Local Business Owner with Iranian roots and UCSB Global Studies Professor Share Thoughts on Iran Conflict
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) – A framed photo in Ray Merpour's Santa Barbara Gas, Propane & Smog shop shows the former fighter pilot under the Shah of Iran next to his plane.
Other than that, you may not know his history of moving from Iran to California in January 1987, with a few stops in between.
Merpour said cousins have been calling to say they are okay but they are not able to say much else about the conflict.
"I do have relatives in a couple of different parts of Iran, I cannot call them but they call because the phone system is terrible and when ever they call me they just say they okay they don't say anything else about the war, I hear more about the war in the news than somebody calling me from Iran," said Merpour, "I hope the outcome will be something that is good for the Iranian people that is it."
He believes some people in the region want Iran to be divided.
And he said history has not shown success.
"They attack Afghanistan and after 20 years they hand it back to Taliban, and Libya, I think Iran is next what is going to happen to Iran, I am afraid of internal war within tribes in Iran."
He hopes journalists will report on the school children killed and other things that may get overlooked.
Merpour hopes for peace, but is not naive about the difficult path ahead.
A scholar who has taught students global studies for years had similar observations.
UCSB Global Studies Professor, Emeritus Mark Juergensmeyer, said via zoom that the United States and Israel have kicked a hornet's nest.
"There is no great love lost for the Ayatollah, it is not like everybody, everybody even in Iran loved him, the whole regime stunk to high heaven, but once you get rid of them, what are you going to put in their place? And so, yes, this was Netanyahu's idea and Trump went along with it and now here we are we. "
The founding director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies compared what is happening now to the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.
To his students and others Juergensmeyer shared several things to pay attention to:
"Several things to watch for, any indication about how this is going to end because Trump has said repeatedly he doesn't want to get bogged down on another endless war. The only thing that would do that would be ground troops and occupation, so look for any suggestion that that is going to happen.If he says oh they are just temporary they are there to stay. Look for what is happening within Iran. I there going to be an uprising, there already was and they put it down with the same forces that put it down a couple of weeks ago are still there and they are going to put it down again," said Juergensmeyer, "and the third thing to look for is breakaway groups the Kurds in the northwest and the Balochis in the southeast have already started mobilizing to take this moment of weakness from the Iranian government to break off and form their own regimes."
