in the streets, burning tires, chanting those chants eventually turned into violence

and those burning tires turned into burning buildings.

And that's what really caused the whole revolution to spiral out of control and bring the new

regime in place and house the old one and the rest is history.

So I was there at that point and my family is very fortunate and our entire community is

very fortunate because almost all of us got out and most of us ended up in the US, many

in New York and the majority in Los Angeles.

And for that, I'm eternally grateful and I think most of our community is grateful where

people who came from an enemy country speaking little to no English, having nothing but

to close on our backs, literally nothing.

The one things we had was extreme belief in the American dream, a lot of patriotism and

most with a lot of education.

We came here and we were delivered the American dream, we achieved it and there's no way

that we can pay the US back for that.

And this is why I do what I do and this is why I speak out when I speak out and that's

why there's so many Iranian Americans in the streets in the US and abroad today celebrating

what's happening and encouraging more to be done to get rid of the current regime

because we're grateful.

And this is why those of us from Los Angeles also affectionately call it tarangeless just

to add that in there.

Who man, what did your parents tell you about the decision to leave since then?

What did they remember?

What are the stories they have since told you as you've aged, as you've gotten older,

that they felt like they could share with you about maybe the fear or the trepidation

or what it was like for the older generations of Iranians who had to make the call to

get out.

Yeah, obviously I was three so I was too young to participate in anything to really

understand what was happening at the time but what I do remember is my parents were

an extreme fear.

We had to live, we had to sleep underneath our mattress in order to prevent the broken

glass that something blown up next to our building from landing on us in the middle

of the night.

You know, that's the kind of life we had was one guided by fear.

And I think it was a decision that was made systematically that everyone in the community

basically got together in synagogues at each other's homes and said we have to get out

of here.

We see the writing on the wall.

This is a regime taking over that will either kill us or make it impossible for us to

live our lives in any way that is worth living.

So let's get out as quickly as we can.

And this is why I think it was a group migration almost everyone left around that same time.

There was some who had reasons to stay or couldn't get out as easily but those who wanted

to leave by and large made it out at a decent time.

Many decided to stay or forced to stay and got out at different times later on and they

have stories that are that are just so compelling because you actually hear what it was like

from them as children and young adults to live in this hell, especially as Jews or even

as regular ordinary Iranians have to live under this level of oppression that is Americans

we could never understand or appreciate.

And so when I talk about my own experience, I was one of the lucky ones.

I got out before it really got horrible but there are so many others who lived there for

quite a long time and worse, there are so many who are still there today of all backgrounds

especially people who are not Jewish or Muslims who did not have a way of getting out or thought

it was going to get better and it never did it just kept getting worse.

And so I have a bit of survivors guilt in that, you know, I'm one of the ones who made

it out and there's so many who've lived under this extreme oppression that I never got

to see and if I can do one thing to give back, it is to make sure that all these people

who have lived a life of tyranny for their entire lives or most of their lives have the

opportunity to see what I've seen and experience what I've experienced.

The thing about Iranians who left, they don't remember a bad place entirely like many

would even want to go visit if they could and the Iranians I've met in LA, they've kept

their culture, you know, when you're in a Persian home, you know it, the smell is the

food.

I mean, the food doesn't change, Persians are total food snobs, they're so proud of being

from Iran and are really heartbroken about what happened, they didn't feel like they

were fleeing up a place or a culture, they were fleeing a regime to your point.

Can you tell us about this pride in being Iranian?

It's incredibly true and I have to note first that yes, Iranian Americans have we have

kept that culture very strongly, we've kept our traditions, many have kept the language,

some have kept their Persian accent, I obviously was too young, that said we are probably

the one immigrant community that is assimilated into America the most where people have so

deeply integrated into American culture that you wouldn't tell unless you went to someone's

home, we're taking part in some type of tradition only to realize wow, they are really hardcore.

