Rose Zadeh and Shayan Khosravanifarahani, waving the flag of pre-revolutionary Iran, at the Berkeley Persian Center Nowruz festival, March 17, 2026. Credit: Kelly Sullivan for Berkeleyside

The crowd was amped up and on their feet. The heavy bass and synths from a loud DJ were quickly building tension, and dozens of people, most of them of Iranian descent, knew the beat drop was coming. People were smiling. And then it dropped hard. 

“Khameini,” the song blared, “is dead, dead, dead, dead.” 

Tuesday night, in the middle of Durant Street in downtown Berkeley, at the end of a beautiful celebration of Nowruz, the 3,000-year-old new year’s holiday marking the Spring equinox and the shift from darkness to light, people jumped up joyfully to the song. Many threw their hands into the air, enveloped in a sense of community. 

Then the next line came up.  

“Thank you, Trump. Thank you, Bibi.” 

Most of the hands came down. A few young people walked away. Some gave wry looks, or showed discomfort. Others kept dancing. The DJ sought to restore the ecstatic feeling by playing “YMCA” by the Village People, President Donald Trump’s theme song. 

The celebration arrived 17 days after the U.S. and Israel began a bombing campaign against the Iranian regime that has killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei along with other senior leadership. U.S. and Israeli missiles have also struck a range of civilian targets, including hospitals, schools and apartment buildings.

Dancers and festivalgoers danced on Durant Avenue in Berkeley on March 17, 2026. Credit: Kelly Sullivan for Berkeleyside

The mixed reactions at the celebration exemplified the complex, bittersweet feelings many in the East Bay’s Iranian community have had about the war: a sense of relief at the end of an era and a man whose rule was marked with violence, spurring many Iranians to leave their homeland, alongside trepidation and fear about what is to come. 

The celebration, known as Chaharshanbeh Suri, or the Festival of Fire, which precedes Nowruz, was hosted by the Persian Center in Berkeley and wove together traditional customs with modern culture. Vendors set up booths along Durant and Shattuck avenues selling Persian cuisine, including Persian ice cream; there was also a taco truck, games for kids and other activities.

We don’t want war, we don’t like war, but we also don’t want our government.”

The most exciting part of the night, especially for the kids, was the ritual of jumping over a bonfire as the sun set, welcoming the “warmth and energy of the Spring,” as a staffer with the Persian Center described it. 

The holiday, which comes from the Zoroastrian religion, includes a traditional song that everyone present seemed to know. 

“Zardiyeé man az tō, sorkheyeé tō az man,” they sang, as couples, students, and older folks all laughed, checking their pants and shoes for embers of flame. “May your rosy red glow be mine, and my sickly yellow pallor be yours.”

Celebratory foods and prayer cards at the Persian Center. Credit: Kelly Sullivan for Berkeleyside

We approached one Iranian American couple who had just jumped over the flames. Giving their names as Farshid and Nasiem, they told us that the event was an important opportunity for Iranians to come together, especially because the celebration — leaving aside some of the songs the DJ chose — was supposed to be apolitical in nature.  

“We’re aware of the current-day situation in Iran, and we’re holding our grief as well as our solidarity and hope with us, but coming together as a community, it felt really, really awesome,” Farshid, Dublin native, said. 

You’re faced with minute problems, like the email didn’t get in on time, and it’s jolting to go from that to being in the midst of war.”

Nasiem, a Berkeley resident who said she had run into friends and family at the event, told us she came because she longed to be around others in the Iranian diaspora who felt a “deeper” sense of grief, concern and worry. Last week, she told us, she had participated in a grief circle at a yoga studio, which ended with Iranian Americans in tears as they created a vision board outlining what they hoped to see in Iran in the coming years. It was the particular connection she felt with other Iranians that made these events feel special. 

“When Iranians see each other, there’s a specific head nod, the hug, and the kiss on both sides,” she said. “There’s a warmth in my heart when I get to see these cultural norms that I don’t get to participate in on a day-to-day basis. And so, to look around, almost knowing what we all have hope for, it feels emotional.” 

Stressful calls to the homeland

Nasiem told us that her family has been sporadically in contact with relatives in Iran since the war began. One of those relatives lives in Tehran, in a building right near the site of a bombing, which she said smashed the windows of their home. So far, those family members have been able to call from landlines roughly once a week to check in and let everyone know that they’re still alive. 

“They sent pictures, and I couldn’t help but sob,” she said. “And then the reality of the day for me is very different because you’re faced with minute problems, like the email didn’t get in on time, and it’s jolting to go from that to being in the midst of war, watching your family. So I’m deeply holding both, but you have to put it down also at times.”

A woman shops for flowers ahead of Nowruz in northern Tehran, March 19, 2026. Credit: AP Photo/Vahid Salemi

Another woman from Berkeley, who was chatting with two friends at the periphery of the dance area and did not want to provide her name, told us that she’s been in touch with her family back in Iran as well, and that the hardest part of the war for her has been the days spent waiting for information from friends. “It’s frustrating,” she said. 

One of the friends, who gave her name as Mogjan and who also lives in the East Bay, told us that her aunt, a beloved cousin, her husband’s parents, and her sister-in-law were all currently under siege in Tehran, and that the family has been able to communicate, but has only provided very short updates, because of the worry of surveillance by the Iranian government. Some at the festival said they’d heard that, during the war and the months preceding it, as protests against the government unfolded, people with a working internet line, who can talk to the outside world, have been targeted, labeled as agents of the CIA or Mossad, or even jailed. 

“And we never ask them how they are doing, because we don’t like to put them in a difficult situation,” Mogjan said. 

