By Mikaprok for SouthFront
At a time when the United States is imposing sanctions one after another against Iran, “persians” in the US feel themselves comfortable.
A formal reason to write about this – the last week it was anounced that in Uber, instead of Mr. Kalanik, corporate governance is shifted to Dara Khosrowshahi.
Let’s start with him. It is very interesting – unlike the previous underdog, Mr. Khosrowshahi is from the American establishment.
Dara Khosrowshahi was a long-time CEO of Expedia, and now moved to Uber for a fantastic salary, keeping in mind company that records billions of dollars in loses every year.
Khosrowshahi’s brother, Kaveh Khosrowshahi, is a managing director with Allen & Co. His cousin, Amir Khosrowshahi, co-founded Nervana, an artificial intelligence company that Intel acquired last year for more than $400 million. He is also cousins with Hadi and Ali Partovi, high-powered twins who are both founders and tech investors.
Two other family members include Farzad “Fuzzy” Khosrowshahi, who played a role in creating Google spreadsheets, and Avid Larizadeh Duggan, a London-based general partner at GV.
And that’s not all.
His distant relative Hassan Khosrowshahi, co-founder of Future Shop and investment bank, one of the richest people in Canada.
Another relative – Darian Shirazi, founder of Radius.
He was on of the early Facebook employee and eBay advisors. By the way, the latter e-market was founded by Pierre Morad Omidyar, person of Iranian origin.
Mr. Shirazi is also distant relative of Amiran Ansari, who donated a huge amount of money to so-called Ansari X-Prize, the biggest technological competition in the world with prizes up to tens of millions of dollars.
One of the first laureates was well-nown Elon Musk, who was mentioned by Hadi Partovi at the time.
By the way, space conquest has its own list of sponsors. Majors are: Citigroup, Intel and Verizon. At the level of exec-level of corporate governance there are: Hamid Biglary, Sharif Shirazi, etc…
Tasks for the competitions were provided by the Stevens Institute of Technology with President Nariman Farvardin, relative of Kaveh Khosrowshahi.
And in the previous company of today’s CEO Uber, Expedia, traditionally sponsored Ansari X-Prize.
This is a small world.
If you accidentally spot any area of the national economy in the United States, where there is money / resources or need some fresh brains, then at the top you will find exactly 1-2 Americans of Iranian origin.
They are literally everywhere.
For example, the recently passed away first female winner of the Fields Medal – Miriam Mirzahani.
Or take ex-CEO Youtube Salara Kamangar. Or the same Shahram Dabiri, the creator of WoW (World of Warcraft), who worked on the game from 1999 to 2007.
It’s an amazing.
If we unite all ethnic minorities from Iran we get about half a million according to official information and about 2 million unofficial. It is impossible to say exactly, because all those people who left in the period 1980-1981 and their children listed themselves often without national binding. Moreover they traveled sometimes through Europe.
With only 0.6% of the country’s population (and this is the largest estimate), they are one of the most influential and wealthy communities in the melting pot.
At least 3 influential families stay permanently in the Forbes list, if we look at the formal grounds. If informally, then there is much more evidance.
One of the three Iranian households has an annual income of more than $ 100K (the average is 1 out of 5).
It is interesting to note that they are one of the most educated social groups in North America for the moment.
E.g.: in 2003 in Stanford most of the foreign students who successfully passed the entrance exams were from one particular educational institution – Sharif University of Science and Technology in Tehran.
From 1985 to 2005, the number of Iranian students (both local and foreign) in the most prestigious star-striped universities tripled.
For comparison, in Canada, for local universities its number increased by 240%, in Australia – by almost 1500%!
In contrast to the level of education: the Iranians are also the least religious groups. Not only in Muslim context – formally, there is abot 1/3 of believers, – but also among the ethnic groups inhabiting the United States.
A surprising fact, if you look at modern Iran and compare it to the reign of Shah Pahlavi.
Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi lives in the US and in all interviews he formulates religious views as follows: “I was brought up as a Shia Muslim and I am very much a man of faith.”
Of course, these are the words of a diplomat, not a Muslim.
Although outwardly they look like a densely knocked down closed community.
Iranians regardless of the internal ethnos, maintain contacts with each other and always act as a united front. Borrow money, take collective obligations, etc. Where there is one person two more appear immediately :-)
They penetrate businesses as families and do not consider themselves as individual entrepreneurs. Even at the level of Forbes-like awards. So they write, as in the good old days, this land belongs to “Khosrowshakhi” without specifying a member of the community.
Following Dara, we are now waiting for the arrival of new faces in Google and Facebook.
There are a lot of Iranian people on the second roles.
Iranians are smarts. Arabs are stupids.
Syrians and iranians should not go to USA and help USA. Syrian gave USA Apple, the richer US company.
Don’t help the ones that want to kill you.
Most Iranians in the US fled there after the revolution, when Iran was in chaos, anyone associated with the former regime in danger. They didn’t go there to help the Great Satan, but to save their own lives. Others still come in search of the American Dream, a better life and more freedom. Think of that what you will, but that is their view. From personal experience I know that in the Middle East jobs are hard to find even for educated people, and government bureaucracy is out of control in almost every country. Which breeds corruption. When you can’t get a job, you can’t start your own family. So emigrating to the West becomes mighty attractive.
Similarly, because so many young men in the Middle East can’t get jobs and thus cannot start a family that’s what attracted them to ISIS in the first place. ISIS offered opportunity, a purpose, adventure and probably most important of all, the chance to get women. Even if it was just a sex slave.
Just bullshit.
You are a troll. You are blocked.
Who cares what you say ?
I agree with Serious, bullshit.