So yes, it is a country and it's a population of people who have great pride in the art,

the music, the poetry, as you mentioned the food, the customs, the traditions, there's

a custom called tarof where if you have a guest in your house or a guest in your business,

you have to offer them the shirt off your back if someone complements your rug or your

tea kettle or anything, you have to offer it to them multiple times and they have to turn

it down multiple times otherwise you give it to them, I'm not getting and it's happened

to me and this is how we are, it's a very hospitable society and so we do remember what the

country was and that's the whole point, all of us remember what it was like and want

it to go back to what it was like and the beauty is because those traditions, because that

culture was never lost, it has that potential.

When you look at any of these other countries in the Middle East that have lived under tyranny

for much, much longer for hundreds of years, right, thousand years, it's impossible to

go back because there's nothing left, there's no historical memory.

In this case, 1979 to now is 47 years, there are a lot of people who were full-blown adults

there when they came here and they can easily resurrect so much of that and there is a will

to do that and I'll tell you, we go in L.A., we buy ice cream from the same guy who used

to make ice cream for my mom when she was growing up in Iran, we go to the same kosher butcher

who was selling kosher meat in Tehran when I was a kid.

There's so many of the businesses that transferred over that are still operational, it's really

remarkable.

Rinse knows that greatness takes time, but so does laundry, so rinse will take your laundry

and hand-deliver it to your door, expertly cleaned, and you can take the time pursuing

your passions.

Time one spent sorting and waiting, folding and queuing, now spent challenging and innovating

and pushing your way to greatness, so pick up the Irish flute or those calligraphy pens

or that daunting beef-wellington recipe card and leave the laundry to us.

Rinse, it's time to be great.

Couple more for you, who man, when you found out that the eye toll was killed, what was

your first reaction?

It was impossible not to celebrate, not because there was a person who was killed, but because

there was an evil entity who represented the worst kind of evil that has existed on this

earth since the 1940s, right, and we know who else was before that, and it's impossible

not to celebrate the death of that, of that kind of evil.

That said, you know that it's not erased off the earth because that was one man and some

of his loyal assistants, but there are many more left, and so I think it's really a matter

of rooting all of that out and putting in leadership that actually respects the people

and gives them the freedom that they deserve and they long for.

And what are you hoping for in terms of what's next?

I know the fear is, and President Trump addressed this, the worst case scenario, is that

you know, you try and cut off the head of the snake and two more heads pop up in its

place, just given the theocratic nature of this regime that it's ruled by mullahs.

And I just wonder, is it possible to like, how do you see this playing out?

How do you hope it plays out so that the actual people that could replace another eye

toll and another eye toll and another eye toll, that that sort of trajectory does not

come to pass and that there is actual freedom.

It sounds like a, it sounds like an uphill climb.

Well, it is an uphill climb.

That said, I think we're past the point of no return at this point, right?

This regime only stayed in power not because people believed in them or cared about them.

They hate them.

They stayed in power through force and fear and now that their tools of force and their

tools of fear are being dramatically taken away from them.

They don't have any of their government buildings.

A lot of their equipment and weaponry is gone.

Their leadership, communication, command, gone, how are they going to do that to the people

anymore, right?

And this is just getting started.

It's been just a few days since Saturday.

Imagine how much more of the regime's oppression apparatus will be dismantled.

Their political prisons, their centers of power, many of the people themselves, it's going

to reach a point at some point where they cannot reconstitute their power and they're

either going to be dead, they're going to be run out of town or both.

And at some point, by the way, when that balance of power tips, the people are going to start

taking action.

They're going to go back into the streets as they already are to some degree, but they're

going to be emboldened to fight and the regime has nothing with which to fight back and

start killing them by the tens of thousands as they did just a few weeks back.

Dr. Human Hamadi, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your story.

Thanks Jessica, pleasure.

That was Dr. Human Hamadi.

Now once again, here's Los Angeles-based journalist and Iranian-American activists tabby

refile on the Fox News rundown extra.

Let's start with the weekend.

When you heard that the Iowa had been killed and many others, what was your reaction?

So, it's actually fascinating because as an Iranian-American Jew, I keep the laws

related to the Sabbath.

