Growing up in Iran, I learned early that my faith was a target. As a member of the Baha'i community—the country's largest non-Muslim minority—I faced systemic discrimination from the Islamic Republic. At 11, I was expelled from school in a brutal manner, with officials even inciting a mob of students against me. My family had no choice but to hire a smuggler to get me across the border into Pakistan.
This is not ancient history. Human rights groups report that dozens of Baha'is have been detained in Iran this year alone, with the crackdown intensifying as Tehran's confrontation with the US and Israel escalates. When a regime feels cornered, it often turns to its oldest scapegoat. In Iran, that has long been the Baha'i community. A new generation is now enduring what many generations have survived—I recognize the pattern because I lived it.
The persecution is deeply personal. It's watching your parents struggle to protect their children and fail. It's realizing as a teenager that your beliefs are a public liability, not a private matter. It's leaving behind everything—country, language, community, family—and arriving with nothing, because nothing was what we were allowed to keep.
Yet, what they couldn't take was my faith. Baha'i teachings center on service, the unity of humanity, and the idea that honest work is a form of worship. Those values guided me when I arrived in California as a refugee. I eventually attended the University of California-Davis, and in the Bay Area, I found something extraordinary: a place that didn't care where I came from, only what I could build. That openness is America's defining gift to people like me.
That tolerance allowed a Baha'i refugee with an accent and no family wealth to co-found AutoWeb, one of the first online car marketplaces, which went public in 1999. I later built other companies and now lead One Planet Group, a private equity firm. America took me in when my own country rejected me. In return, I've helped build companies, create jobs, and contribute to the economy that gave me a second chance. This isn't charity repaid—it's a promise kept on both sides.
But the danger from Iran's regime hasn't passed. I grew up in the 1980s, when banners quoted Ayatollah Khomeini: "War is a blessing." That mentality remains. Weakening the regime militarily doesn't touch its ideology, and ideology—not pragmatism—drives its choices. A government that doesn't build, thinks in terms of decades, and treats its own people as expendable won't moderate because it's taken a hit.
The evidence is clear beyond its borders. Tehran has made life hell for Palestinians through Hamas, for Lebanese through Hezbollah, and for Yemenis through the Houthis—not out of solidarity, but because regional crisis serves its grip on power. These aren't allies bound by shared belief; they're instruments. A government willing to sacrifice the people it claims to champion isn't a rational actor to trust in negotiations. A regime that treats its 93 million citizens as enemies can't be pressured into a better nuclear deal on the assumption that a signed contract will be honored.
Until the world understands who it's dealing with and stands up for the Iranian people rather than what's profitable, the Islamic Republic will only grow stronger. I think of the young people taken to gallows every morning, the Baha'is detained now, the youth and women of Iran—many teenagers like I once was. The world has looked away for half a century while an entire nation has been persecuted. Iran's current turmoil could make that worse. I don't have a solution to Iran's politics, but I know what it means to be forgotten while your government decides your destiny. The US offered me a lifeline; it's time the international community offered the same to those still trapped inside.
