Persian Power: Community has achieved great success in business and professional life

Arezou Bakhtjou considers herself typical of young Iranian-American professionals. She is university-educated, works as a licensed real estate broker and expects to enroll at Whittier law school next fall with an eye on becoming a patent attorney.

But Bakhtjou is not a typical immigrant: She has been living in the United States for only 18 months. While even most Iranian-Americans consider her story somewhat unusual, she illustrates the rapid success this new local community has experienced in the past 25 years. From the Moshayedi brothers, founders of SimpleTech, a $300-million public company included on Inc. Magazine’s list of the Fastest Growing Companies in America, to Paul Makarechian, owner of the St. Regis Resort and Spa in Dana Point, to Dr. Fardad Fateri, former president of DeVry University, Iranians have achieved prominence in every aspect of business and the professions, from high-tech to education and the arts.

Persian accents are heard everywhere in Orange County, especially in Irvine and the South County area, but most people don’t know who Iranian-Americans are. In fact, nobody seems to know how many Iranian-Americans actually live in Orange County.

Worse, Iranian-Americans have had a difficult time being recognized as a distinct community by the public, the mass media, even the government, all of which tend to confuse them with Arab-Americans.

But as any Iranian-American will tell you, Persians are not Arabs, any more than Koreans are Japanese.

“Meaning no disrespect to Arab-Americans,” they tell everyone who will listen. “We are very proud of our own culture, our own language, cuisine and history.”

In fact, relations between Iran, or Persia, as the country was traditionally called, and the Arab world have been tense for many centuries (see sidebar, “The Tragic Pageant of Persian History”). And nothing annoys Iranian-Americans more than being mistaken for Arabs their accent and appearance is very different.

Furthermore, most Iranian-Americans consider themselves to be secular refugees from theocratic tyranny. They have no connection, whatsoever, with the current government of Iran, which they contemptuously dismiss as the “mullah regime.” In fact, many Iranian-Americans are not Muslim at all, but Jews, Bahais, Christians and even followers of the Zoroastrian religion of the ancient Persian Empire.

No one knows how many Iranians and Iranian-Americans live in the United States. Census figures indicate a nationwide population of roughly 330,000, but the Washington-based National Iranian American Council estimates that the actual number is at least 3 times as high. According to an NIAC report, this undercount is due to the lack of an “Iranian” box on census forms. Anyone who wants to be counted as of Iranian descent must specifically write in his or her origin by hand.

One thing is clear: While there are many working-class Iranians who can be seen stocking shelves at local discount stores, the majority are well-educated, high-achievers.

NIAC Executive Director Dokhi Fassihian says, “Iranians rank as having the highest percentage of master’s degrees of any ethnic group in the United States. Iranian culture puts a great deal of value on education, more than on other aspects of life.”

This trait may explain the success of Iranian-Americans in the professions: They see education as an asset that can last throughout their lifetimes. In general, they want stability and are not after the quick buck.

The Moshayedi brothers Manouch, Mike and Mark are examples of this class of educated Iranian-Americans. SimpleTech, the computer memory company they founded in 1990, is one of Orange County’s leading high-tech firms, employing 400 people. The company manufactures and markets a comprehensive line of more than 2,500 memory and storage products through a worldwide network of distributors. All 3 brothers are engineers, and Mark and Manouch hold MBAs, as well.

Makarechian, 30, is president and CEO of Makar Properties. Besides owning the $350 million St. Regis Resort and Spa, the UC Santa Barbara graduate is developing luxury hotels and communities from La Jolla to Palm Beach, including Pacific City in Huntington Beach, a high-end, oceanfront project that will include 516 condominiums; 191,000 square feet of retail, restaurant and office space; and a 400-room resort hotel. Born in Tehran, he grew up in the Untied States after his father, Hadi Makarechian, fled from post-revolutionary Iran.

“The mullah’s loss is America’s gain,” adds attorney Babak Sotoodeh of Tustin, founder and president of the Alliance of Iranian- Americans. “Imagine what has happened the cream of educated Iranian society has moved here, bringing all their skills with them.”

Some attended Iranian universities and immigrated; more attended American graduate schools and stayed on after earning advanced degrees, often working at menial jobs as they worked to become established. According to the old joke, “You could always tell which taxi driver is Persian he’s the one with Ph.D. on his license.”