And so I was off of all phone, laptop, social media, everything.

Usually I am for about 26 hours.

And I didn't realize what had happened, this unbelievable watershed moment I had waited

my whole life for until my dad paid me a visit at home and he walked in.

We had a dozen guests that day for Shabbat lunch.

And he walked in and I said, oh hi dad.

And he said, tabby, that's it.

War has begun.

And I screamed, I said, what?

And then he said, and they killed Hominay and I said, what?

And I screamed so loudly, I had guests running out of the bathroom asking what had happened.

You would have thought that my own house was gone for a bit under some kind of ballistic

missile attack.

And then all I wanted to do was cry and sob tears of joy because you have to understand

they've never gotten Hominay.

I think they've been able to, but for some reason maybe they didn't want to touch them, especially

in June's war.

And so he was so much more than a dictator for us.

He was the emblem, the absolute symbol of everything nefarious.

I mean, if my trauma had a face, it would be his, along with of course his predecessor,

Hominay Hominay.

So I started screaming and then I wanted to just sob tears of joy because of all of this,

but I couldn't, you see, because on the Sabbath, you're not really supposed to cry.

It's supposed to be a day where you're trying to access the utmost abundance and joy and

not think about life's problems.

So it was, it really was one of the most memorable moments of my life.

But it was also, and this is so important, immediately tempered by reality.

I've seen a lot of Iranians, especially those in my situation in the diaspora.

There are millions of us.

And for them, it was on all unadulterated joy, but as much as I yelled with absolute

ecstatic disbelief, me being who I am with the history that I have, and we can talk about

this at length more with a third of my family who escaped to America's refugees, a third

who escaped post-level revolutionary Iran and went to Israel, and a third who were left

behind in Iran.

It's complicated.

It's really complicated.

My joy was and continues to be tempered with a lot of grief and anxiety.

This is war.

This is war.

We can dance, but we also have to remember the reality on the ground.

Tavi, what are your hopes and fears about what's next, about the possibility of an Iran

without an Ayatollah or a theocratic regime?

Is it possible, or is this, I mean, the President Trump said this week, the worst case scenario

is that in a few years, you end up with somebody just as bad or worse.

Right.

So I completely understand that average Americans concern that you might be replacing

one very historic evil in the form of the Mullahs with another, and we can wait to see

what that is.

But I really have to say here, as someone who was born in Tehran, the peace capital of

the world, after the revolution, with roots dating back 2,700 years to the ancient Jewish

community of Persia and then Iran, you are not talking about an Arab country.

Iranians are, I believe, and I can find the facts for you to back this up, among the most

educated, secular people in the entire Middle East.

Unfortunately, our generation has only seen almost 50 years of this rapid religious

fanaticism, but you and I know if you talk to any average Iranian, whether it's back there

or in the diaspora, this is somebody who is most likely highly educated, secular, extremely

proud culturally of Persian civilization, of those many thousands of years worth of Persian

civilization, and unarmed, which is important, that this isn't, you know, Saddam being captured

or Qadafi or in other Arab countries by, you know, armed militias and thugs going around.

So I actually am not concerned in the long term about Iran falling again into violent or

radical hands, particularly because I had the honor of having sat down with the exiled Iranian

crown prince Reza Pahlavi on two occasions in the last two years or so. And I have tremendous

hope and excitement for a leader like him, again, highly educated, sophisticated, secular,

his vision aligns with that of most Iranians. And that's the best that you can hope for.

But you did ask me if I do have some fears and I do have to share with you. Yes,

look, there have been Iranian cells here for decades in the US and the US in Israel had a joint

mission in which they just eliminated a lot of senior Iranian leadership, including the head

himself, Khamenei. And they may not take that lying down. I believe today, you know, the government,

here in the US government issued a statement that look, they're not expecting anything

God forbid wide scale. There's probably going to be some hacking. There may be some small scale

level stuff. But we do have to keep those threats in mind. Again, as an Iranian, I have an outlook on

these things, which is much more realistic, because you see, I was born into the theocracy,

having been born into the 1980s. And so you have to understand the mindset of the Ayatollahs

was something that was exported out of the country because Khamenei wanted to export his revolution.

