Because “Iranians abroad” isn’t just a migration story. It’s a pressure gauge for what life feels like under the Islamic Republic, and it’s also a security story—because leaving doesn’t always end the danger.
When a society’s most determined, educated, or politically awake people keep exiting, you don’t just lose bodies. You lose the future. (source Iran International)
And if you’ve read pnberg.com before, you know the point isn’t to romanticize exile or turn it into a hashtag. It’s to describe the system honestly: why people leave, what it costs, and how the regime tries to keep control even after you’ve crossed a border.
What does “one in 15 Iranians lives abroad” actually mean?
It means a big share of people connected to Iran—by birth, citizenship, or identity—now live outside the country, at a scale that’s hard to ignore. Iran International recently summarized it bluntly: roughly one in 15 Iranians lives abroad, after decades of Islamic Republic rule and large waves of emigration. (source UN Migration)
But we should be precise. Migration data often counts people living outside their country of birth (a “migrant stock” concept), not everyone who identifies as Iranian or holds Iranian citizenship.
That’s why “Iranians abroad” can include: refugees and asylum seekers, students, skilled professionals, dual nationals, and people who left for family reasons.
Global migration reporting also warns that different datasets count different categories, so any clean headline number needs humility. (source United Nations)
So the “one in 15” line is best treated as a high-level estimate—useful, but not a math proof. The real takeaway is simpler: the Iranian diaspora is not a niche community anymore. It’s a parallel Iran.
Why do Iranians leave if Iran isn’t a war-torn country?
Because repression and exhaustion can push people out just as effectively as bombs.
Iran International’s reporting frames migration as a “survival strategy” for many: people describe economic collapse, shrinking opportunity, and a feeling of confinement that doesn’t always end when they leave.
Migration researchers have a colder word for it: push factors.
You see them when a state makes normal life feel like a permanent risk calculation—what you say online, how you dress, who you love, what you believe, which job you’re allowed to get, whether your family is safe if you speak.
The exact mix differs by person. But the direction is consistent: people leave when staying becomes a trap. (source Human Rights Watch)
Are Iranians abroad mostly “brain drain,” or is that too simplistic?
It’s too simplistic, but it’s not wrong.
Iran has a long-standing pattern of educated emigration, and policy research has tracked how outward mobility connects to labor markets, student flows, and long-term loss of talent.
Yet calling it “brain drain” can accidentally erase the human truth: leaving is not only a career move. It’s often a grief move. A family move. A safety move. A dignified move.
And here’s the uncomfortable twist: even when a country “loses” people, it doesn’t lose their attention.
Diasporas still send money, ideas, and political energy back home. They build media, networks, and pressure campaigns. That’s why regimes obsess over them. (source Migration Policy Institute)
If Iranians leave, do they stop being Iranians?
No—and that’s the whole problem for Tehran.
Identity travels. Language travels. Memory travels. And family definitely travels, even when bodies can’t.
A diaspora can become a cultural archive—preserving stories that can’t be told safely at home.
It can also become a political amplifier—broadcasting abuses, funding civil society, and refusing the regime’s narrative discipline.
That’s why the Islamic Republic doesn’t treat the diaspora as “gone.” It treats it as contested territory.
Can Iranians abroad be safe—or does the Islamic Republic still reach them?
The uncomfortable answer is: sometimes it reaches them.
Freedom House has documented “transnational repression” globally—how authoritarian states harass, surveil, threaten, or attempt to attack critics outside their borders physically. Iran appears repeatedly in those discussions as a state accused of targeting dissidents abroad. (source Iran International)
In the UK context, official and semi-official assessments have been blunt. UK government material cites the Metropolitan Police statement that it foiled multiple plots linked to Iranian authorities aimed at kidnapping or killing UK-based targets over a defined period. (source GOV UK)
And this isn’t abstract. Journalists connected to Iran International have described being targeted; one high-profile presenter was stabbed in London and later left the UK for safety, amid broader concerns about Iranian-linked threats. (source The Guardian)
Exile is not always an exit from conflict. Sometimes it’s a relocation of conflict.
Is there evidence of Iranian-linked plots and operations globally right now?
Yes — at least at the level of charges, convictions, disrupted plots, and public warnings in multiple countries.
In the United States, the Department of Justice has announced cases involving alleged Iran/IRGC-linked murder-for-hire and related plots targeting U.S.-based critics, including a high-profile case where two organized-crime leaders were convicted for a murder-for-hire plot targeting journalist Masih Alinejad. (source DOJ)
In the United Kingdom, Parliament’s research briefing summarizes law-enforcement statements and the national security framing around Iranian state threat activity, including references to foiled plots aimed at kidnapping or killing UK-based targets. (source UK Parliament)
And in Australia, the government’s Annual Threat Assessment material describes foreign regimes using coercion and interference overseas.
