Iranian American couple from California speaks out against anti-war protests: ‘It is a rescue mission’

When an Iranian American husband and wife see protests against the war with Iran in the United States, they shudder, recalling living and being raised under a regime that “controlled” their young lives.

Since its start, Operation Epic Fury has drawn scrutiny from the American public, inspiring anti-war protests across the country. 

Behzad Hemmati and Rahil Nazarian both had the opportunity to come to America from Iran as young adults. 

Decades later, Hemmati, 50, and Nazarian, 42, told Fox News Digital that they are watching the situation unfold from their new home in Southern California, and to them, this conflict isn’t a war, it’s a “rescue mission.”

Born under the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Hemmati recalls he was too young to experience the “good things” before the Islamic Revolution in 1979 overthrew Pahlavi’s reign.

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“I came here [just because of] my natural personality, I couldn’t bear with the things that [were] happening [in Iran],” Hemmati said.

He recalled his life as a teenager and said, “You want to be yourself, to be free,” but shared that what Western culture considers a “normal” teenage life, wasn’t allowed in Iran.

“You want to dance, you want to hang out with your friends, but we couldn’t … girls and boys [are] always separate,” Hemmati explained. “This is how [the government] control[s] you, this is how [they] break you in pieces and take that beautiful life that you can have [and] take it away from you.”

Nazarian was born during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. Her father was a teacher and after the Islamic Revolution, she explained that the Islamic Republic took her family’s home, their land and her father was unable to work.

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“After [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini came and took over, they fired [my father] because they told him, ‘You work during Shah, you don’t deserve this,” Nazarian said.

Murderous regime

In an emotional moment, she recalled her father being brought back and forth between Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) camps until one day, he did not come back.

“They were executing most of his family members,” Nazarian said. 

“One day, he went, and they told him, ‘Oh, we have a plan for you, we’re gonna give you back everything we took to you, we’re going to give it back to you,’” Nazarian recalled. “He left home [that day], he never came back.”

Since the initial strikes in Operation Epic Fury that began in the early-morning hours of Feb. 28, the conflict has struck a chord with the American public, leading to backlash against the Trump administration.

Still, when Hemmati and Nazarian see protests against military action, Hemmati told Fox News Digital that they “don’t understand.”

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“People should understand [here], those that they don’t understand,” he said. “People are going on the street and saying no to war, I can tell you 100%, they have no idea.”

The operation has also garnered support from many in the Iranian American community. 

Hemmati said protests in favor of U.S. military action in the country have sprung up around Southern California, and that he attends an event almost every weekend. He says this is a way for people to be the voice for people inside Iran who are in favor of the operation.

“[Iranian’s] inside Iran want to show the world — obviously, they can’t do anything because everything is disconnected from Iran — but that’s why we’re going out to be their voice,” Hemmati said.

Family in Iran

Nazarian and Hemmati said they spoke to relatives still living in Iran and despite constant bombardments near their homes, they’re “glad this is happening.”

“No matter what happens, no matter if we lose our house, no matter if the whole house is destroyed, as long as we’re alive to fight back, we’re still grateful and happy,” Hemmati said.

“They were thanking President [Donald] Trump and said, it’s OK, we have to pay the price for freedom,” Nazarian continued.

Hemmati said by targeting specific IRGC locations the operation is “cutting the regime’s bloodlines.”

“They’re targeting those very special places for their government,” Hemmati said. “Once they’re eliminated, then it’s time for people to go out.”

Once able, Nazarian and Hemmati said they’ll be on the first flight to Iran to see family for a long-overdue visit.

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“[Our] kids are so thirsty to see their cousins, their family, because I don’t have any family [in the US],” Nazarian said. “I haven’t seen them for nine years [and Hemmati] hasn’t been there for 19 years.”

“[This] is what I’ve been waiting for [for 47 years],” Hemmati said. “Unfortunately, we’re going to lose some lives in this rescue mission … but again, people are saying inside Iran, they’re saying, ‘How many are we gonna lose? … We’re ready to sacrifice again until we get to [freedom].’”