In fact, the Persian community in the United States consisted mainly of students and former students until the “Islamic Revolution” of 1979 forced an entire educated class to emigrate. Many were loyal to a secular monarchy, others feared being sucked up by the meat grinder of the 8-year-long Iran-Iraq war, still others saw their businesses dry up as wealthy clerics gained a stranglehold on the national economy.

Dr. Fardad Fateri of Newport Coast was typical of the student-immigrants: He came to this country in 1981, when he was 16. He received a BA from UC Irvine, an MA in social sciences from Cal State Fullerton and a Ph.D. in organizational behavior from U.S. International in San Diego now called Alliant International University. He later did post-doctoral work at Harvard.

Dr. Fateri maintains that Iranian-American’s high level of education has allowed them to slip into the American mainstream with unprecedented speed. “The Iranian community has culturally assimilated faster than every other community that I have studied. Persians have been here in large numbers only since the 1980s, but we live among the general population rather than in isolated neighborhoods, and we intermarry.”

Dr. Fateri suspects that an important reason why Iranian-Americans have chosen to assimilate is the collapse of religious interest in their native country. “Only non-Muslim Iranians, such as Bahais, Jews and Zoroastrians, are tied to their religious communities; the rest of us don’t think that way. We are just Iranians.

“In Iran, there is nothing left to believe in, which can make us cynics disappointed idealists.” Throughout American history, new immigrant communities organized around churches, synagogues and even Buddhist temples. They also tended to move into distinct, ethnic neighborhoods. While there is a local Shiah mosque, few Iranian immigrants are religious. And while there is a concentration of immigrants in Irvine, they live everywhere, from Seal Beach to San Clemente. As a result, they don’t yet have a network of social service organizations. There is, for example, no Iranian-American equivalent of the Jewish Federation of Orange County, a secular umbrella group whose constituent organizations provide everything from day care to lunches for seniors.

But they are trying, by using the one tool a community of sophisticated professionals knows very well: networking.

“Our initial strategy is to connect the community through business and cultural networking,” says Hossein Hosseini, president of the Network of Iranian-American Professionals of Orange County. NIPOC sponsors social mixers, an annual trade show and the famous “Mehregan Persian Harvest Festival,” which attracts 20,000 people to the Orange County Fairgrounds every fall for a 2-day, 12-hour festival of food, live music, traditional costumes, games and more food. “Mehregan originated with the ancient Persian Zoroastrian religion followed by our ancestors,” says Hosseini. “The date is normally set by the ancient Persian calendar, but in America, Mehregan isn’t a national holiday, so we have to schedule it on a weekend. This year it is on Oct. 2 and 3.” Hosseini hopes to see his organization become a seed for a more organized Iranian-American community. “Eventually, we hope to be able to hire an executive director, and provide a broad array of educational and charitable services.”

Arab-Americans weren’t the only ones who felt the sting of the 9/11 backlash. Extremists assaulted turban-wearing Sikhs from India, and the FBI seemingly arrested just about anyone who had the misfortune of being born in a country with a government that supported terrorism. Among those caught up in the chaos were thousands of immigrants from Iran. “Iranians were asked to report to the FBI,” says attorney Sotoodeh. “Thousands did just to be law-abiding and all of them were arrested. The FBI even harassed Iranian engineers at work, telling co-workers that they want to interview them about terrorism and they never found anything.”

What shocked Sotoodeh even more was officials’ ignorance about Iranian culture and society. “They thought that we spoke Arabic! They even arrested an Israeli because he was born in Iran. What does he have to do with al-Qaeda? But they refused to listen.”

As a result of these struggles, Sotoodeh formed the Alliance of Iranian-Americans, a nonpartisan group active here and in Los Angeles. The AIA seeks to intervene in 9/11-related cases and to build public awareness. “We want to inform other Americans and public officials about who we are, that we are not a threat. We also want to inform our own community about their rights and their role in society. We want them to get involved.”

Sotoodeh adds, “Many are afraid the government will put everyone in internment camps, like the Japanese-Americans.” Easing into politics

Politics, American-style, doesn’t come easily to Iranian-Americans. They are, by custom, extremely formal and polite, even “Old World.” At mixers sponsored by NIPOC, every handshake is accompanied by a bow. One almost expects to see the members in top hats and monocles, as they cheer on the Lakers.

