Here in New York City, dozens of people attended an antiwar rally Wednesday demanding an immediate ceasefire in Iran. The demonstration was organized by Payandeh NYC, a group of Iranian diaspora members founded in April to reject U.S. military aggression against Iran. This is Nahid Siamdoust, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

Nahid Siamdoust: “I’m an Iranian American who is working hard and paying my taxes and seeing that money going into Iran to killing my own family. We’re asking that these wars stop. Some Iranians in the West have been sold a lie. They have been sold the lie that the U.S. and Israel are going to be bringing them some kind of salvation or freedom. We know that that was never the intention, because, you know, within a couple of weeks, Donald Trump, of course, threatened to annihilate Iran’s entire civilization.”