ATLANTA — Iranians in metro Atlanta are sharing their reactions to U.S. military action in Iran and the death of the country’s Supreme Leader.
Local Iranians gathered Sunday evening along the Beltline’s Eastside Trail to display signs with the names and photos of political dissidents killed in the Islamic Republic over the past four decades. On a busy section of the trail, organizers lined up dozens of signs honoring those dissidents.
Gholam Baktiari says the death of the Supreme Leader is a positive development for Iran.
“There’s nobody in the world that’s not happy that this bloody murderer is gone,” Baktiari said.
He says with the Supreme Leader dead, he hopes Iranians can rise up and change the country.
“We want to topple this government. We don’t want no dictator, no Shah, no Khomeini, no mullahs. We want the Iranian people to have the same right as we had in this country; to vote for a government they wanted,” Baktiari said.
However, he says he wants the U.S. military action to end soon and wants Iranians to rise up and change the country themselves.
Farhad Shariat, a former political prisoner in Iran, also welcomed the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader but hopes the military intervention ends quickly.
“Freedom is not going to come with a war, it’s not going to come easy, it has to be changed with the Iranian people,” Shariat said.
Batool Zamani, president of the Iranian-American Community of Georgia, agrees.
“We are capable, we have resistance, and we will get rid of this regime,” Zamani said.
Zamani says she hopes the U.S. operation will end soon.
“We don’t want any foreign intervention to overthrow the regime. We want for Iranian people to overthrow this regime and have sovereignty over our own country,” Zamani said.
Organizers say they want the future of Iran to be open and democratic.
WSB Radio’s Jonathan O’Brien contributed to this story.