Iranian community in the Bay Area concerned about family overseas

By CBS Bay Area

While Mahmoud Khossoussi is preparing Persian dishes at his restaurant, Maykadeh, in the North Beach neighborhood, his mind is thousands of miles away in Iran. 

“I have my wife over there in Iran. And she cannot get out right now, I have lots of cousins and friends in Iran,” Khossoussi told CBS News Bay Area. “There was no internet in Iran for 39 days.”

He immigrated to the Bay Area in 1963. 

“Today, I am 81 years old,” he said. 

And Khossoussi added that he is concerned about the safety of his family back home. 

“I’m hoping that Donald Trump keeps the situation of Iranian people separate from the Iranian government. We are all for the destruction of the Iranian government, but we are not for the destruction of the foundation of the Persian civilization,” he said. 

Hamid Azimi, a volunteer with the Iranian American Community of Northern California, said they are against the war. Instead, they are in factor of continued organized resistance to the regime. 

“This war needs to stop so that the resistance units that the Iranian people have, led by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, can take over and finish the job and bring about peace and stability to the Middle East,” Azimi told CBS News Bay Area. “People of Iran are not different from any other people in the world. We get worried when bombs are getting dropped on our country, on our relatives.”

He and the community have been rallying more across the Bay Area recently in support of the resistance movement. 

“The Iranian people want freedom, and this freedom will not come with war. It will not come with appeasing the ayatollahs, which has been the dominant policy for the last four decades,” he said. 

And for Khossoussi, he’s leaning into cooking Persian dishes from his childhood, in a time of uncertainty for his community. 

“A lot of people are trying to help us and support us during this bad time, and truly I’m grateful,” he said.