SEATTLE — Washington lawmaker Darya Farivar was nervous in the days leading up to a vigil marking the anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman held in Iranian police custody for allegedly violating the country’s hijab law.
“I wasn’t sure what to expect,” said Farivar, a 46th District Democrat who is, at 28, the youngest member of the Legislature.
Farivar is also Iranian American, so it might seem natural she would speak at the Sept. 17 event on the University of Washington campus. But since Amini’s death, and the mass protests it sparked in Iran and around the world, Farivar has faced accusations — utterly false, she says — that she supports Iran’s Islamic regime.
In January, as the legislative session was about to begin, she received two threats by Instagram direct message, one saying she would get “four bullets in the middle of your forehead,” and one conveying misogynist sexual imagery.
Farivar said she decided to speak up about this now, in an interview with The Seattle Times and op-ed in The Stranger, because she’s tired of “this disinformation — not only because it’s upsetting to me, it’s upsetting to my family, but because it has had such a horrible impact on this community.”
Farivar is not the only one who says she’s been attacked. Other Iranian American leaders in Western Washington say they’ve been vilified amid divisions over how to challenge Iran’s hard-line Islamic regime, as well as differing views of what should follow a regime change.
Since a revolution installed a theocratic government in 1979, Iran has been criticized for repression of women and human rights abuses. While Iranians have protested before, Amini’s death in September 2022 sparked an unprecedented and sustained call to overthrow the government, which became ever more urgent as the regime’s backlash arrested thousands and killed hundreds, including dozens of children, according to human rights reports and the U.S. State Department.
“We’ve really been taken over by rage and really confusion,” said Shahrzad Shams, a retired UW professor of Persian Studies, who added the development is particularly heartbreaking given decades of Iranian Americans marking festivals and other events together.
Whether they can recover any time soon remains an open question, but some see hope in recent overtures across divisions. The fact that Farivar considers a success last month’s vigil — countered by a protester and marred by a scuffle, bringing UW police to the event — illustrates how bad the situations have been.
No charges were filed and Farivar said, “It did not completely disrupt things, which was great.”
An explosive situation
Roughly 14,000 Iranian Americans live in Washington, according to 2022 Census data, and many did come together in the aftermath of Amini’s death. They rallied for months in solidarity with Iran’s women-led protesters.
Hundreds attended the Seattle-area rallies, with thousands turning out for one event. The demonstrators included people who had relatives endangered in Iran by protesting, and those with firsthand experience of being jailed or assaulted by the Islamic government’s morality police. Optimism ran alongside trauma; there was a belief that a new Iranian revolution was afoot.
Farivar, born in the U.S. to parents who emigrated from Iran as adolescents, did not join the demonstrations. Many took notice.
Arezou Bagan, who helped found Voice of Iran, a group leading many of the local rallies, said Farivar showed “zero” support. Bagan said she had nothing personal against the lawmaker but felt Farivar, in stressing her Iranian American heritage on the campaign trail, was portraying herself as something she was not.
“How could she describe herself as a representative of Iranian women?” Bagan asked.
Farivar said she had COVID-19 when Amini was killed last September. In October of that year, she issued two statements declaring opposition to the Iranian government, one declaring it “an authoritarian regime murdering its own people,” and called for a state commission on Middle Eastern Affairs.
Yet even after recovering, she shied away from rallies. Recounting the past year in her Lake City home, she said it was difficult to find one she felt comfortable attending.
She pointed to an old Iranian flag, with a lion in the center, waved at many rallies. It dates to before the Islamic Revolution, and as such is a protest symbol. But Farivar notes it was flown under the last Shah — commonly viewed as a repressive, authoritarian ruler whose regime dissident members of her family escaped.
Different rallies sometimes aligned with different views about Iran’s future.
Some protesters would like to see Iran taken over by the Shah’s son, who lives in the U.S. and has called for a parliamentary monarchy, according to The Associated Press. Others support a non-monarchy democracy or, among a splinter group, a blend of Islamism and Marxism.
Farivar said she’s certain “the regime needs to go” but leaves the question of what comes next to those who live there.
The attacks on her continued into fall 2022, often on social media. When Farivar planned campaign meet-and-greets, one at a brewery and one with a Halloween theme, she was said to be, as Bagan put it, “partying” amid the collective grieving.
Two things lit a match to this already explosive situation.
