This article was produced as part of (JEWISH REVIEW)’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.
When reports of joint U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran began circulating early Feb. 28, Iranian Jewish families like Jamie Bokhour’s began checking their phones and trying to reach relatives abroad.
“In Great Neck, a lot of people, including myself, have family in Iran, so this isn’t just something happening far away,” said Bokhour, a high school senior, referring to the Long Island suburb with a large Iranian Jewish community.
For Bokhour and other teenagers with roots in Iran, the conflict is not only a geopolitical story but a personal one, tied to relatives, family history and the lives of young people their own age living under Iran’s repressive government.
“As a teenage girl, it’s really hard to watch what girls my age are going through in Iran,” said Bokhour, whose father’s family fled Iran during the revolution in 1979 when he was nine. “They face immense pressure and persecution under the regime, and many of them don’t have the basic freedoms that we take for granted.”
Interviews with students in Long Island and other diaspora communities reveal a common thread: Many Iranian American teenagers are trying to make sense of the war’s geopolitical stakes while also worrying about relatives who still live in the country.
Communication has been difficult. The internet monitoring group NetBlocks reported “a near-total internet blackout” in the country as the government attempts to suppress communication and potential anti-government organizing.
Yoni Pedram, a teenager from Long Island, said he has been closely following developments because relatives remain in the country. Around 10,000 Jews still live in Iran, down from over 80,000 before the 1979 Revolution that brought Iran’s Islamic regime to power.
“I feel that this war is necessary for the safety of Israel and the rest of the world,” Pedram said. “The Islamic regime is the biggest funder of terrorism worldwide. This war will weaken Iran’s terror proxies and also get rid of the threat of Iran’s ballistic and nuclear programs.”
At the same time, he said, the situation is deeply personal. His mother and maternal grandparents left the country in 1986, when his mother was three years old, traveling first to France and Canada before eventually settling in the United States. His father’s side of the family emigrated later, leaving Iran in 1996 and first moving to Austria before immigrating to the United States.
“I am concerned about Israel’s safety, since Iran has been sending barrages of ballistic missiles,” he said. “I am also worried for my family who are still in Iran. Although I have concerns, I understand that this is the price of war and that this war is necessary.”
Pedram described his connection to Iran as primarily cultural rather than political.
“I connect with Iran’s culture, as I am immersed in it,” he said. “For example, I understand and speak some Persian and I eat Persian food every Shabbat. However, I do not feel patriotic toward the country. Rather, I connect to the culture since it is part of my heritage.”
Despite the complicated relationship, he said he still feels empathy for people living there.
“I still pray for the people there,” Pedram said, “because they are being oppressed by the Islamic regime.”
Other teenagers described a similar mix of concern for relatives and hopes for change.
Sabrina Monasebian, a high school sophomore on Long Island, said she feels sympathy for people living under Iran’s government, which under the late leader Ali Khamenei suppressed dissent, restricted personal freedoms and carried out violent crackdowns on recent protests.
“I am showing my support to the people of Iran who have had to suffer decades of hardship because of terrorists running the country,” she said. “I feel happy but sorry for them at the same time.”
Her main concern, she said, is the safety of family members she has never met.
“I just hope my distant family that still lives in Iran stays safe and can hopefully continue a life there safely and freely,” she said.
NetBlocks data shows a near-total internet blackout in Iran since Feb. 28, 2026, following military strikes by the United States and Israel. (Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Growing up hearing about the Iranian government has shaped her perception of the country.
“I have always been intimidated by the Iranian government, their ideology and their capabilities,” Monasebian said. “Up until now, I never even considered visiting where my family grew up.”
Despite that, she said she hopes to one day meet relatives who still live there.
“I have a lot of family in Iran I have never met,” she said, “but I hope to meet them someday, hopefully in Iran.”
Joshua Fine, a 15-year-old student from Jericho, New York, said the conflict has sparked strong reactions within his family, particularly among relatives who left Iran decades ago.
“Many Iranians have been waiting a very long time for this,” Fine said. “The Iranian regime has robbed Iranians of human rights such as freedom of speech, press, assembly and religion.”
Fine said his hope is that the conflict eventually leads to political change.
“My main concern is that innocent lives will be lost,” he said. “But I hope the end of this war leads to regime change in Iran. Iran needs a secular democracy.”
The news has also stirred emotional reactions among older members of his family.
“When my grandmother heard the news, she broke into tears,” Fine said. “She hasn’t been back to Iran since the revolution, and her last wish before she dies is to go visit.”
Fine said much of his extended family eventually left Iran, settling in the United States, Israel and France, though some distant relatives remain there.
His grandmother immigrated to the United States with her family in 1962. Her father had been a prominent doctor in Tehran, but after immigrating he had to restart his career and redo medical school in the United States.
Fine’s grandfather came to the United States in 1968 after completing four years of military service in Iran, just before the revolution that reshaped the country’s political system into a conservative religious theocratic dictatorship.
Even as they follow the military and political developments from thousands of miles away, their concerns often return to the same question: whether their relatives and the people of Iran will be safe in the days ahead.
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