But and here's the big but the mindset of the mullahs for the last 50 years or so was also trickled

down to every level of Iranian society when I was a child there. And that included a school

children at the time. And so I know they're slogans. I know they're ideologies because I had to stand

there as a little girl in the late 1980s when I later found out my American peers were like dancing

to Madonna and Michael Jackson and watching Hulk Hogan on TV. We didn't have any of that.

I was standing there in my mandatory hijab, even though I was a little Jewish girl and my mandatory

Islamic head covering standing on that Tehran playground every day while an administrator held

up a megaphone and I had to scream along with all the other little girls on the playground.

Death to America, death to Israel, death to these Zionists, you know, math problems asking us,

you know, if you shoot at the Americans or the Zionists, how many are left? I mean,

talk to Iranian Americans on the ground here. The ones that aren't either

pro regime or pro regime because they're paid by the regime. And they will tell you these

similar stories. They understand these ideologies because we understand the ideologies. We also

understand the threats. And I think that's one thing that Americans should keep in mind.

Because you did ask me about my fears too. It is wild. I mean, I've followed you on Facebook for

a long time. And you've always been very entertaining and very funny about it. But it is wild to hear you

and read over the years the stories about what you recall before your family left.

How old were you when you left? Do you remember? Was it a tense feeling to have to flee?

So I actually remember everything. I was seven when we arrived in the US as protected refugees

in the late 1980s. But I remember every thing that was sort of important enough to remember about

Iran because it was such a tumultuous childhood. I was born after the years of the revolution,

which means I learned how to tie my headscarf before I learned how to tie my shoes.

Okay. I came to America. I didn't know how to tie shoes. But I knew how to tie a mandatory

Islamic headscarf really well, by the way, except that I had very fine soft hairs and they always

came out of the sides of the scarf. So the teachers and administrators back in the Tehran school

always slammed my hands down really hard with a ruler. I hate rulers, by the way, and I hate

megaphones. There are two things that are out loud in my home. But I remember everything because

of that. And because I'm a child survivor of the Iranian rock war, which lasted eight years,

started before I was even born and lasted from 1980 to 1988. And so the combination of having

been born into really violent religious fanaticism, the kind that also isn't exactly friendly towards

females and Jews. And I'm both the combination of having lived during the Iran, Iraq war when

Iraqi missiles were bombing our neighborhood, sometimes on a daily basis because in Tehran,

we live near the government buildings. In fact, our old house is actually located about 500 meters

from where they dropped those 30 bombs on Hamina's compound over the weekend.

And it was like I said, such a tumultuous time. It was a very tense time. I have to tell you,

I have a special connection with these Israeli kids, whether right now or whether 20 years

ago in steroids in southern Israel, who are constantly hearing those sirens telling them to

run for cover into bomb shelters, not because I had bomb shelters. Please, you think Iran would

build bomb shelters for its civilians. Please, please, please, okay, that their buildings aren't

even up to code, which is why it's so tragic during major earthquakes that you have all of these,

you know, casualties over in Iran. But you know why I sympathize so much with them is because

in those formative years of my childhood, those sirens would go off throughout the city

of another impending Iraqi aerial strike, thanks to Saddam Hussein and his and his Air Force.

And you would run for cover wherever you could, but there were no bomb shelters, you see. So

I understand all of it. It's taken a lifetime to try to

heal from it. Sometimes I can be a hoot at dinner parties because I have a few stories if you can imagine.

And when here in Los Angeles, you know, when ambulances and fire trucks go by,

you will see that I usually close my eyes. I cover my ears. Sometimes I have to hug myself and

kind of rock myself back and forth. And because I have to say tabby, you're not under an aerial

bombardment anymore. You've always had such a sense of humor about it too.

You have to, Jessica, you actually really have to, everyone has problems. Life is hard for everyone.

