As an Iranian Australian I feel helpless watching the war unfold and pray for peace – but prayer must be coupled with action | Dellaram Vreeland

My family fled Iran in 1979 as members of a religious minority. Now we watch from the safety of Australia as our community is persecuted again

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As a second-generation Iranian migrant, I’ve been suffocated by helplessness over the past two months as my spiritual brothers and sisters in Iran fight for a sense of freedom in their home country. Now, as war hits the region, millions of Iranians living around the world watch with trepidation, praying for peace in the face of yet another harrowing conflict.

My family fled just before the Iranian revolution in 1979. We are Baháʼís – members of the largest non-Muslim religious minority in Iran. Bahá’ís have been persecuted since the faith’s inception in the mid-19th century and, in times of unrest, things get worse. We can only imagine what is in store.