Israel, Iran conflict leaves Long Islanders with ties to the region worried, but some say war was 'inevitable'
Holding photos of her twin daughters, Gitty, at left, and Keira, at right, Sari Kahn, of West Hempstead, sits on her front porch with two empty chairs waiting for her daughters to come home safely on June 20, 2025. The 19-year-old twins, were studying in Israel when the war with Iran started and are now stuck there. Credit: Debbie Egan-Chin
On Long Island, home to tens of thousands of Jews with ties to Israel and thousands of Iranian Americans in the North Shore villages around Great Neck, a week of war in the Middle East has frazzled nerves and given some people hope for regime change in the Islamic Republic.
"This war was in some ways inevitable," said Jacqueline Harounian, a Carle Place lawyer whose parents, Iranian Jews, immigrated to the United States in the late 1950s, ahead of the wave of immigration surrounding that country’s 1979 revolution. "Iran cannot have nuclear capability," she said. "I grew up watching tapes of Iran chanting death to America, Israel, the West."
Harounian, who still has extended family in Iran, said the death toll there from Israeli strikes — at least 657 people, including 263 civilians, according to a Washington-based human rights group — was "crushing."
Attorney Jacqueline Harounian in her office at Wisselman Harounian Family Law in Care Place Friday. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
But the war that flared after Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities was "necessary," she said. She said the country "needs new leadership," though any change should be imposed by Iranians, not outsiders, as was the case in the 1953 coup orchestrated by the United States that deposed a democratically elected prime minister. "Regime change might be why we’re here right now," she said, of this juncture in history.
WHAT NEWSDAY FOUND
- As Iran and Israel exchange missile fire, Long Islanders with ties to those countries are anxious but also hopeful — not just for an end to Iran’s nuclear capability but for its theocratic regime.
- Some area residents with children studying in Israel are trying to get them home.
- Iranian American Long Islanders including prominent North Shore elected officials and business leaders said the Iranian regime needs to go, though some said they were concerned about the power vacuum that could follow.
Israeli leaders have said they acted to eliminate the existential threat of a nuclear-armed Iran and President Donald Trump has said he is weighing U.S. military involvement.
Iranian missile and drone strikes have killed at least 24 people and injured hundreds in Israel, where Long Islanders are among the civilians for whom flight into bomb shelters or safe rooms has become part of everyday life.
A West Hempstead mother, Sari Kahn, told Newsday this week that she feared for her 19-year-old twin daughters, Keira and Gitty, who were taking a gap year at a school in Jerusalem. They have been unable to leave the country since Israel closed its airspace. "They want to be home," Kahn said, of her daughters. "It’s scary to be woken up by loud sirens in the middle of the night, to run down to a bomb shelter."
Kahn said she believed that exiting Israel through its borders with Jordan or Egypt could be dangerous for her daughters. She hopes the U.S. government will intercede with Israel to permit flights out of the country. "We are appealing to the heart of [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio and our senators and our congresspeople," she said. "I want them on planes coming home to America, anywhere in America."
Kahn said she was working with the offices of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Rep. Laura Gillen (D-Rockville Centre) but had had little communication from the State Department. A spokesperson for the department said in an email that officials there were "considering all available options." The spokesperson said officials were providing updates about routes out of Israel and "recommend U.S. citizens take those as soon as they may safely do so." The spokesperson did not comment on Kahn’s case.

Adam Krieger, 26 was on a birthright trip to Israel when war started, He was evacuated by boat to Cypress, flew to Italy and then New York. Credit: Bruce Cotler
On Thursday Great Neck native Adam Krieger, who’d been in Israel on a trip organized by the nonprofit Birthright Israel, flew into New York City after a multi-leg evacuation that involved a 17-hour cruise ship trip from the Israeli port city of Ashdod to Cyprus and a flight to Italy. Krieger, who described nightly harried trips to a bomb shelter in the hotel where his group was staying in Jerusalem, said he hoped to return to the country to see cultural sites like the Western Wall and the Dead Sea. "I don’t think I’ll be on the first trip that’s going out, but I don’t think I’ll be too far behind," he said.
In the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem, Yaakov Buechler said he and his wife spend much of every night in their apartment’s saferoom. "The walls are thicker and it has a special kind of steel door," he said. "It has only a small window made of thicker glass and outside that windows is a steel door that closes. It’s about 5 inches thick. Normally we leave it open, but now it’s closed all the time."
Buechler is the brother of Dix Hills Jewish Center Rabbi Howard Buechler and his wife, Melissa, is from North Bellmore. They hoped to attend their grandson’s bris this week. "They’re having it in a synagogue with a bomb shelter," he said.
In interviews Friday, many Iranian Long Islanders said they believed the theocratic regime in Iran — a country they remembered from childhood or know only from family stories — was crumbling and needed to go.
Ellie Cohanim, a part-time Great Neck resident who served as deputy special envoy to combat antisemitism in Trump’s first term and was born in Tehran, was one of several who spoke optimistically about exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed shah, as possible leader of a transition government. "The elegance of that solution is that it would pick up history where it left off," she said. "When the dust settles, we will see a new Iran but also, more importantly, a new Middle East. Once this Iranian threat has been removed from the region, there is so much hope for peace."
Great Neck Mayor Pedram Bral, who moved to the United States from Iran when he was 14, said he worried that the prince lacked sufficient popular support in Iran. "We don't want to make the same mistakes that were made in Iraq and Afghanistan," he said. "We don't want a vacuum." Bral said he was convinced, though, that the regime, which he said "butchered, murdered, imprisoned" thousands of its own citizens, must fall. "I don’t think there’s any other way of resolving this."
Lawyer Janet Esagoff said she hoped to return to Tehran. Her last visit was in the early 1970s, when she was 4, to her grandmother’s home. "I remember being surrounded by my family, feeling very comfortable and feeling at home. It was my parent’s homeland." A return visit has been impossible for the last half century, she said. "It wouldn’t be safe because of the regime that’s currently in place," she said. "Iran is not a safe place now for Jews coming from abroad, coming from America."
Mayer and Estee Waxman, of Queens, are shown in Flushing on Friday. Their son, Barak Waxman, 18, is “stuck” in Israel because of the fighting between Israel and Iran. Credit: Debbie Egan-Chin
Mayer Waxman, executive director of the Queens Jewish Community Council, said his son, Barak, 18, was among the American students currently unable to leave Israel. "We miss him, we’re in constant contact and he’s in good hands," Waxman said. "He’s frustrated but I don’t think he’s more scared than usual, because this is the unfortunate reality. ... It’s become so bizarrely commonplace."
Waxman, like many interviewed for this story, described war as unavoidable. "I think, when there’s a bully, at some point you don’t want the victimization to continue. You’ve got to stand up to the bully."
Newsday's Bart Jones and AP contributed to this story.
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