First, Farivar, looking for support from local Iranian Americans, sought and received the endorsement of the Washington, D.C.-based National Iranian American Council. NIAC describes itself as a nonpartisan nonprofit seeking to give voice to Iranian Americans.
NIAC president Jamal Abdi, who grew up in Bothell, said the group’s values are progressive, including support for gender equality and abortion rights, and are “completely opposed” to those of Iran’s Islamic regime. But the nonprofit also supports diplomacy with that regime and opposes broad sanctions against Iran.
“We believe the tensions between the U.S. and Iran benefit the hard-liners that rule Iran,” he said, adding that the chant “‘Death to America’ is what keeps this sclerotic revolution intact.”
But others see such reasoning as cover for alignment with Iran’s rulers, holding an influential and pernicious sway on American policy.
In its online materials, Voice of Iran promotes a petition calling on elected leaders to renounce their NIAC endorsement, saying the group’s leaders “lobby and support this brutal regime during a time when the Iranian young pour into the streets and cry out for democracy.”
Farivar, who also opposes sanctions on the grounds that they would hurt ordinary Iranians, further inflamed NIAC detractors by objecting to portions of a Seattle City Council resolution proposed in December that expressed support for Iranian protesters. The portions condemned NIAC and called for an FBI investigation of its “corrupt influence on U.S. foreign policy.” The council indefinitely postponed the resolution.
A Persian-language media outlet serving the Iranian diaspora posted on the social media network X about Farivar’s and NIAC’s objections and the scuttling of the resolution. The Instagram threats came that night, she said, providing screen shots of the Farsi messsages.
Farivar had by then been elected with almost 60% of the vote. Even so, she said, “I felt like I was living in a conspiracy theory.”
Voice of Iran spokesperson Azadeh Forouzandeh said the organization’s members have not been involved in threats. “We would never do that,” she said.
She believes, however, that Farivar is affiliated with NIAC, citing the endorsement, the lawmaker’s opposition to the NIAC references in the City Council resolution and her refusal to renounce the organization.
Farivar said she might have seen such a request on social media but doesn’t think acquiescing would have stopped the attacks.
Looking for Iran’s agents
Meanwhile, accusations spread to others.
Shams, the retired academic, said she endorsed Farivar. “I was so proud of her and I thought others would be, too. … Immediately I was accused of being part of NIAC.”
Shams saw social media posts discouraging people from participating in events associated with UW Persian Studies or Peyvand, an immigrant-centered cultural and educational nonprofit Shams heads.
Afshin Sepehri, president of the Alefba Group, a Washington nonprofit devoted to Iranian and Persian culture, said he and his organization were also targeted for supposedly being aligned with NIAC. He said the claim is untrue, and while Alefba is nonpolitical, it has put on many events surrounding the struggle in Iran and its implications for human rights.
He believes the finger-pointing stemmed from a desire to do something to help Iranians and bring down the Islamic republic. But since activists couldn’t touch the real enemy, the regime, they started looking for its local agents — an explicit Voice of Iran goal.
Any remote connection to NIAC was good enough, as Sepehri saw it. “They were saying this guy is friend of that guy, and that guy is a friend of the other guy, and that other guy used to be a member of NIAC,” he said.
“But, now, I have good news,” he continued. “Things have changed.”
His organization recently received a conciliatory email from Voice of Iran with an invitation to talk. Leaders from both groups met a few weeks ago and discussed ways they could work together.
Voice of Iran leaders said they are indeed stressing unity and focusing less on identifying agents of the Islamic regime — though Forouzandeh said some were still supporting an effort to discredit a planned speaker at Georgetown University who once worked at NIAC and is now a journalist.
Generally, though, she said the Iranian regime’s propaganda has already been discredited. She added the past year has also been an intensely emotional learning process.
Forouzandeh said she emailed two other organizations seeking common ground. She has yet to hear back.
Shams, who received an email, said she was encouraged but not yet ready to respond. “The problem is it takes time to build trust again,” she said.
Forouzandeh, after being questioned in an interview about Farivar, also emailed the legislator.
The email conveyed “utmost respect” for Farivar and a shared commitment to democracy, noted “misunderstandings … due to inconvenient messages” she’d received and assured the lawmaker that Voice of Iran didn’t send those messages. It also invited discussion.
Farivar, who became emotional as she read the email, said she wasn’t inclined to respond at this point, in part because she felt the group didn’t acknowledge harm she’s experienced. “This is a textbook incident of gaslighting,” she said.
But nonetheless, she said the email was an important “sliver of hope.”