MORNING GLORY: President Trump and the US are waging a righteous battle — and winning

The United States and Israel are winning this battle with the Islamic Republic of Iran — decisively. Our Gulf allies are standing strong. The cost has already been high with seven U.S. service members dead and many wounded, some seriously. Soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces have been killed and civilians in Israel and among the Gulf states murdered by the lashing out at every country in the region by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

But of course, some hard-left partisans hate the prospect of either President Donald Trump or the United States winning an important, indeed crucial battle.  That includes, shockingly, Catholic Cardinals in the U.S. These cardinals are putting politics ahead of faith and demonstrating deep ignorance of national security affairs combined with indifference to the patriotism of their parishioners — many of whom with family on the front lines — who can be expected to at least stop giving to an anti-American church if not leave it.

For anyone who, out of ignorance, real or feigned, does not understand the nature of the regime atop the 91 million innocent people of Iran: These fanatics murdered 35,000 of their own people in two days and nights of terror in January in Tehran and across other cities in the vast country. 35,000!

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The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps numbers between 150,000 and 200,000 and their street thugs, the Basij, between four and five times that. So a million of Iran’s people cruelly repress the other 91.

The left in America refuses to come to grips with how evil the Iranian regime is and for how long it has been so. They seem to have forgotten the original hostage crisis, the murder of our Marines in Beirut in 1983, the destruction of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996 and countless other acts of assassination and mass terrorism since the regime seized power in 1979. They do not know that we know for a certainty that Iran murdered and maimed thousands of our troops in Iraq in the war that began there in 2003. Our political left is defeatist and in the grip of their appeasers and anti-Israel caucus. That left now includes at least three high-profile Catholic cardinals.

The Senate and House GOP should stand proudly behind President Trump and proclaim the Islamic Republic of Iran as the evil and malignant terrorist regime run by theocratic fanatics that it has been for 47 years; that the cause of destroying the regime’s ability to threaten the region and the world is just; and that President Trump, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Caine are conducting the war in remarkable fashion because the American military has no peer.

I hope House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune persuade the caucuses they lead to agree to bring forward a second reconciliation process to quickly resupply the military with the funds to replenish the ordinance expended and, indeed, to go further: To fully fund the next three years of spending necessary to the rapid build-out of the “Golden Dome” and the “Golden Fleet,” while also making sure the equal of any of our allies — Israel — has the funding and hardware we can provide to assist them on all of their fronts. The righteous battle with Iran and its proxies needs to be proclaimed and explained and cannot be done too often or too loudly.

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And, as a Roman Catholic, I hope some of our braver and certainly better informed cardinals stand up and address the brothers in red who have flown off the rails of national security reality.

Democrats who are defeatist, appeasers, anti-Semitic or simply deranged by their hatred of President Trump: You keep speaking up too. History will record your positions.

The region and the whole world is far better off already because of the crushing of Iran’s striking capability and will be immeasurably blessed by the collapse of this insidious regime.

What we have witnessed by the “Yosemite Sam” response of Iran to the attacks by the U.S. and Israel should have awakened even the least observant consumer of news to the nature of the regime. The mullahs ordered everything in their arsenal fired at all of their neighbors, none of whom other than the U.S. and Israel were involved in the conflict. In this respect, Iran acted as Hitler’s Germany did after Imperial Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941: Germany unilaterally declared war on the United States four days after the “day that will live in infamy.”

While Iran has been in conflict with Israel and the United States since the Islamic Revolution culminated in the return of Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran on February 1, 1979, Iran was not at war with the Gulf States. That Iran attacked everyone it could hit should tell you why the regime was so dangerous. It is an unhinged and revolutionary power. It does not abide by anything remotely like the rules of civilized nation states. Its “threat” was not merely imminent, but ongoing and never ceasing. Its hideousness appeared unveiled on 10/7/23 in Israel when its puppet Hamas invaded Israel to kill, kidnap and maim. Iran could never be trusted with nuclear weaponry or the sort of forest of missiles it was aiming to assemble in order to blackmail the world into acquiescence to its nuclear ambitions.

