I went to A School as an Aviation Machinist’s Mate in Millington, TN in 1975-76, and there were a lot of Iranians there.
Personally, I had very few interactions with them except to watch them in classes or to see them marching around in formation. We didn’t fraternize with them, IIRC.
My overall impression was that they were somewhat unserious and frivolous, buttressed by the lone single experience I had with one.
We took part in self-paced learning where there was no instruction, but you read from manuals, took a test, and had it scored. Then you took your test, used a heavy duty electronic hole puncher to punch holes in the paper, and then put them in a binder assigned to you.
One day as I waited in a short line to punch my paper, I had an Iranian Jet Mechanic student behind me. As I got up to the machine and was squaring away my papers to punch them, the Iranian student grabbed my black tie, stuck it in the machine, and punched a hole in it!
He did it so quickly I was too surprised to be angry, and before my anger could come to a boil, he laughingly handed me a ten dollar bill and walked away.
Now, the tie only cost about a buck, and when you do the math, I was only making as an E2 about $12 a day! (sounds silly, but that is what it was-I have a pay stub!)
So, I got nearly a whole day’s pay for having a hole punched in my tie! I thought that was a good trade!
The Iranians as a rule seemed pretty...goofy. I saw them marching in formation once with a petty officer assigned to them, and they had stolen his cap and were tossing it around through the ranks as they marched...silly.
When I went to college after I got out, I had quite a few in my classes (I was a chemistry major) and most I liked. They seemed smart and had good senses of humor. We had one in my class who I became good friends with who when introduced to me, was Homayun Asmilie (I think) but he said “You can call me ‘Brian’!”
When the Embassy takeover took place, many of them became angry and upset because they were forced by their own country to go back to Iran, but there were at least two I remember who became very angry and sullen, and it wasn’t because they had to leave. They were fully on with what was going on over there. I can still see their glowering faces today. (Brian explained all this to me, but I don’t think he was one who went back, though when I graduated I never saw or heard of him again.
I had high hopes for Iran. I hoped they might be the country that would help fix the Middle East, and it didn’t turn out that way at all.
My experience with Iranians is that they consider themselves Zoroastrians, NOT mulsims. The ones who I met here had fled when the Shah was disposed and the islamists took over and they HATE the muslims.
That same school year, 1975-76, our college got a bunch of Iranians. They hated being here and made it very plain we were to never speak to them. They rarely showed up for class and never participated in any discussion. I never saw them turn in homework or show up for tests. Grading on the bell curve was popular so with the rule to pass the Iranians, we were screwed.
I’ve had other FRiends say that’s what happened on their campuses, too.