The Burden of Exile: How Geopolitics Reshapes Belonging
- Bahareh Sahebi
- 2 hours ago
- 6 min read
A missed phone call from Tehran can unravel an entire workday. Friends who once laughed together now avoid conversations about Iran altogether. Family gatherings become emotionally charged as fear, hope, grief, and politics collide around the same table. Political events thousands of miles away are experienced not as distant news, but as disruptions to ordinary family life. Geopolitics doesn’t just change opinions. It changes relationships.
Being Iranian outside of Iran has never simply been a matter of migration. Immigration is not only a geographic transition but an ongoing relational process of negotiating identity, family, culture, and belonging across two worlds (Parra-Cardona et al., 2005). For many Iranians in exile, however, that process has been further shaped by the persistent influence of geopolitical conflict, making the future of Iran and the experience of belonging elsewhere increasingly difficult to separate.
As scholars of belonging have noted, belonging is never simply about geography but about recognition, security, and membership (Yuval-Davis, 2006). For many Iranians who built lives abroad, belonging has long carried an undercurrent of uncertainty. During moments of geopolitical tension, the distinction between a government and its people often begins to blur in the public imagination.
Assimilation can begin to feel less like cultural adaptation than self-protection. Many learn to move through public life with the quiet awareness that their identity may be viewed through the actions of a government they do not support (Sahebi & Ghafari, 2026).
That vigilance did not begin with today's headlines. It began decades earlier, with revolution and war that forced families into exile. Some rebuilt their lives in communities where language, culture, and shared history softened the loneliness of displacement. Others settled in places where few people understood where they came from or why they had left. There, belonging often felt less like something freely given than something that had to be earned, negotiated, and continually protected. Moments of geopolitical tension exposed how fragile belonging had always been.
During periods of heightened geopolitical tension, policies and public rhetoric have repeatedly reminded Iranian Americans that belonging can feel conditional. Families have found themselves separated by political restrictions, visa barriers, and periods of heightened geopolitical tension, while public discourse has at times blurred the distinction between a government and the people who fled it. These moments reinforce an old question: How quickly can acceptance become suspicion?
Some experiences were less visible but no less cutting. In conversations with Iranian professionals I know personally, several described moments that have stayed with them for years. One Iranian professional recalled being told by a colleague, “You know what we do with people like you here,” the remark accompanied by a hand gesture mimicking a gun. Others described coworkers asking whether they were “with us or with them,” or insinuating they might be “spying” or connected to terrorism. The threats were often indirect. The message was clear: you do not fully belong.
But policies are only part of the story. More often, the reminders arrive in ordinary conversations. Many people in the diaspora find themselves repeatedly asked to explain a country they may have left decades ago, while still trying to make sense of it themselves. Coworkers ask whether ordinary Iranians support the government. Friends ask whether military strikes are justified. Professors call on Iranian students to explain events unfolding thousands of miles away. The expectation may seem benign, but it places individuals in the position of representing an entire nation while simultaneously managing their own fear and uncertainty. Even moments of trying to step away from politics are interrupted by reminders that identity itself remains politically visible. It becomes difficult to simply be a colleague, a neighbor, a student, or a parent when events thousands of miles away continually pull you back into the role of representative.
Today, that fragile sense of belonging is being evaluated once again. As political unrest inside Iran has intensified and regional conflict has escalated, many Iranians in the diaspora have found themselves carrying two realities at once: worrying about the safety of loved ones abroad while navigating renewed uncertainty about how they are perceived at home. What once felt like an undercurrent of vulnerability has become part of everyday life.
Within that emotional landscape, external conflict can begin to look less like escalation and more like a desperate possibility that the regime's control might finally give way.
It is a painful double bind between different forms of danger: one that carries the uncertain possibility of change and one that means continued life under a regime many experience as violent and unyielding.
In January 2026, security forces responded to nationwide protests with a lethal crackdown that Amnesty International and the United Nations described as an unprecedented escalation of violence (Amnesty International, 2026; United Nations Human Rights Office, 2026).
Amid an unprecedented escalation of violence, thousands were arrested, and the internet was severed. Families were left searching for loved ones in a silence that signaled not calm, but catastrophe. As military escalation now redraws the headlines, many of those families remain without answers, their unresolved grief competing with the strategic language of war.
