Iranian Americans in SoCal watch Iran protests with a mix of hope and 'visceral dread'

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Tabby Refael’s messages to Iran are going unanswered.For weeks, she has called, texted and sent voice memos to loved ones in Tehran, where massive crowds have demanded the overthrow of the country’s authoritarian government.Are you OK? Refael — a West Los Angeles-based writer and Iranian refugee — has texted, over and over.

Do you have enough food? Do you have enough water? Are you safe?No response.When the protests, initially spurred by economic woes, began in late December, Refael consistently got answers.

But those stopped last week, when Iranian authorities imposed a near-total internet blackout, at the same time that calls to telephone landlines were also failing to connect.Videos circulating online show rows and rows of body bags.

And human rights groups say the government is waging a deadly crackdown on protesters in Tehran and other cities, with more than 2,000 killed.Like many in Southern California’s large Iranian diaspora, Refael, 43, has been glued to her phone, constantly refreshing the news trickling out from Iran, where, she fears, there is “a wholesale massacre occurring in the literal dark.” “Before the regime completely blacked out the internet, and in many places, electricity, there was an electrifying sense of hope,” said Refael, a prominent voice in Los Angeles’ Persian Jewish community.But now, as the death toll rises, “that hope has been devastatingly tempered with a sense of visceral dread.” Refael’s family fled Iran when she was 7 because of religious persecution.

Born a few years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, she was raised in an era when hijabs were mandatory and people had to adhere, she said, to the “anti-American and antisemitic policies of the state.” Refael has never been able to return.Like other Iranian Americans, she said she feels “a sense of guilt” being physically far from the crisis in her homelan...