A toy remains on the ground next to a residential building damaged when a nearby police station was hit Friday in a U.S.-Israeli strike in Tehran, March 15, 2026. Credit: AP Photo/Vahid Salemi

While most of the American-born or long-time U.S. residents we spoke with had not been to Iran in years, several in the crowd were recent immigrants. One, Arya Jahan, is a photographer and artist who told us she’d escaped Tehran just three years ago, leaving behind a successful gallery, because she “preferred” to save her life. One day, she bought a one-way ticket to the U.S. and left everything and everyone, including all of her family. Given that Nowruz is often seen as a family holiday, Jahan felt like the night’s celebration didn’t make a ton of sense for her, but she still appreciated being there, sensing that connecting with other Iranians here could lead to a lasting community.

Still, she said, the last three months, starting with the murder of thousands of anti-regime protesters, have been really hard for her, transporting her to her homeland every night as she thinks about the worst. 

“I haven’t slept well,” she said. “I wake up every hour sometimes to see what’s going on in Iran.” 

‘We are here to be the voice of Iranians’People jump over fires to welcome wellness, joy, and light in the new year on March 17, 2026. Credit: Kelly Sullivan for Berkeleyside

Jahan told us that she felt some relief once news broke that Khamenei had been killed in an airstrike. 

“You know, we don’t want war, we don’t like war, but we also don’t want our government,” she said. “We just don’t have a good government. They bully people. They harass us.” 

She said she chose to speak to a reporter because she felt the need to give a voice to the many people back in Iran who were prohibited from speaking. And she said many of those sheʻs in touch with were happy about the war, despite the serious dangers it posed. 

“My family, there, they cannot have a safe life,” she said. “We are here to be the voice of Iranians who don’t have any internet. And we want the world to listen to us. We want the world to hear us. And our government will probably be down soon, and we are ready to celebrate the biggest celebration.”

Others were far more critical of the war. 

Nasiem, the Berkeley resident, said her family did not believe the U.S. should have gotten involved in a military operation, especially if, as reporting suggests, the administration did not have a full plan for how to get out of it.  

“It’s not gonna benefit this country, Iran, to step in and throw out one dictator for another,” she said. “My family is outraged.”

‘The connection remains’

Other Iranian Americans we’ve reached out to in the days since the U.S. and Israeli bombardment began also said they were not mourning the death of the ayatollah, because it was his authoritarian policies that had forced their families out of the country. But their feelings about the weeks-long bombing campaign were mixed.

One Oakland resident, Shamim Imani, told us that his parents grew up in the city of Yazd in the Baha’i faith. While they faced some struggles as members of a religious minority, he said, they were still able to live in relative peace and later pursue professional careers in Tehran, his father as a civil engineer and his mother as an architectural drafter. But then the Iranian Revolution happened in 1979. His father, who’d been contracted to work on a museum project dedicated to the shah, was blacklisted. The family, including Imani and his brother, left for Kansas City, Missouri. 

“My parents filed for asylum, which they were granted,” Imani said. “They didn’t know English, had only a few hundred dollars, and started over. My dad went to night school, and my mom raised my brother. Eventually, my dad got recertified and started working for the City of Kansas City. But they never went back to Iran — it wasn’t safe, and their assets, money, even photos were taken. It’s a story a lot of Iranians have.”

Imani said that the situation was so dangerous and stressful in those years, especially for people of the Baha’i faith, that his aunt and uncle smuggled one of his baby cousins out of the country by wrapping her in a blanket, like a package.

Imani’s own mother, he said, became pregnant with twins shortly after arriving in the U.S., but lost the pregnancy when she found out that her father had been captured back in Iran. 

Imani said witnessing what’s happened in Iran over the last few weeks has been hard for him, his own growing family, and his parents.

“My parents would say: ‘Go back to what? Everything’s gone,ʻ” he said. “The only thing that matters is family.”

Naz Dana, an Oakland resident whose kids attend the same school as Imani’s, was born in Iran and is old enough, in her late 40s, to remember the early years of the revolution. She remembers people going out into the streets at night to protest and then hiding in basements and garages to shelter from bombings. 

“There was always a public announcement about which neighborhoods were going to be hit that night, and some people would tape up their windows with an X so that if the glass blew out, there wouldn’t be shards everywhere,” Dana said. “But even years after that, I also remember seeing people missing a leg or an arm selling things at intersections, talking about that time.” 

Dana said she still thinks about the beautiful people there. 

“I think for a lot of us, even if you’ve been away for a long time, the connection remains to the country and the culture,” she said. “But not to the government — to the people.”

She said she understood the relief people there must have felt with the ayatollah’s death after 40 years of “every protest getting squashed and people getting killed in the streets.” 

“But where is this going?” she asked. “And what is the endgame here? I think for us, that’s scary.”

Hope for the futureMedhi Azadani waves a pre-revolutionary Iranian flag at the Berkeley Persian Center’s 22nd annual Festival of Fire. Credit: Kelly Sullivan for Berkeleyside

That night at the Nowruz celebration, with its familiar music and foods, many of those present sought to find flashes of positivity. 

A young woman from Concord, who did want to provide her name, said she felt “blessed” to attend a public event in a country that still has many freedoms, including the freedom to wear her hair down without fear of reprisal. 

“It’s hard in America, it’s hard everywhere, but I feel like a glimpse of peace in your life is all that matters,” she said. “It’s a very stressful and scary time. If we don’t choose to seek some sort of happiness, then we’re going to live in that misery right here. So it’s important to make the choice every day.” 

Mogjan, one of the women we spoke with at the festival, expressed something similar, choosing to zoom out from the current conflict to contemplate what may lie ahead. 

“We have darkness, and we have light. And light is going to come back to our country,” she said with a contented smile. “Also, we are here because for more than 3,000 years, we have held this event to bring light and happiness to our hearts, to our lives.“