Across the diaspora, the crisis unfolded through fragmented information. Families refreshed Telegram channels, Instagram accounts, and encrypted messaging apps searching for signs that relatives were safe. The uncertainty transformed ordinary activities such as working, attending school, or caring for children into parallel experiences conducted alongside a constant search for information.
One Iranian American woman in Chicago, who shared her experience with me and asked to remain anonymous, described spending several days refreshing Telegram channels while trying to continue working after losing contact with relatives during the January internet shutdown. “You're trying to function normally,” she said, “while wondering whether people you love are alive.” The uncertainty followed her into meetings, conversations, and daily responsibilities, creating a split reality familiar to many in the diaspora.
The past year unfolded less like a series of separate events than like waves that never fully receded. One week brought protests, another brought mass arrests, another brought internet blackouts. Just as families began searching for loved ones through disappearing messages and fragments of online footage, military confrontation overtook the headlines. Before one uncertainty could settle, another had already arrived. For Iranians, both inside the country and across the diaspora, the emotional landscape became one of continuous anticipation rather than recovery.
For those in the diaspora, the question is no longer whether geopolitics shapes belonging. The question is how much strain belonging can bear before it begins to fracture.
What unfolds as geopolitics on television is experienced very differently in the lives of those who carry a homeland from afar. It enters conversations around the dinner table, follows people into meetings and classrooms, reshapes how they understand themselves, and quietly alters what it means to feel at home.
Rebuilt over decades, belonging erodes under the weight of rhetoric, restriction, and unresolved trauma. Across the diaspora, hope is often accompanied by the quiet recognition that even freedom may arrive through unbearable loss. It is anxiety, rage, grief, and fear held all at once. And beneath it all, the persistent ache of watching from afar, oceans away from the streets where history unfolds, unable to intervene yet unable to look away.
When tensions between the United States and Iran escalate, Iranians in exile are often pushed into three roles simultaneously: unofficial translators of a complex political reality, information networks for families and communities, and representatives of a country many have not lived in for decades. The result is that geopolitical conflict ceases to be foreign policy. It becomes an everyday negotiation of belonging, often requiring individuals to explain and defend experiences that many outside the community struggle to understand.
The burden of exile is an ongoing effort to participate fully in daily life while part of one's attention remains fixed on events unfolding elsewhere. Among Iranian Americans, that tension can make belonging feel less like a settled fact than an ongoing negotiation. Home becomes less a place than a divided attention carried into every ordinary day.
Because when a homeland burns, distance reveals something many people living between countries already know: belonging is never only about where we live. It is also about where our hearts remain, where our families wait, and where part of us continues to hope, fear, and grieve. Sometimes all at once.
References
Amnesty International. (2026, January 14). Iran: Massacre of protesters demands global diplomatic action to signal an end to impunity. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/01/iran-massacre-of-protesters-demands-global-diplomatic-action-to-signal-an-end-to-impunity/
Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497
Parra-Cardona, J. R., Bulock, L. M., Imig, D. R., Villarruel, F. A., & Gold, S. J. (2005). Trabajando con familias: Latino immigrant families, family therapy, and recommendations for clinical practice. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 31(1), 69–83. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-0606.2005.tb01543.x
Sahebi, B., & Ghafari, A. (2026). Individualized wellness as regulatory discourse: Rethinking neutrality and systemic responsibility. International Journal of Systemic Therapy. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/2692398X.2026.2691515
United Nations Human Rights Office. (2026, January 13). Iran: UN Human Rights Chief urges authorities to end violent repression and calls for accountability. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/01/iran-un-human-rights-chief-urges-authorities-end-violent-repression-and
Yuval-Davis, N. (2006). Belonging and the politics of belonging. Patterns of Prejudice, 40(3), 197–214. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313220600769331
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein belong solely to the columnist and do not represent the official position of our think-tank. Humanotions cannot be held liable for any consequences arising from this content. Content published on Humanotions may contain links to third-party sources. Humanotions is not responsible for the content of these external links. Please refer to our Legal Notices & Policies page for legal details and our Guidelines For Republishing page for republication terms.