Former East Bay Mayor Says US Strikes on His Iranian Homeland Signal ‘First Day of Hope’

For some Bay Area Iranians, the emerging war involving their homeland marks a potential turning point — the prospect of regime change in the face of airstrikes, launched by the United States and Israel.

Former Pinole Mayor Vincent Salimi described his reaction as a “big relief.”

“For 47 years, people in Iran have been living without civil liberties and have been suffering the consequences,” said Salimi, who was born in Iran and left the country with his family when he was 4.

Since the attacks began around a week ago, more than 900 people in Iran have been killed, including former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and hundreds of people at a girls’ school, according to the Iranian Health Ministry — although other reports have placed the number above 1,000.”

Salimi referred to Feb. 28, the first day of the U.S. and Israel’s joint military campaign against Iran, as “a day that people will remember for thousands of years in Iranian history.”

Currently, the owner of a construction management company, Salimi, supported a 2022 city of Pinole proclamation that advocated for women’s rights and a “Free Secular Democratic Republic of Iran.”

He talked more about this effort while in office for the Contra Costa County city and the ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, with KQED morning host Brian Watt. Their conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Brian Watt: What’s your origin story? How did you get to the Bay Area?

Vincent Salimi: My life, it’s similar to a lot of Iranians who suffered the consequences of the Islamic Republic of Iran. My father studied civil engineering in Germany in the ‘60s and went back to Iran [and] married my mother. I [also] have an older sister.

In 1984, the family moved to France because the situation was becoming horrible in Iran, and in early 2000, I moved to the Bay Area by myself with $500. I didn’t speak very good English, and all I had was just a hope of a better tomorrow. I had the opportunity to go anywhere, but like Tony Bennett said, I left my heart in San Francisco.

How did you decide to get involved in local politics?

Since I left Iran in 1984, I had this fire inside, to do something. After I became a U.S. citizen in 2018, I had the opportunity to get the endorsement of the Democratic Party and [several] unions. I campaigned for three months against other candidates, and then, I was elected.

Tell me more about this proclamation that you had the city of Pinole issue back in 2022. It also focuses on the rights of women.

For the last 47 years, [Iran] went back 5,000 years. I come from a strong mother who has given me all the energy that I have today. A society without women’s rights, it’s not a healthy society. I have a daughter. I love her, and I think the bare minimum for society to be able to move forward in a secular way is to also understand the rights of women.

Are you in touch with family back in Iran right now or others who you are close to?

I am talking to them on a daily basis. Most of the people are safe. They are not going outside, but the most important thing [is] they are relieved. Many of them were telling me that they were waiting for a long time for that strike, and that we’re hoping that could have happened sooner. And they are just hoping for a better tomorrow, and they know that it’s the beginning of the end.

There is clearly a lot of relief. But how do you think that the Iranian community that is not inside Iran is processing this, where there are going to be a lot of different viewpoints about what’s going on?

It’s going to be a lot of viewpoints for many reasons, because we have two types of people who are proud of Iran. We have the ones who were born before the revolution and remember what Iran used to be. And we have the second generation, like me, who basically were born after the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979.

And I think the people who were brought before the revolution had consequences mentally and suffered from it. So they are way more emotional than the second generation. I think this work will [need] the help of the people who were there before the revolution, but also the new generation needs to take over that country and help rebuild that society.