Iranian Canadians ‘not a monolith,’ professor says as community reacts to U.S.-Israeli attacks

Reaction is pouring in from the Iranian diaspora across the Greater Toronto Area after a sweeping U.S.-Israeli attack over the weekend killed the country’s supreme leader and pulled about a dozen other countries into the conflict.

“It’s definitely a very bittersweet moment,” said Kimia Tehrani, an Iranian Canadian student and activist.

“I think I’m incredibly happy that a dictator that has taken over my life and my country over the past 46 years has finally died,” she said.

“[But] I’m obviously very upset at the civilian lives that are at danger right now, I’m upset because my family is back home and I don’t know what the future holds for them.”

The initial attacks happened on Feb. 28. In the 48 hours since, Iran has retaliated with a barrage of strikes targeting American bases situated across the Middle East as well as Israel and other Gulf States like the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, and Jordan, according to data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based institute.

At least 555 people in Iran are dead, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society. At least 52 have been killed in Lebanon and 11 were killed in Israel, according to local officials in both countries. Six U.S. soldiers have died, a post by the U.S. Central Command said on X.

Iranian community ‘restless,’ says imam

Iran is certainly in turmoil, said Maral Karimi, a lecturer in politics at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) and author of Iranian Green Movement of 2009: Reverbrating Echoes of Resistance.’

“People are divided politically but at the same time, they’re united in that they’re now living, once again, under war conditions,” said Karimi.

“The community is not a monolith.”

Over the weekend, Iranian Canadians gathered across the Greater Toronto Area calling for the end of the regime in Iran, with many voicing support for Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, though support for the exiled crown prince is not universal.

Mesbah Moosavi, imam and president of the Islamic Iranian Centre in North York, said that sometimes he can’t sleep because of what is happening in the country.

“The Iranian community, they are angry, they are furious, they are restless, they have anxiety for many things [that are] happening in Iran … many innocent people have been killed in Iran,” he said.

“As the founder of this centre, I always try to keep this centre neutral,” said Moosavi. “This is a religious place, not [a] political scene.”

Bänoo Zan, and Iranian-born author and poet who self-exiled from Iran in 2009, said she’s been “heartbroken” for the protesters who died fighting against the regime.

“I would like to see the voices of democracy activists uplifted, the people who would like to have a future Iran in which the voices of women, ethnic minorities and LGBTQ people included in the decision making [of the country],” Zan told CBC Radio’s Here and Now.

“My stress and anxiety is not only for my family members. All people who live in Iran are my family and are my relatives and are my kin.”

Canada shares U.S. concern on Iran’s nuclear program but prefers diplomatic solution, Anand says 

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand, who is in India alongside Prime Minister Mark Carney, said Monday that while Canada shares U.S. concerns about Iranian nuclear proliferation, it does not intend to be involved in any military operations and would like to see a diplomatic solution.

‘We haven’t even started hitting them hard’: Trump

Speaking with CNN on Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump said the “big wave” is yet to come in its attacks on Iran.

“We haven’t even started hitting them hard. The big wave hasn’t even happened, the big one is coming soon,” he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reiterated Trump’s comments a few hours later to reporters when he was briefing members of the U.S. Congress on Iran.

“The hardest hits are yet to come,” he said. “The next phase will be even more punishing on Iran than it is right now.”

In an earlier update provided at an unrelated event, Trump said Iran refused to cease its pursuit of nuclear weapons and that its conventional ballistic missile program was growing “rapidly” and presented a threat to the United States.

Trump previously said the U.S. had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program when it struck its facilities in June 2025.

Trump also laid out four U.S. objectives in Iran: destroying the country’s missile capabilities, “annihilating” its navy, ensuring Iran can’t obtain a nuclear weapon and ensuring the country’s regime “cannot continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.”

He projected that the assault could last four to five weeks, but also said the U.S. has “capability to go far longer than that.”