Many fled before some even as soon as Mossa Degh was killed and afterwards they kept fleeing , the Shah was no picnic for many and why they fled. The Shah and his Family make the 80′ look like years of moderation, things are similar today in religious freedoms but you don’t have the constant secret executions in the days of the Shah.
Everyone always seeks better opportunities , today they are not as many of the opportunities and the struggle is more difficult, as it is about who you know and not what you know.
Most Iranians who migrated to US after the revolution were wealthy families with ties to the ruling family. You don’t need a job if you are wealthy, you’ll create your own, just like they did in the US. And parts of the hardship right after the revolution and the following years was the wealth they took with them which had a hard impact on the war-torn economy. After the war, another group started to migrate: not so wealthy but educated. They generally migrated to Europe, Canada and Australia. The country’s conditions after the war was also hard. We had to rebuild and repair a damage of almost $1000 bn. Losing those brains had a sever impact too. Sanctions didn’t help also. It’s slowly changing. Brains are returning (with more knowledge) and Iranian wealthy investors started to come too. We’ll see the changes for the better IF another war doesn’t come.
You are over simplifying. Not all people that went to US were rich. People like Anosheh Ansari made their fortune there. During Khatami he tried to connect to diaspora but Revolutionary guard put a stop to it since it would decrease their hold of power. Now since they are in a critical condition with economy the situation is different, but again they put people like Namazis in prison with no grounds, again because they are affraid of diaspora. It is a very complicated story, I doubt there would be a war, more likely it would be an implosion like Soviet.
I’m sure not all of them were rich, that’s why I started with “most Iranians… after the revolution”. Perhaps If I wrote “right before and immediately after the revolution” you would understand me better.
I can assure you, without a war implosion will not happen at all. Until the a few years ago I was were you are now. You are Iranian so you know the meaning of “my head stinks of Ghorme-Sabzi odour”. Well, “stank”, not anymore. My view changed as I started to receive news Now I give the IR the benefit of the doubt. If they imprison someone (one in uncounted dual citizenship Iranians visiting Iran every year) and say he works for foreign spy agencies, don’t automatically assume it’s groundless. The loudest of Iranian diaspora are utterly powerless and are just the pawns in this game, tools for various governments to pressure Iran, mostly by affecting the people through media networks. Fortunately the result is less than impressive, as none of them can gather a meaningful number of domestic population around a subject. Take care.
Probably many times they are right, but I doubt that an 80 year old guy that has been working for UN all his life and is father of an accused would do any spying activity. Some times things are done to put pressure on the government or to create tension.
Many of the Iranians who left Iran after the revolution were members and or supporters of of the previous sell out regime, this includes many Jews, Freemasons, Bahais (A type of Freemasonry within Islam), and and other pro-US types. Not only do many of these traitors not help Iran in any way to this day many of them are active in hurting Iran’s interests in every way they possibly can. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars throughout the decades in undermining Iran’s current government in accordance with American and Zionist interests. The supporters of Reza Pahlavi have allied themselves with every force or organization that wants to see Iran destroyed. The people of Iran will never forget or forgive these scums for what they have done.
Also many people don’t know this but Iranians both inside and outside of Iran are under the most severe psychological propaganda campaigns that exists in the modern world. US, England, and Israel have created literally hundreds of active and well funded media networks spreading 24/7 propaganda designed to destabilize Iran and undermine Iran’s current government. They also have thousands and I literally mean thousands of active social media users pretending to be Iranian spreading propaganda on all social media. This propaganda campaign is so severe that even I was partially brainwashed by it until only a few years ago. I don’t think there is any other country in the world that is under such extreme level of disinformation campaign as Iran is.
sad to say from the photo above and other sources, the reason for fleeing is the issue of wearing of the hijab … that speaks volume of their faith and fate
Not having faith is no reason to betray your country. I have no faith in Islam either but I’m fiercely nationalistic as are many other secular Iranians.
Don’t see any connection to this article. But now If you are outside and don’t support the regime you are not suddenly a sellout.
If you don’t support Iran’s government at a time when all the enemies of Iran are openly and boldly stating their desire and intention to see Iran completely destroyed you’re beyond a sellout.
Using your logic the people in power would always create tension to get peoples support. Like How Trump is doing in US.
We didn’t create the tension, we have been in a constant defensive state since we overthrew the illegitimate US installed puppet government of Pahlavi. We didn’t incite and support Saddam Hussein to invade us and kill hundreds of millions of Iranians, we didn’t put global sanctions on ourselves, we don’t threaten ourselves with destruction and invasion on a constant basis throughout international media, we didn’t shoot down our own passenger plane, we didn’t assassinate our own nuclear scientists, we didn’t sabotage our own nuclear program, and of course I can go on for hours but to sell out traitors none of this means anything nor does any of it boil their blood so I know I’m just wasting my time.
That’s right, you’re not a sell out by not supporting the government. The sell out are the ones who call for bombing of Iran for “peace” and “freedom”. The ones like Shazde (Prince) who decides for me the future government of Iran will be constitutional monarchy, and he will accept the crown’s burden for the good of the people, and says he doesn’t want to, but he has no choice!
You’re a sell out if you sell your country for your gain. Unfortunately, there’s not a shortage of sell outs in Iranian diaspora. The monarchists are the most harmless ones and by far the least informed about Iran’s conditions today (they live in the past), the most dangerous ones (literally, murderers they are) being MEK, and the most cunning ones work for Israelis (surprisingly to outsiders, very few Iranian Jews work for Israel).
Regarding article, about the Iranians in American society, good thing for the American Average Joe is that Iranian – sell out or not – are interested in producing something by their work. They normally don’t go for politics and secret societies and are not interested in banking and usury. I’d say ONE certain group interested in usury if more than enough for any country!