‘Is there a plan’: 6 months into war, Iranian Americans worry about future

‘Is there a plan’: 6 months into war, Iranian Americans worry about future

USA Today-Aug29th2026

LOS ANGELES ― When the war in Iran began, Freddy Kashani would set his alarm for 6 a.m., wake up and turn on the news, monitoring reports all day until bedtime. Kashani co-owns Saffron & Rose, a Persian ice cream shop in Los Angeles. His family is from Iran, and some of his employees have family members there.

A part of him was excited to see potential change in Iranian leadership. But as a war touted to last just weeks reaches its six-month mark, he has only questions — and a feeling like nothing is happening.

“What are we doing?” Kashani said. “Is there a plan?”

With no end in sight to a conflict that has seen neither side willing to concede much ground, Iranian American sentiments range from frustration and disillusion to defiance and flickering hope ― and, for many like Kashani, concern for loved ones still there.

The regime some hoped would topple has remained stubbornly in place and increasingly emboldened despite American military might and crippling economic sanctions, an outcome predicted by observers such as the National Iranian American Council in Washington, D.C.

“Our feelings leading into the war have been completely validated, I’m sad to say,” said council president Jamal Abdi. “We’ve warned for two decades against war, especially the notion that military action would liberate the Iranian people.”

A council-commissioned poll of Iranian Americans at the war’s outset found the community evenly divided for and against the United States’ attack on Iran ― a result the council found surprising given Iranian Americans’ longstanding opposition to war. Abdi believes people were still upset over the regime’s deadly January crackdown on civilian protests prompted by anger over a floundering economy.

A month later, a second poll found two-thirds of the community against the war

The effects of the war are easily measured in terms of lives lost, livelihoods ruined and worsened inflation. At least 3,400 Iranian civilians had been killed as of June 30, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, while consumer food costs were 128% higher in July than the year before. Nearly $60 billion has been lost in energy infrastructure alone, according to an Arab Gulf States Institute analysis, while major airports across the country have sustained extensive damage.