They also come from a country that has known the forms of democracy for nearly a century, but has never enjoyed the reality. And for that reason, they distrust politicians, and many are afraid that they could get into trouble if they take a stand on public issues. The result is a population that is not eager to join the rough-and-ready political life they see in this country.

“We aren’t used to speaking up, even though we now have the numbers to be heard,” says Hosseini. “We may be educated and worldly, but we don’t know how to be influential, how to work the political system. People don’t know that you can write to a congressman about some problem and expect an answer. Instead, politicians of both parties tend to see us as ATM machines, and they forget about us after elections.”

An Iranian-American who has entered the political fray is Irvine optometrist Dr. Mosen Alinaghian, a community pioneer who immigrated to California in 1968. A veteran of civic affairs in Fountain Valley and Irvine, Dr. Alinaghian is running for Irvine’s 4-seat city council. He is well-spoken about Irvine civic affairs and outspoken about its numerous problems, including sclerotic streets not built to handle the city’s current daytime population.

Among Iranian-Americans, opinions concerning the theocracy ruling their homeland range from mild disgust to visceral revulsion. Some want to see the regime left alone to slowly rot away; others want to see it overthrown by another “shock and awe” campaign. All, however, expect the current regime to fall within a few years.

If that happens, Orange County can expect a sudden spike in immigration, as the country slowly reorders its society and economy. Then immigration will likely taper off, as have previous waves from Europe and Asia. And as U.S.-born Iranian-Americans join the American melting pot, the ubiquitous Persian accent may go the way of the Irish brogue.

But by the time, jars of fesenjan will sit next to marinara in every supermarket, possibly to be served with corn chips and no one will confuse Persians with Arabs, or the other way around.

Note: The local Bahai and Zoroastrian communities did not respond by press time. OCM

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Persian or Iranian? They’re both, actually. Persia, or Fars, is the ancient term for the country. The people and their language are called Farsi.

And as all Persians are quick to point out, their language is not related to Arabic in any way. Like English, Italian, Russian, Urdu and Hindi, Persian is a member of the Indo-European family of languages and shares a number of grammatical ties. Some words, such as the Persian “lab” for the English “lip,” haven’t changed since the first Indo-European tribes went their separate ways perhaps 5,000 years ago.

Most ethnic minorities in the country speak a dialect of Farsi or a related language, such as Kurdish. Azaris in the northwest, however, speak a dialect of Turkish, and there are many Arabs living in the region bordering Iraq.

The term Iran is derived from Aryan, the name historians and anthropologists gave to a wave of tribes that migrated out of the Caucacus Mountains, traveling south and east into Persia and India.

Reza Shah adopted the current official name, Iran, in 1935, and the current regime has never changed it back. OCM

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The Delights of Persian Cuisine Writing assignments can take a journalist to wars, sewer plants or even city council meetings. But other assignments can take a writer and his family to more pleasant places, such as the imposing Caspian Restaurant and nightclub in Irvine, to acquaint themselves with Persian cooking and nightlife.

Hosts Esi Nabi, Bahman Jahangiri and Cyrous Fannyan provided a rich sampling of dishes that were both exotic and yet, somehow familiar.

Persian cooking, it seems, is an elegant, delicately seasoned barbecue served on tablecloths meaty dishes presented with class. The dishes feature ingredients every American knows, but are prepared in unique ways:

As one might expect, the featured main dishes are kabobs beef, lamb, chicken and shrimp broiled on skewers and served en brochette. A specialty is barg kabob seasoned filet mignon.

An entirely different form of kabob is koobideh ground beef or chicken mixed with egg and seasonings, and broiled on a sikh a flat, sword-like skewer.

Persian cooking is always served with rice, but not plain, vanilla rice as is known in most countries. Instead, Persians use aromatic basmati rice, or polo, as the base of a variety of side dishes combined in ways that surprise Westerners. We tried baghala polo, made with fava beans and heavily seasoned with dill, and adas polo, mixed with currants, dates and saffron.

Appetizers ranged from kashk o’bademjan, a delicious eggplant dip made with whey, sautéed onion and mint to the more familiar stuffed grape leaves and humus. Shirazi salad turned out to be a Mediterranean cucumber and tomato salad seasoned with mint instead of parsley or cilantro.

