As US-Iran tensions escalate, veterans and others protest in downtown Raleigh
Just days after a U.S. airstrike killed Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, hundreds of protesters made their way to Halifax Mall in downtown Raleigh to protest the possibility of another war in the Middle East.
The “No War with Iran” protest was hosted by the Piedmont chapter of Democratic Socialists of America and its three local branches from Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. Along with the protest, the groups were accepting donations to help families at McDougald Terrace, where carbon monoxide poisonings caused emergency evacuations on Friday.
To start the protest, the crowd cheered at the mention of the Iraqi Parliament’s decision on Sunday to expel U.S. troops.
“Islamophobia is the root of all of this terror right now,” said activist Manzoor Cheema in a speech to start the protest. “At the end of communism they needed a new enemy... Muslims and Islam is the new enemy.”
After listening to a handful of speakers from different groups like Muslims for Social Justice and House of Kanautica, the crowd marched from the mall to State Capitol, where they circled multiple times. Signs from the march varied from protesting “endless wars” to President Donald Trump.
On Saturday, Trump, who authorized the killing of Soleimani, tweeted out a threat of striking 52 more sites in Iran if the country were to retaliate.
On Sunday, Iran reportedly decided to abandon the 2015 nuclear deal with the United Nations security council. The deal originally meant that Iran would deplete its uranium stockpile by 98 percent.
“No war with Iran. No war with Iraq. No war against Muslims. No war at all,” chanted the crowd, led by Tommi Hayes, a former combat veteran. Hayes told the crowd to think about and hold close the citizens of Iraq and Iran.
An Iranian-American family at the protest said they were worried about the toll a war could take on friends in both countries.
“We don’t want to see any more of our brothers and sisters go the Middle East and get killed, and we don’t Iranians to get killed. We don’t want any war,” said Hamid Rismani, who came to the U.S. in 2003 from Iran to pursue education.
Rismani, who earned a Ph.D. from MIT, brought his family to the protest.
When he saw the news of the strike on Soleimani, Rismani said he was “shocked and upset.”
Ray McGovern, former Army officer and CIA analyst, attended the protest with Veterans for Peace and said that he couldn’t help but notice the mural by Halifax Mall called “Education Wall 1992.” The mural says “You are a child. You are suitable to be awed.”
“It says ‘You are suitable to be awed,’ not shocked and awed,” said McGovern. “And that’s what’s coming if we don’t prevent it, as we prevented the continuation of the Vietnam war.”
“If we retaliate... then there will be terrorist incidents and things will spiral out of control,” he said.
This story was originally published January 5, 2020 at 4:21 PM.
