Iran, A Country Occupied by an Islamist Regime
“I watched millions of people come to the street and thousands died,” said Saghar Erica Kasraie, a naturalized U.S. citizen, Christian convert, and anti-Iranian regime activist. In an interview with The Gateway Pundit, she described how the recent protests, during which more than 30,000 people were killed by the regime, inspired her to make her movie, titled Occupied Homeland.
She said the title reflects how many Iranians view the Islamic Republic. “We Iranians see the Islamic regime as a terrorist organization that has taken our country, our homeland, hostage. We believe it is occupied by the Islamic regime and its ideology.”
According to Kasraie, the regime has drained the country’s wealth to advance its revolutionary agenda abroad. “It’s depleted our resources for exporting its ideology with its proxies and with its ideological mission to destroy the land of Israel and to kill all the infidels so that Islam will be glorified.”
Kasraie’s family fled Iran shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. She recalled how suddenly life changed for children as the new regime rapidly imposed Islamic rule.
“One day I went to school with no hijab, and the next day I went to school with hijab,” she said, remembering how students were required to chant “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” While her father’s relatives reached the United States quickly, Kasraie, her mother, and sister became stranded in Italy while waiting for visas during the Iran-Iraq War and the hostage crisis.
With no refugee system in place at the time, they spent about a year living in a Catholic convent. There, as a child surrounded by unfamiliar Christian imagery, she began asking questions about faith. “Why is a man hanging on the wall with nails in his hands and feet?” she recalled wondering as she looked at the crucifix.
The family eventually settled in the United States, where a babysitter began taking her to a Baptist church. The experience contrasted sharply with the rituals she had seen in the convent. The cross was there, but without the image of the man.
“There was no stand up, sit down, no kneeling, no bells, no rituals,” she said. “Just people singing.” She said she sensed the same feeling she had first experienced in the church in Italy, a sense of peace that eventually led her to be baptized as a young teenager. She learned English and became a patriotic American, as did countless other Iranians who fled the ayatollahs’ regime.