The strong scent of beef kebab and ghormeh sabzi - a stew of herbs and fenugreek considered a national dish of Iran - wafted down the hallway of the Longworth House Office Building on Tuesday, leading to the small office of Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Arizona).
The freshman lawmaker, who is the first Iranian American Democrat elected to Congress, was hosting a modest open house to mark Nowruz, the Iranian new year. Interns and Hill staffers munched on Persian fare from Rumi’s Kitchen, pastries from local bakery Shiraz and baklava from Costco (yes, they sell that). Some congressmen stopped by. The sofreh haft-seen - an elaborate display of items symbolizing renewal, good fortune and health - rested on a table outside the door. A placard on an easel explained that Nowruz, celebrated by millions of people around the world for some 3,000 years, symbolizes “a time of renewal, hope, and harmony with nature.”
But Ansari’s staff had to update that placard this year, to acknowledge that this Nowruz season - typically a multiweek affair akin to the December holidays in the United States - comes at an “extraordinarily difficult moment.” In January, the Islamic Republic of Iran killed thousands of anti-government demonstrators. Then, in late February, the U.S. and Israel launched surprise attacks across Iran, the start to an ongoing war that has taken out some regime leaders and has also left civilians and some U.S. service members dead.
Some in the Iranian diaspora have been supportive of the war, hoping it will lead to regime change, but Ansari has been skeptical from the start. (Another House member, Republican Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma, also has Iranian heritage. Bice’s office did not respond to The Post’s inquiries, but she has been publicly supportive of the war.)
“The situation with Iran has just become vastly more complicated over the last year under this new administration and [President Donald] Trump’s approach to Iran, which quite frankly, is one where he’s giving very mixed signals each and every day to Americans and Iranians,” Ansari said in an interview. “And I think has given a lot of false hope to the Iranian people."
While Ansari said most Iranian Americans understand her political role - to speak for her constituents, not Iranians - her stance on the war has led to blowback from some Iranians in the diaspora. Her social media accounts are filled with comments accusing her of being, as she puts it, “simultaneously an AIPAC shill and an agent of the Islamic Republic regime." She said some of her family members have been subjected to online conspiracy theories. “It was just really overwhelming, and then they get stressed out and anxious, and they’re blowing up my phone. My parents are like, ‘Did you see this?’” She has gotten used to it by now.
She is feeling the same complicated web of emotions many other Iranian Americans are feeling. There was hope after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed, but also fear and concern about the civilian death toll. “Would I love for the regime to fall, and for there to be a future democratic pathway for Iran? Absolutely,” she said. But based on the feedback her office has received, her constituents - an ethnically diverse, deep-blue district encompassing much of Phoenix - are largely opposed to the war, and especially worry about the deployment of American troops. As member of Congress, she “did not hear justification [for] it as it pertains to U.S. national security interests,” and she said long-lasting change has to come within Iran itself.
Renewal, hope, harmony. Nowruz, which translates to “New Day” in Persian, coincides with the vernal equinox, the start of spring. This Nowruz season feels heavy for many Iranian Americans. They aren’t fielding the usual wave of calls and texts from family in Iran due to the state-imposed communications blackout. Iranian American families still meet for meals and set out the haft-seen, but they’re also debating the politics of the war, and their anxieties for what comes next.
Celebrating Nowruz has become somewhat of a hallmark of Ansari’s time in public office. While on the Phoenix City Council, she helped found an annual city-sponsored festival. Last year, just months into her first term in Congress, she introduced a resolution to mark the holiday and establish March as Iranian American Heritage Month.
Her celebrations are different this year. There is no big Phoenix festival. “We decided maybe it’s not the best time,” she said. But Ansari still wanted to mark the occasion on the Hill, a modest effort to educate her colleagues and their staffers about Persian culture.
“Iran and Iranians have always been living under the shadow of what people think about Iran because of the regime,” she said. Even well-intentioned people, she said, may only associate Iranians with what they see on the news - a grim picture of an oppressive government that kills its own citizens and proclaims “Death to America.” So taking a moment to spotlight the culture - the food, the dance, the art, the traditions, the history - that’s “where you can really understand the humanity of a group of people,” she said.
So, earlier this month, she laid out her haft-seen with items borrowed from a friend and Ansari’s mother, who, throughout her childhood, instructed her on the beauty of their heritage. The table setting has seven items that symbolize the wishes and hopes for a new year: the garlic (seer), for protection and good health; the apple (seeb), for beauty and well-being; the sprouts (sabzee) for growth; vinegar (serkeh) for patience; a sweet pudding (saamanoo) for sweetness; a dried friend (senjed) for love; and sumac (somagh), for the sunrise, for new beginnings.
This year, Ansari’s mom isn’t doing anything elaborate to observe Nowruz, according to her daughter. “She’s just not in the mood,” Ansari said. “She’s generally just very depressed about the war and the future.”
Ansari grew up in Arizona. Her grandfather had been imprisoned in Iran shortly after the Islamic Revolution, and her family settled in the United States because of the regime change. “I can’t tell you how often I think, how sad it is that the only difference between myself and someone else, a woman in Iran my age, is that I was just lucky enough to have been born here.” She was inspired to run for public office during the first Trump term in part because of the 2017 travel ban, which prohibited migrants from several predominantly Muslim countries, including Iran, from entering the United States.
While Iranian Americans are well-represented in certain professional fields, Ansari said, “in politics or public office, we really have not had a voice at the table.” The result, she said, are policies that negatively impact them.
As far as the second Trump term, “I have zero faith, based on actual evidence of the actions over the last year and a half, that there are any good intentions when it comes to Iran,” Ansari said. “I just know that in my bones, and they have told me directly, that a democratic transition in Iran is not a priority.”
Ansari still wants to roll out her haft-seen on the Hill next March. The celebration “will take different forms every year,” she said. “Hopefully, next year we can do another bigger one.”
By then, she hopes things will be different for Iran. But she said hope is hard to come by “when you think critically about what the context is, and who is in power. I don’t think it’s impossible, but I think the next few years will be very challenging for Iran, and Iranians.”