President after president of both parties vowed that Iran would never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. President Trump made good on that vow with the order to conduct Operation Midnight HammerOperation Midnight Hammer last June, which obliterated the ongoing enrichment and weaponization programs inside Iran.

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At that point, Iran could have taken the off-ramp, recognized that the U.S. and Israel had reached the point at which no further provocation or prevarication would be tolerated. Indeed, President Trump made repeated efforts to offer terms to the ayatollahs.

They refused. They obfuscated, playing for time, and always refusing to negotiate as their missile arsenal accumulated. President Trump then did what every American president of both parties pledged to do: He stopped them. And he ordered the military to prevent the next attempt to rebuild.

Stunningly ignorant clerics and critics have damned the United States for breaching international law. Some have incredibly turned their backs not only on the growing, ongoing and imminent threats posed by the fanatics but also on the mountain of corpses the IRGC piled up in the streets of Iran in January. Catholics: Stop giving money to those dioceses that are putting our troops at risk, and make no mistake, some cardinals are doing just that. They are the modern but left-wing versions of Father Coughlin of the 1930s. Their infamy will be as enduring as his.

Cardinal Cupich of Chicago joined Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C., and Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, in co-authoring an incoherent statement titled “Charting a Moral Vision of American Foreign Policy” that ignores the massive evils perpetrated by the IRGC this year and over the decades. Politicians shouldn’t advise priests on their religious doctrine and priests should not demonstrate their lack of knowledge about basic national security.

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The cardinals are not alone, however, as the upside-down view of this battle has a grip on the Democratic Party. For the first time in my life, the partisanship that marks elections now defines a conflict in which American servicemen and women are on the front lines. We can perhaps excuse clerics for their ignorance of the world. The Catholic bishops of America presumed to lecture Ronald Reagan in the 1980s with lengthy letters on war and peace as well as on economic growth, and conveniently forgot how wrong they were when the policies of Reagan and President George H.W. Bush brought down the Soviet Union and freed much of Eastern Europe and even Russia for a time.

But now the American left, both in elected office and in pulpits high and low, have wholly lost their way. To repeat: The Iranian regime murdered 35,000 of its own people two months ago. Its proxy, Hamas, invaded Israel and slaughtered 1,200 on 10/7/23 while starting a war that devastated Gaza. Two other of Iran’s proxies — Hezbollah and the Houthis — also attacked Israel in the months after 10/7, as did Iran. Where were the cardinals then? Hiding, of course.

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The collapse of moral clarity among American elites on the left is complete, and it has even made inroads on the fringes of the right. The Republican Party should boldly proclaim that, even after 250 years, our country still knows right from wrong and will defend the right.

President Trump is leading a winning campaign to rid the world of as malign an actor as there is. The region and the world will be so much better off if the president perseveres. Pray he does, because it is obvious that many who should be doing so lack the wisdom and/or the courage to do so.

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BRETT VELICOVICH: Iran built a drone terror machine — America just hacked it

As coordinated U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran continue, one thing is clear: this is not the kind of war we have spent decades planning for. There are no massed formations or carrier battle groups trading salvos. This conflict is being fought with swarms of relatively inexpensive, one-way drones. Adaptation and rapid innovation now determine how conflicts are fought.

Iran has spent years perfecting saturation warfare. The concept is straightforward: flood the sky with enough drones and missiles to exhaust the enemy’s interceptors, force impossible triage decisions and eventually break through. Iran has targeted hotels, tourist centers and locations without hardened counter-drone systems. Iran’s kamikaze drones, called Shaheds, are low, slow and persistent. They aren’t technically sophisticated, but they are difficult to stop in large numbers. This isn’t a failure of U.S. technology. It’s a logistics and economics problem that we need to solve and adapt to. And we’re already doing that.

