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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Dellaram Vreeland

As an Iranian Australian I feel helpless watching the war unfold and pray for peace – but prayer must be coupled with action

A woman and child walk by a building damaged by US-Israeli strikes
A woman and child walk by a building damaged by airstrikes on Tehran during the US-Israel war on Iran. Photograph: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

As a second-generation Iranian migrant, I’ve been suffocated by helplessness over the past two months as my spiritual brothers and sisters in Iran fight for a sense of freedom in their home country. Now, as war hits the region, millions of Iranians living around the world watch with trepidation, praying for peace in the face of yet another harrowing conflict.

My family fled just before the Iranian revolution in 1979. We are Baháʼís – members of the largest non-Muslim religious minority in Iran. Bahá’ís have been persecuted since the faith’s inception in the mid-19th century and, in times of unrest, things get worse. We can only imagine what is in store.

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