The most interesting dish, however, is khoresht fesenjan, a sauce for rice that is as improbable as it is delicious, a sort of tart and purple marinara made with chicken, ground walnuts, onions and lots of pomegranate juice.

But a Persian dinner is not entirely about food; it is about friends, family and atmosphere. Tables at the Caspian are large, with many arranged in long rows to accommodate several generations of extended families.

And then there’s the dancing, and the dancing, and the dancing: Accompanied by a live band, belly dancers prance about the tables, gathering up wives, daughters, grandmothers and great-grandmothers, until the dance floor is packed with proper, well-dressed, gyrating ladies.

The dancing gives husbands, fathers and grandfathers a chance to lean back, loosen their belts, and enjoy a baklava and a cup of tea scented with cardamom.

The Caspian Restaurant is at 14100 Culver Drive in Irvine, off the 5 Freeway in Irvine. Call (949) 651-8454 for reservations or visit caspianrestaurant.com. OCM

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Persia suddenly burst into the West after King Cyrus, known as Kurosh in Persian, united the Medes and the Persians in the 6th century B.C., founding the Achaemenid Dynasty.

One of history’s truly remarkable rulers, Cyrus is the great liberator of the Bible who freed the Jews from Babylonian captivity. His successors tried to conquer Greece, but were beaten back in such epic battles as Marathon and Salamis.

Alexander the Great conquered the Achaemenids in 331 B.C. and burned their capital, Persepolis, whose ruins remain hauntingly beautiful today.

Three hundred years later, Parthian rulers held off repeated Roman attacks on the country. In the late 6th century A.D., the great Persian King Khosro conquered most of the eastern Mediterranean but was stopped at the gates of Constantinople by the Byzantine Emperor Heracleas.

In the year 637, invaders professing the new religion of Islam suddenly burst out of the Arabian Desert. In a few short years, these Arabs conquered all of Persia, imposing their own language and alphabet, all but destroying native Persian culture. It took the country 300 years to regain its independence.

This invasion, and its brutal aftermath, was the single, most-searing event in Persian history. If there is 1 thing that unites all Persians, even those who support the current regime, it is a resentment of that invasion and subsequent Arabic cultural influences.

Persia eventually adopted the Shiah strain of Islam, which reveres Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed, and his descend-ants, while Sunni Islam prevailed in most of the Arab world.

Arab rulers were followed by a succession of dynasties, most of them of Turkish origin, until 1925, when Reza Shah founded the last Pahlavi dynasty, and tried to restore Persian national pride and power.

Although the country still retains the new name he gave it in 1935, Reza Shah largely failed to force the major powers to recognize Iran’s sovereignty. The reason was geography: The Russians, both tsarist and Communist, saw Persian territory as an outlet to the warm water of the Persian Gulf, while the British saw Russian ambitions as a threat to their oil supply.

Although neutral in both world wars, Iran became a battleground in both. During World War I, Turkish and Russian forces fought each other in the north. During World War II, Soviet and British forces partitioned the country into “spheres of influence” in order to secure a supply route from the United States to the Russian Front.

The rise of the Cold War caused the Soviets to try to maintain its sphere, attempting to detach much of northern Iran into a “People’s Republic of Azerbaijan.” A few years later, a nationalist prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, allied himself with the pro-Soviet Tudeh party, which caused the United States to help engineer his downfall.

The last shah, Reza Pahlavi, was overthrown in 1979 by religious theocrats who created the “Islamic Republic” so detested by Iranian-Americans.

It was that upheaval that drove many of Orange County’s Persian immigrants out of their ancestral land. OCM

Great post Cy,

On your 'about' page you mentioned that the name 'Persia' came about with the Greeks. The blend of 'f' and 'p' is common with Greek words such as 'phosphorus' or 'philosophy' where the 'p' becomes an 'f'.

"most Iranian-Americans consider themselves to be secular refugees from theocratic tyranny."

“Iranians rank as having the highest percentage of master’s degrees of any ethnic group in the United States. Iranian culture puts a great deal of value on education, more than on other aspects of life.”

“You could always tell which taxi driver is Persian he’s the one with Ph.D. on his license.” LoL

3 posted on 07/20/2004 7:25:44 PM PDT by nuconvert (Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror and you wouldn't have been notified.)

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