Mixed reactions in Winnipeg following attacks on Iran

Iranian Manitobans are worried about their loved ones tonight, but also hopeful major change is coming to the country. Harrison Shin explains.

It was a weekend of mixed reactions in Winnipeg after an early Saturday morning military operation by the U.S. and Israel killed Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

On Saturday, members of the Iranian community braved the cold weather, thanking U.S. President Donald Trump for military intervention against the Islamic regime.

Demonstrators supporting Iranian protesters gathered at the parking lot of CF Polo Park Saturday afternoon after the launch of a major attack against the Islamic regime. Vehicles decorated with the Pahlavi dynasty’s Lion and Sun flags and Canadian flags departed the parking lot and headed west in a rallying fashion.

“It’s a mixed feeling at this moment,” one of the demonstrators, Shervin Shahidian, told CTV News Saturday. “We are mostly happy in our hearts because we know the end (to this Islamic regime) is soon — but at the same time, we are very worried about our loved ones.”

Shahidian believes Trump made the right decision to intervene.

“The regime that didn’t care about 60,000 lives of its own people – you think if their ambition (is) to get to the nuclear power, they would hesitate to attack all those free nations if they wanted to?

“Do you trust that kind of regime? I think President Trump did the right decision, to protect the world – not only Iran.”

He said with the “surgical attacks” by Israel and the U.S., Iranian people will get to their “liberation faster and sooner than ever.”

Farimehr Hakemzadeh, another demonstrator on Saturday, said she wasn’t surprised about the intervention.

“My first thought was ‘finally.’ We have been waiting for this for a long time,” she said on Saturday.

“There were signs. We didn’t know when it was going to happen and if it is going to be the right time. We were very worried about the people of Iran fighting this fight alone.

“We are hoping that this is a right time for them.”

‘It’ll never be right to illegally invade a sovereign country’

On Sunday, Peace Alliance Winnipeg held a protest condemning the attack in front of the U.S. consulate in Winnipeg.

Candice Bodnaruk, an executive member of the organization, said there is a common thread among recent U.S. actions against Venezuela, Cuba and now Iran.

“They all support Palestinian self-determination. They voted in support of Palestine at the U.N., they are highly critical of Israel, and Trump and Netanyahu want to silence them and get rid of them,” she said Sunday.

Bodnaruk then referred to the amount of oil supplies in Venezuela and Iran. When asked by a reporter if she was saying Trump has an ulterior motive, she agreed.

“Yeah, definitely. They want that regime change so that they can go in there, they can control it and it can be their playground.”

In response to the Iranian community’s car rally at CF Polo Park on Saturday, Bodnaruk described the rally group as “conservative, right-wing Iranians that also support Israel.”

“You see Israeli flags as well at those rallies — which are really concerning. Yes, they have every right to express their concerns. In our view, it’ll never be right to illegally invade a sovereign country and to topple the government.”

Bodnaruk emphasized the importance of protest.

“I think there’s a lot of misinformation out there. It’s very easy to say that ‘okay, this is a state with a totalitarian government,’ and that could very well be.

“But that doesn’t mean that we have the right, as the West, to go in and install puppet governments, kill people as we go, and then say ‘okay, now we’re happy with it.’”

‘A plural approach’

Maya Mahshid Rad-Spice, an Iranian Manitoban living in Thompson, said it has been a mix of emotion.

“The first few hours in the day when Ayatollah Khamenei was killed, it was more towards joy and exhilaration, but then as time goes – worry and concern,” she said on Monday.

Internet connection has been unavailable and with the attack getting more intense, Rad-Spice’s worry and concern increased, she said.

“I think the first few strikes, I could still talk to my family and friends that were still connected. About two days ago, it has been only through messages … I haven’t directly been able to talk to any of my family members.”

With future of Iran still uncertain, people like Mohammad Soleyman Nejad said the days ahead will be tense for Iranians.

“When someone asks them, ‘how are you?’ the answer is not as simple as good or bad – because the amount of stress and pressure that is on them is absolutely crazy,” Soleyman Nejad told CTV News on Monday.

Both Rad-Spice and Soleyman Nejad said they would like to see plurality in Iran’s future.

“I would love to see freedom happening and the road to that goes through a plural approach in bringing together all of that diversity that is resided in Iran,” Soleyman Nejad said.

“I want to see a free, democratic Iran – a secular country … we have many different ethnicities, we have different people, we are a country that has a history of all these people peacefully live together on a beautiful land,” Rad-Spice said.

Beginning in late December, demonstrators took to the streets in multiple cities in Iran amid economic crises. The Islamic leadership has been in power since 1979 after the Islamic Revolution ousted the Pahlavi dynasty.

During the early hours of Saturday, the U.S. and Israel launched a major attack on Iran. The Islamic regime’s paramilitary, the Revolutionary Guard, said it retaliated by launching strikes against military targets in several countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Israel.

Saturday afternoon, Iranian state media reported Khamenei’s death. He was 86.

With files from CTVNews.ca staff and The Associated Press