For the first time, the U.S. has deployed the LUCAS system — a one-way attack drone modeled directly on Iran’s own Shahed design — in combat. The system was developed by reverse-engineering downed Iranian drone systems in Ukraine and rebuilding them with American guidance systems, hardened navigation and real-time targeting integration into our intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) networks. Then we sent them back to Iran to destroy their infrastructure.

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LUCAS was used in the opening strike, hitting Iranian drone manufacturing sites and other weapons infrastructure before advanced fighters followed. These drones aren’t just munitions; they’re nodes in a combat cloud, receiving real-time targeting updates and networked with intelligence assets in ways Iran’s drones cannot match.

While Iran is building volume, the U.S. is building systems. This distinction matters.

This operation has also marked the largest-scale deployment of AI models across the U.S. Department of War in history. From intelligence assessments to target identification to battle scenario simulation, AI has been part of the decision cycle at every level. This precision has been another point of delineation between the two sides. While Tehran responds with indiscriminate barrages hitting civilian areas, U.S. strikes are being driven by layered intelligence, refined targeting and a disciplined operational picture. That gap in approach is not only strategic but ethical.

This conflict with Iran will be decided by the side that adapts fastest, identifying problems and finding solutions on a compressed timeline.

But there are still areas where we’re adapting. The cost dynamics of this new approach remain unresolved. The U.S. has traditionally favored high-tech, expensive weapons systems requiring extensive training and planning. But when the adversary has more drones than you have interceptors, the math turns against you fast.

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Relying on high-cost interceptors to counter cheap, easy-to-produce drones is not a sustainable equation. The answer isn’t to outgun; it’s to intelligently adapt — and to do so quickly. Lower-cost, high-speed, combat-proven intercept platforms designed to counter one-way attack drones, including the Shahed-136, Geran-2 and other Group 3-class unmanned threats, are what this new battlefield demands.

That’s the lesson Ukraine has been teaching for years — and one this conflict is reinforcing in real time: no military in the world is adequately prepared to stop cheap, mass-produced one-way drones at scale. Not yet. The U.S. industrial base has the capacity to change that. The constraint is understanding the new reality and deciding to move on it.

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Iran spent years developing and proliferating the Shahed as a tool of destabilization, deploying it in Yemen, Iraq and Ukraine, and against American forces across the region. Now, a version of that same weapon has been turned against the factories that produce it.

As of today, the Islamic Republic is in unprecedented internal chaos. Leadership is scrambling, and the regime’s command-and-control picture is unclear even to those inside it. That uncertainty creates both opportunity and risk. Precision matters more — not less — in these moments.

This conflict will be decided by the side that adapts fastest, identifying problems and finding solutions on a compressed timeline. Though the U.S. drone industry isn’t where it needs to be, real-world, battle-tested deployment is how capability gaps get closed. What we learn here will shape doctrine, acquisition and industrial strategy for the next decade.

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America just delivered one of the most significant demonstrations of adaptive military capability in modern history. The question isn’t whether we can innovate — it’s whether we’re prepared to build the industrial and defensive infrastructure at the scale and speed this new era demands. 

The answer to that question isn’t decided on a battlefield. It’s decided here at home — where we invest and how seriously we take the threat. The conflict with Iran has made that choice unavoidable.

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Trump suddenly seems anxious to end the war as American casualties mount and Iran finds ways to hit back

It was Mike Tyson who famously said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

In terms of sheer firepower, the greatest military machine in human history has totally overwhelmed Iran and is decimating the country.

But the Iranians are finding ways to fight back, as American officials acknowledge, and those who envisioned a cakewalk are finding a rockier road.

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The Trump administration’s disclosure that 140 U.S. service members were wounded in the initial attack that killed Ayatollah Ali Khameini and other top leaders highlights the ability of even an overwhelmed enemy to inflict pain. 