It's just a matter of being on a spectrum of how hard it is for you versus me versus someone else.

You have to find the humor in everything, even sometimes oppression, even sometimes war.

You know, at the height of the propaganda that we were being taught in Iran as school children,

you know what we used to do? We would take the slogans that they would force us to say,

and we would warp them and turn them around and curse the mullahs themselves with them.

Huh.

Iranians are actually some of the funniest people you will ever meet because we truly have our

finger on the pulse of what it is to live. To live. And life is as many lows as it is highs,

and you have to find the humor in it. How can we help make stronger communities happen?

Well, at JP Morgan Chase, we invest in what's working, in businesses that create more jobs,

in hospitals delivering care where it's needed the most, in workers building new buildings,

bridges and roads, connecting what we need to where we live.

Make the green grass grow all around all around, make the green grass grow all around.

Make momentum happen. Learn more at JP Morgan Chase dot com slash impact.

I want to ask you one more thing. We have some new fox pulling about Americans' thoughts

on what's going on in Iran, and there's quite a few results, but I'll just share these with you.

The support for these strikes on Iran is split 50-50. A majority, barely 51 percent feel these

strikes have made us less safe. From your perspective, given what you've gone through,

what do you say when you when you hear that? Well, first I say that in the short term,

they may be making us less safe. I was devastated by the loss of I believe now the numbers up to

six US servicemen that were killed since this war began. But here's the thing. I'll share two

thoughts with you. Number one, as a moderate with hawkish foreign policy tendencies,

obviously, given my background and my life experience, I will tell you the Americans really

need to stop thinking that Iranians can somehow magically overturn this regime peacefully.

At this point, for 47 years, they have been mowed down in the streets, pulled out of their homes

and dragged towards jails or hung from cranes. I understand as a child survivor of war

that war may be, in some cases, the last option, but in other cases, it is not. In other cases,

strength through those arms is the only way when your civilian population on the ground is

on armed and has been mowed down for years, including by the way in January, when you had

somewhere between 30 to 40,000 of them butchered because they're unarmed. Okay. So, you know,

it's hard for me. This is my former homeland. This is my capital city. This is where I was born.

This is a land where for 2700 years, every ancestor that I had was born and lived their life

and was buried on Iranian soil. And if I, as an Iranian, am telling you that I welcome with a

measured sense of bitter sweetness for those caught in the crossfires that I welcome,

what is happening right now? Please believe me. Please believe us.

And I will end with this. In absolute awe, and I'm going to try to say this without

crying, in absolute awe, an eternal gratitude for the sacrifice that our US servicemen and

women gave in fighting in Iraq. I have to tell you, 23 years ago, we fought the wrong country.

It should have been Iran. And if we had gone in in 2003, their nuclear program was nothing

compared to what it is today. Their ballistic missile program was nothing compared to what it

eventually became. And I say this with absolute honor and awe for our service members there,

but 20 over 20 years ago, it should have been Iran all along. And by the way, it's not easy being a

Californian either. On Monday, our governor over here issued such a scathing cowardly pandering

to the most radical aspects of his base. And I say this as a moderate. Remember,

statement in front of all of the cameras, actually using regime propaganda messaging,

he said that, you know, it's not okay that Israel and America are working together and dropping

bombs on places like girl schools. That girl school was hit by any Iranian missile accidentally,

or maybe even on purpose, because they knew they could blame the Americans and the Israelis.

I will say this at this point, at this point, I would rather vote for the new Ayatollah

over Gavin Newsom for the next president of the United States.

I appreciate you. Tavira File, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate your insights.

Thank you for giving me a voice because I know that if I had stayed in Iran,

this would never have been an opportunity for me. It's a privilege.

You've been listening to the Fox News rundown. And now, stay up to date by subscribing to this

podcast at FoxNewsPodcasts.com. Listen ad free on Fox News Podcasts plus on Apple Podcasts.

And, prime members can listen to the show ad free on Amazon Music. And for up to the minute

news, go to FoxNews.com.