Soroush, an Iranian immigrant who asked that his full identity not be disclosed, looks at his phone on a rooftop overlooking Washington, DC, on September 1, 2026. Soroush says he has lost a number of longtime friends because of political disagreements that intensified among Iranians following the January events in Iran and the subsequent conflict involving Iran, Israel and the United States. He says the divisions within his social circle have become so deep that he is now considering leaving the state and relocating elsewhere in the United States. The 750,000-strong Iranian community in the US is overwhelmingly united in opposing Iran's Islamic regime whose top leadership has been decimated by the US-Israeli offensive that has destroyed swaths of the country's military and prompted global economic shocks. But deep fault lines have appeared among expatriates and exiles over whether the war will succeed in ending 47 years of clerical rule in their homeland. (Photo by Amid FARAHI / AFP via Getty Images)