As President Donald Trump sends decidedly mixed messages about the duration of the war, the question hovers in the air: What amounts to winning?

There are some, including Republicans, who want Trump to declare victory and get out. He can boast that he disrupted the terror state’s latest attempt to develop a nuclear weapon.

Yesterday, in fact, the president told Axios that the war will end “soon” because there is “practically nothing left to target … Little this and that … Any time I want it to end, it will end.”

Trump’s explanation: “We have done more damage than we thought possible.”

Just days ago, the president said the military campaign against Tehran would take four to six weeks.

More important than the timing, Trump had insisted that Iran must undergo regime change. He proclaimed that he had to approve the country’s next leader. Well, with the Iranians anointing the ayatollah’s son, who Trump had specifically deemed unacceptable, that obviously didn’t happen.

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The almost seamless quality of the U.S. kidnapping of Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro and takeover of that country’s oil may have given the Trump team a sense of overconfidence when it comes to Iran, which has 90 million people.

There’s no mistaking the fact that Trump, allied with Israel, has made other dire threats against an Iranian regime that has bedeviled a succession of American presidents since the 1979 hostage crisis.

“If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz,” he posted, “they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.”

But that’s exactly what the Iranians are doing, with reports that they are booby-trapping the strait, a major chokepoint for world oil shipments, with land mines.

Among other things, according to officials and experts cited by the New York Times, militias backed by Iran have attacked hotels utilized by American troops.

There was a series of drones launched at an affluent hotel in the Iraqi city of Erbil.

An Iran expert at Johns Hopkins University told the paper that the Iranians learned from the initial U.S. attack last June that the Pentagon is lacking certain missiles and defensive weapons that can intercept drones. 

Another Times story, assessing the first 12 days, concluded that Trump and his advisers “misjudged how Iran would respond to a conflict that Tehran sees as an existential threat.”

MICHAEL OREN: IRAN HAS WAGED WAR ON AMERICA FOR 47 YEARS — TIME TO END IT

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, however, told reporters that “I can’t say that we anticipated necessarily that’s exactly how they would react, but we knew it was a possibility. I think it was a demonstration of the desperation of the regime.”

Beyond weaponry, the war launched by Trump has had a more predictable financial impact, creating economic uncertainty around the world.

Americans have been hit with soaring gas prices and shrinking retirement plans. The market volatility and oil prices have bounced around, but this has clearly fueled feelings of anxiety.

What’s more, unemployment has ticked up and tens of thousands of jobs have been lost, which predates the war but also may be linked to the Supreme Court ruling rejecting Trump’s tariffs.

America has punched Iran in the mouth. But the theocratic dictatorship can declare a victory of sorts simply by surviving. 

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Trump, for his part, can boost his party’s uphill chances in the midterms by bringing this war to an early conclusion.

That would also end a different war, the acrimonious debate within his MAGA coalition between those who defend the assault on Iran and those who believe he betrayed his base by abandoning his America First pledge to stay out of foreign wars.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink argues US-Iran conflict won’t derail economy as gas prices surge

BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink insisted the United States’ war with Iran will not have lasting economic consequences, even as oil prices continue to surge nationwide.

“Do I believe the war is going to be lasting a long time? No,” Fink told Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier. “Do I believe oil is going be reverting back to where it was? Maybe even lower.”

Fink joined “Special Report” Wednesday, where he discussed how artificial intelligence and the war in Iran are affecting the economy. He also addressed whether so-called “woke” corporate initiatives have proven to be a failed experiment.

Turning first to market volatility, Fink explained why short-term impacts on energy prices do not alarm BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager.

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“It creates uncertainty, and uncertainty creates fear,” he said of the war with Iran. “But that being said, the $14.5 trillion of money we manage, most of it is very long-dated. I don’t pay much attention to the short-term volatility.”

Fink’s comments come as energy markets roil amid conflict in the Middle East.

