When I was in college, the Iranian Revolution stranded dozens of my classmates at the University of Louisville, where most were studying engineering. It was one of the best things that ever happened to my hometown because so many of those Iranian students turned into educators, business leaders, entrepreneurs and restaurateurs, Mehrzad Sharbaiani and Anoosh Shariat just to name two. Since then, I’ve had Iranian girlfriends, friend friends and roommates. Some of our closest friends from Louisville are Persian.
We had several business and healthcare leaders, including Dr. Mehdi M. Yazdanpanah, founder and CEO of NaugaNeedles, a Louisville-based medtech company specializing in advanced scanning probe microscopy, not to mention like a hundred doctors and surgeons.
Nationally, Iran-born entrepreneurs in the U.S. rival the founders and CEOs from India, Taiwan and China. Major business leaders include Iran-born Arash Ferdowsi , co-founder of Dropbox, Dara Khosrowshahi at Uber and Mike Doustdar at Novo Nordisk, raised in the U.S., and now CEO of the Danish pharma giant.
Here in the Netherlands, Delft-educated Nearfield Instruments co-founder and CEO Hamed Sadeghian is from Iran. Hamed has built the TNO spinout into a major mechatronics player, and he supports Fe+male Tech Heroes.
The case for going
Now, with the Islamic Republic on the verge of collapse after attacks by the U.S. and Israel, the question is, will the best and brightest Persians in Europe’s tech ecosystems return to Iran, which is what I would do, or do more Iranian techpats talents aspire to come to Europe?
My money is on the Iranian people telling the mullahs, “Enough” after the indiscriminate slaughter of thousands of protesters in January.
So, let’s say for the sake of argument that this feeble and evil regime finally falls.
As of 2020, the latest data I could find, there were about 500,000 Iranian citizens in Europe. The advantage of staying is, Iran’s future could be magnificent. It has massive untapped natural resources and a population young (median age 35 compared to the Netherlands at 43 years old) and talented enough to leapfrog past, say, the United Arab Emirates. Tehran is the second-largest city in the Middle East behind Cairo. Look it up ….
Just the tourism potential is intoxicating, with architecture, mountains, seas and deserts to explore. That’s not to mention the Persian cuisine. Developing everything Iran has to offer tourists and travelers will take decades and require billions of dollars and euros.
Iran has oil, gas and, despite the worst efforts of the mullahs, women ready to claim their roles in the economy.
The argument for staying
The argument for staying is uncertainty. Just because Khamenei is gone doesn’t mean he won’t be replaced by someone as bad or worse. The brutality of the Islamic regime is unsurpassed, with more than a 1,000 executions per year, second only to China. By comparison, life here in Europe is comfortable and safe. The Persians we know here in the Netherlands are smart and successful and considered Dutch. Why would you want to give that up?
If you do a search for Iran-born leaders in Europe and the Middle East, you get dozens of names, including a fair number of men and women elected to the German Bundestag, the Dutch Tweede Kamer and to the Israeli Kenneset.
They’re all Europeans now. Do you really want to take a giant leap into the unknown?
The unintended results of regime change in Iran could be terrible and immense. I can guarantee you Donald Trump hasn’t given them any thought. But Trump has a history of being lucky, which is better than being smart. Should the Iranian regime fall, it could herald the birth of one of the most promising countries in the world … and set off a mad scramble for its wealth (to use Trump-speak) like no one has ever seen before.
I studied Iran’s history and culture under Dr. Riffat Hassan and I assure you the odds there’s a George Washington waiting in the wings to lead Iran to democracy are zero. But a smart and opportunistic benevolent despot in the tradition of the al Thanis in Qatar, an MBS in Saudi Arabia or Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore could work a miracle in a land that has seen way too few in the past 50 years.
For me, that would be worth taking a big gamble.
Co-CEO of Dispatches Europe. A former military reporter, I'm a serial expat who has lived in France, Turkey, Germany and the Netherlands.
