This 2024 presidential election presented to me the deepest sense of cognitive dissonance and alienation I’ve ever experienced. I was born into a Jewish Iranian family that immigrated, along with many other Jewish Iranians, to the United States in the lead-up to the 1979 Iranian revolution. My 2,700-year-old community had survived centuries of systemic antisemitism only to be followed by displacement and has yet again been triggered—by the atrocities of October 7 in Israel and the drastic rise of antisemitism.
I realize that my convictions are at odds with my own community and segments of the larger Jewish community.
Because of its history, the Iranian Jewish community has traditionally felt comfortable with a strongman-style protector such as the Shah of Iran. Although my community has been in the United States for or 45 years, it has invested little energy in civic education, in understanding American democratic processes, our branches of government, the checks and balances that our Constitution guarantees, and the protections afforded to religious minorities.
Suffice it to say, the Jewish Iranian-American communities largely centered in New York and California are staunch Trump supporters.
I, on the other hand, campaigned for Vice President Kamala Harris in battleground states, speaking about the state of antisemitism at home and aboard and warning of the dangers of a Trump presidency. As a political scientist, an expert in combating antisemitism, a diplomat who has met with both democratic and nondemocratic governments as an activist both for the Jewish people and the Jewish state, I have come to believe with the strongest moral clarity that unless our country is led by responsible leaders, the very safety and security of its citizens is threatened.
And yet, I am fully of this Jewish Iranian-American community. So you can see the cognitive dissonance that I have been living in. It has been an especially trying campaign given that post-October 7 America has seen an unprecedented spike in antisemitic incidents. I have seen anti-Israel encampments on university campuses up close, including at UCLA, where I teach as an adjunct professor. I have traveled to and advised Jewish communities as far away as Australia and across Europe, Latin America and South Africa as their realities were turned upside down, going from safe and integrated communities to unsafe and isolated ones.
There are deep divisions within the Jewish community as to which U.S. presidential candidate offered the stronger and more secure vision for both the American Jewish community and Israel. These divisions are troubling at such a dangerous moment, with Israel under attack on seven different fronts.
While I can see why those in the Jewish community in America and those in Israel have come to believe that President-elect Donald Trump can be trusted—and I fully acknowledge what his administration accomplished with the Abraham Accords, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli sovereign territory—I firmly believe that former and now president-elect Trump cannot be trusted with the safety and security of the Jewish community or Israel. I say this as someone who has documented, analyzed and fought antisemitism from the white supremacist right, from the radical left and within Islamist Jihadist ideology, as someone who has a deep understanding of the threats posed by the Iranian regime and its proxies.
I realize that my convictions are at odds with my own community and segments of the larger Jewish community. And that is certainly no easy or comfortable sensation to sit with. And I wonder, in this early post-election period, where we are headed. I wonder if my community will learn the hard way the blessings of our democracy only when it’s been weakened and diminished. I wonder if the historically strong allyship between Israel and the United States will be tested by ideologues such as JD Vance with his isolationist view of the world. And I wonder if the notoriously pragmatic leaders of the Iranian regime will figure out, just as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un have, that flattery and the prospect of a deal can go a long way with Trump.
The Iranian American community is under no illusion as to the threats that the Iranian regime poses to all that they hold dear. I wonder if they will come to realize, perhaps too late, that authoritarian-minded leaders tend to think and act alike.
For me, there was no greater blessing than my parents’ decision to bring us to America as we fled the fundamentalist zealotry of the Islamic revolution. Tomorrow, I will pick myself back up, dust myself off, and continue the fight against extremism, antisemitism and threats to our democratic system. To me, there is no cognitive dissonance between those values and advocating for the Jewish people and the Jewish state. I will keep fighting the good fight.
Sharon S. Nazarian, Phd, is the president of the Y&S Nazarian Family Foundation, serves on the national board of directors of the Anti-Defamation League, and previously served as senior vice president of International Affairs at ADL. She also teaches as an adjunct professor at UCLA and is a Moment Institute senior fellow.
Opening Image: Demonstrators outside the Israeli American Council Summit in Washington, DC, in September 2024. Photo by Megan Naftali.
Dr. Nazarian, Thank you for your courage of convictions and your life’s work with and for the Iranian Jewish Community. A most interesting and informative article.
Through the centuries, Jews in both Christendom and the Islamic world have been protected by kings. Yours is the first such community to make a sudden leap from that to the U.S.
THIS! Americans who immigrate from dictatorships are likely to vote for strongmen because that is what they know.
Perhaps we should consider only allowing immigration from democracies.