Gasoline prices have surged 20% since the U.S. attacked Iran Feb. 28, causing intensifying pain at the pump. The national average currently sits at $3.58 per gallon for regular gasoline, compared to $2.94 before the U.S. struck Iran, per AAA.

Despite the recent spike, Fink argued that oil prices could fall even lower once the war ends and if Iran reenters the global market.

“If the outcome of the war is a neutralized Iran, and they are allowed to be selling … oil products into the market again, I mean there’s probably a great probability that oil is gonna be below 50,” he said.

Fink cautioned investors against making drastic moves during the U.S.-Israel-led war with Iran, arguing that the volatility could create opportunities.

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“We have seen many people pulling out of the market. And, to me, that is the wrong outcome,” Fink argued. “In fact, I’ve been getting so many texts, ‘What should I do?’ And I said, ‘Buy more here.’ This is a good long-term opportunity.”

The CEO went on to address whether “woke” initiatives like diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and environmental, social and governance (ESG) were failed experiments for BlackRock.

“The pendulum moves all the time,” Fink said.

EXILED IRANIAN WARNS REGIME WAS ‘AGGRESSIVELY PATIENT THREAT WAITING TO POUNCE’ ON AMERICA

“Do I believe the pendulum five years ago was too far? Yes.”

BlackRock began rolling back its DEI initiatives last February, citing “significant changes to the U.S. legal and policy environment related to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) that apply to many companies, including BlackRock.”

Fink said he feels “more pragmatic” today than he did five years ago and noted that society has moved into a “better position” of increased pragmatism.

Baier continued to press Fink on whether BlackRock pushed its corporate clients too far to a certain side.

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“Do you think BlackRock pushed some companies a little bit further left than you thought?” Baier asked.

“It was never our intention because our job is to be … I gotta be a fiduciary to everybody who gives us money,” Fink responded.

Ex-Iranian women’s soccer star empathizes with national team, breaks down sharing story of father’s death

Shiva Amini, a former Iranian women’s professional soccer player who was banned from the team and later forced to leave the country after she was photographed playing without a hijab around her head, suggested Wednesday that the players coming back to the country faced an uncertain future.

Six Iranian women’s national soccer team players received asylum in Australia after the team was bounced from the Women’s Asian Cup. The Australian government stepped in and worked with some players to attain a humanitarian visa.

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Amini appeared on Fox News Channel’s “The Story” said she understood what the players are going through.

“I can totally understand what those Iranian soccer players are going through because I’ve been in their shoes,” she said. “The Iranian regime put you in this situation. You have to say goodbye to everything that you have in Iran … Anything could happen to you when you go to Iran. You can face prison, you can face rape, you can face execution. … The regime don’t care about who you are.”

Amini was granted asylum in Switzerland over threats from the Islamic regime in Iran.

She broke down in tears as she recalled being unable to see her father for nearly 10 years and missing his funeral when he died.

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“I was in Switzerland and the regime put me in a situation,” she said. “I just simply play soccer with my friends without my hijab on and the regime saw my social media and used that against me because they wanted to make an example of me for the other athletes in Iran.

“They took everything from me. I lost my family, I lost my home, I lost my safety. I remember after six, seven years when I was in Italy I just wanted to invite my parents, my family, my mom and my dad because my dad was like restless. He was like, ‘Hey, I wanna see you.’ I tried to get a visa for them. This is so sad because I tried so hard with a lawyer but the regime didn’t give a visa to my dad, but (only) my mom.

“My mom came to me after seven years and when she was there, I was so happy. It was something after seven years I could hug my mom, I feel her. When my mom was in Italy, my brother called me and said, ‘Dad, passed away.’ And that day was the worst day of my life because I felt guilty. My mom is here. I couldn’t get a visa for my dad.  … I wanted to get hack to Iran, but my mom didn’t allow me and she said, ‘No, you cannot even see your dad because they’re gonna arrest you.’”

Most of the Iranian women’s soccer team left Australia, declining last-minute asylum offers.

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The team flew to Malaysia after being at Sydney Airport.