Iranian Americans despise the Islamic Republic more than almost any group on earth. They fled it. They lost family to it. They protest against it every weekend in cities across America. They showed up to CPAC in numbers I have never seen at any political event, because Reza Pahlavi, the man who represents everything the regime is not, was speaking.
And then they go home and do not vote.
Less than 4% of Iranian Americans cast a ballot in U.S. elections.
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Let that land. The community most motivated to see the Islamic Republic dismantled, the community that understands better than anyone what American foreign policy means for the people of Iran, the community that flew flags and filled a CPAC hall for a conservative prince in exile, cannot be moved to participate in the elections that determine American foreign policy.
The regime’s lobbyists are laughing.
This is not a small irony. It is a strategic disaster.
While Iranian Americans march on weekends and post on social media and rally around symbols of resistance, foreign interest groups with direct ties to factions inside Iran spend millions every year in Washington. They fund think tanks. They hire lobbyists. They cultivate relationships with members of Congress. They understand that the real battlefield for Iran’s future is not on the streets of Los Angeles or Houston. It is in the halls of Congress and the Oval Office.
Iranian Americans have something those groups will never have. Citizenship. The legal, constitutionally protected right to vote, organize, donate, and elect the people who set American policy toward Iran. No amount of foreign money can buy that. No lobbying firm can replicate it. It is the most powerful political tool in the world, and we are leaving it completely unused.
I understand how we got here.
I was born in Iran into a Baha’i family, one of the most persecuted religious minorities in the Islamic Republic. My family was forced out because of our faith. I came to America, served as an infantryman in the U.S. Army, and have spent over a decade working in politics and civic advocacy. I know what it costs when freedom disappears. I also know what it takes to protect it.
What it takes is showing up. Not just on weekends. On Election Day.
The reasons Iranian Americans do not vote are real, and they deserve to be understood, not dismissed.
In Iran, political participation was a survival calculation. The wrong opinion could mean imprisonment. The wrong association could destroy a family. Generations were taught, out of genuine necessity, to stay quiet, to build privately, to treat political visibility as a threat. That instinct traveled with us when we came to America. And in the early years of building new lives in a new country, the silence made a certain kind of sense.
But the conditions that justified that silence no longer exist. Iranian Americans are not new arrivals trying to survive. We are an established community with deep roots, significant economic power, and the full legal rights of American citizenship. What we have not built is political power proportional to any of that.
That gap has consequences that go far beyond our community.
Consider what is happening in Washington right now. Foreign interest groups and foreign-funded organizations with stakes in Iran policy spend millions of dollars every year lobbying members of Congress, funding think tanks, and shaping the foreign policy conversation. They understand something that too many Iranian Americans have not yet accepted: that the most powerful lever for what happens in Iran runs through American elections.
Iranian Americans do not need millions of dollars to compete with that. We have something far more powerful.
We have citizenship.
The right to vote cannot be purchased or lobbied away. It belongs to us by law. And right now, we are leaving it on the table while others use their resources to fill the vacuum we have created.
The Iranian Americans who filled that CPAC hall showed up for a man whose values align with theirs, whose vision for Iran’s future reflects what they came to America believing. That instinct is exactly right. The problem is that it stopped at the conference hall door.
Every senator who sets Iran sanctions policy was elected by someone. Every president who decides whether to engage or confront the regime won because voters showed up. Iranian Americans could be those voters. In key states, in competitive districts, in local races that send people to Washington, our numbers are large enough to matter. But only if we use them.
The regime does not fear our protests. It does not fear our social media. It does not fear our rallies.
It fears a politically organized Iranian American community that votes, donates, runs for office, and holds American politicians accountable for their posture toward Tehran.
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We have been giving them nothing to fear.
That ends when we decide it ends. Not with a march. With a ballot.
Brian Taef is a U.S. Army veteran, political professional, and Iranian American civic advocate. He is the founder of We Are Cyrus, a nonprofit organization operating in 24 states focused on Iranian American civic engagement. Disclosure: the author has a direct organizational interest in the subject of this piece.