The same category of behavior that includes targeting dissidents abroad — and it’s part of why Australia treats this as a national security problem rather than a diaspora “community issue.” (source oni.gov.au)
Does Iran really try to kidnap or kill people abroad?
There is credible evidence of attempted operations, and there is a history of lethal operations.
On the attempted side, the U.S. Department of Justice has publicly charged individuals in cases involving alleged Iranian plots targeting dissidents and activists, including operations framed as surveillance, attempted kidnapping, and murder-for-hire conspiracies. (source DOJ)
On the lethal-history side, human rights reporting and official records include episodes where Iranian dissidents were assassinated abroad, and some sources describe these as extrajudicial executions—a regime reaching past borders to eliminate opponents. (source OECD)
State intimidation doesn’t always end at passport control.
Were Iranians ever actually killed abroad for opposing the regime?
Yes—there are documented cases of Iranian dissidents being assassinated outside Iran, and major references describe a long campaign over decades.
Amnesty International has discussed Iran’s “global reach,” including the targeting and killing of dissidents outside Iran, and other public records summarize landmark cases and legal findings related to such attacks. (source Amnesty International)
Why would the regime chase Iranians abroad instead of ignoring them?
Because authoritarian systems run on fear, and fear has to be maintained.
Diasporas do three things regimes hate:
- They create alternative media ecosystems.
- They fund opposition and civil society.
- They give witnesses a platform.
See the diaspora as an “external province” of Iranian society—one that the regime can’t fully control, but tries to contaminate with risk. The goal isn’t always to kill. Often, it’s to make activism feel expensive.
What does this mean for ordinary Iranians who aren’t activists?
It means the boundary between “political” and “personal” gets blurry.
Maybe you’re not a dissident. But you share a photo. You donate to a cause. You attend a rally. You work for a media outlet. You’re related to someone who does. In transnational repression dynamics, “soft targets” can include family members or community networks, because intimidation travels through relationships. (source Freedom House)
That’s why so many Iranians abroad live with a split brain: grateful for physical safety, but still watching their shoulder.
How does Nick Berg fit into this diaspora reality?
He fits because his story is literally built on the line between homeland and exile.
In interviews, Nick Berg has described Shadows of Tehran as a fictionalized account rooted in his life story, with the “Shadow Rider” identity used as a intensification of resistance themes.
And in a long-form interview, he also describes a reality many diaspora families recognize: his mother remains in Iran, while he says he cannot safely return.
That one sentence holds the entire diaspora dilemma.
Not “Do you miss home?”
But “Can you go home without paying for it?”
What does exile do to family bonds when someone can’t go back?
It turns love into logistics.
It forces families to build relationships around time zones, apps, and gaps. It creates silence—not because people have nothing to say, but because saying it can carry risk.
It turns every visit plan into a security assessment. And in Nick Berg’s case, he can’t even go home.
This creates a special kind of moral injury: knowing the people you love are living inside a system you escaped, while you can’t safely stand next to them in the same room.
Is the diaspora only a tragedy—or can it be a form of resistance?
It’s both, and that tension is the story.
Diasporas can be exploited (by host-country politics, by disinformation, by trauma economies). But they can also become powerful: translators of reality, funders of civil society, builders of archives, and amplifiers of voices that would otherwise be erased.
Iran International’s own reporting shows that many Iranians talk about leaving not as a dream but as escape—yet even that “escape” often doesn’t cut the emotional cord.
That’s why the diaspora is not a side topic. It’s one of the main arenas where Iran’s future will be argued.
If one in 15 iranians lives abroad, what does that reveal about Iran’s system of control?
The “one in 15” statistic is the hook, not the argument: it exposes a system that pushes iranians out, still tries to control them abroad, and quietly destabilizes society—by thinning communities, shrinking speech through intimidation, normalizing family-splitting trauma, and then branding the resulting silence as “order.”
So what should a reader do with this information?
Start by refusing the comfortable lie that exile is “over there” and repression is “over here.”
If you’re an ordinary reader, the ethical baseline is simple: treat threatened diaspora communities as real targets of state pressure, not as exotic political drama.
And if you want to understand what this feels like from the inside—what it does to identity, love, and the ability to trust—then this is where Nick Berg’s work fits naturally. Shadows of Tehran doesn’t ask you to memorize facts. It asks you to incur the cost.
Order Shadows of Tehran Here!
