Michigan’s Iranian American community is concerned about the recent escalation of hostilities with Iran. 

The U.S. bombed several sites in Iran on Sunday, joining Israel’s war aimed at destroying the country’s nuclear program. 

Camron Michael Amin, a professor of Middle East and Iranian diaspora studies at University of Michigan-Dearborn, says some people were not able to get in touch with their loved ones due to an internet outage in Iran. 

“Communication seems to have improved over the course of the week, but many people couldn’t reach anybody starting sort of a week ago,” he said. “Sunday, it was hard to reach people, and that seems to have been largely driven by internet outages.”

Amin says many Iranian Americans are nervous about any escalations in the war, especially those with loved ones in Iran.

“I can’t speak for everybody, obviously, but generally speaking, Iranian Americans are nervous about and wary of anything that escalates and prolongs the war. However they feel about the Iranian government, however they feel about the issues between Iran and the United States… because they have people they know or people they care about in Iran that might be at risk they themselves visit when they can,” he said.

Amin says recent polling shows that Iranian Americans frequently keep in contact and travel to Iran as tourists or to visit family.

“So anything that makes that more dangerous or more fraught is unwelcome,” he said.

Amin says one concern is getting dual-national Iranian Americans out of Iran during the conflict.

“Certainly, dual nationals in Israel, from several countries, including the U.S., have ways to get out of that country during the fighting. And I think there’s a similar concern about dual nationals, who are Iranian Americans, who might be stuck in harm’s way during the fighting right now,” he said. 

Amin says Iranian Americans are looking to policymakers and legislators to prioritize helping people stuck in Iran.

President Donald Trump announced Monday that a ceasefire had been reached between Iran and Israel, after the deal initially faltered. 

The night skies over Tehran have been flashing with fire since Israeli jets began piercing Iranian airspace. They have been targeting nuclear facilities that Israel insists pose an imminent threat. Hundreds have been killed in Iran and thousands injured. 

Iran has responded by firing missiles into Israel, where at least 24 have been killed.

An American-brokered ceasefire fell apart this morning with reports of Israeli and Iranian airstrikes coming after the announcement. 

President Donald Trump’s post on Truth Social Tuesday morning demanded Israel’s compliance: “ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS. IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!”

Meanwhile, the world has been watching anxiously. That anxiety grew Saturday when Trump escalated the conflict, deploying American B-2 bombers and launching Tomahawk missiles in an aggressive campaign. The president has openly hinted at regime change. 

Iran responded by striking an American air base in Qatar, home to thousands of U.S. troops. 

Diplomacy now teeters on a knife-edge as fears of broader conflict intensify. These fears are held among many in metro Detroit, especially among the hundreds of thousands of Arab and Middle Eastern residents here. Many have been watching violence and conflict erupt across the region and it brings back painful memories of the wars that forced them to leave their homes and flee to the U.S. in the first place.

Some analysts say this latest move by Israel is an attempt to entirely reshape the Middle East, which is stoking further tension and anxiety among people in the diaspora here.

Fariba Pajooh, an Iranian-American scholar of communication and media studies at Wayne State University, joined The Metro to help us understand this moment. Pajooh spent years working as a journalist in the Middle East covering conflicts. Some of that coverage led to her imprisonment by Iranian authorities. 

Use the media player above to hear the full conversation.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump said a ceasefire between Iran and Israel was in effect Tuesday after the deal initially faltered, and the American leader expressed deep frustration with both sides.

Israel had earlier accused Iran of launching missiles into its airspace after the truce was supposed to take effect, and the Israeli finance minister vowed that “Tehran will tremble.”

The Iranian military denied firing on Israel, state media reported, but explosions boomed and sirens sounded across northern Israel in the morning, and an Israeli military official said two Iranian missiles were intercepted.

Trump told reporters at the White House before departing for a NATO summit that, in his view, both sides had violated the nascent agreement. He had particularly strong words for Israel, a close ally, while suggesting Iran may have fired on the country by mistake.

But later he said the deal was saved.

“ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly “Plane Wave” to Iran. Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect!” Trump said in his Truth Social post.

Indeed, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he held off on tougher strikes against Iran after speaking to Trump.

The conflict, now in its 12th day, began with Israel targeting Iranian nuclear and military sites, saying it could not allow Tehran to develop atomic weapons and that it feared the Islamic Republic was close. Iran has long maintained that its program is peaceful.

Many worried the war might widen after the U.S. joined the attacks by dropping bunker-buster bombs over the weekend and Israel expanded the kinds of targets it was hitting.

But after Tehran launched a limited retaliatory strike on a U.S. military base in Qatar on Monday, Trump announced the ceasefire.

Israel accuses Iran of violating the truce. Iran denies that

The deal got off to a rocky start.

An Israeli military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with military regulations said Iran launched two missiles at Israel hours into the tenuous ceasefire. Both were intercepted, the official said.

Iranian state television reported that the military denied firing missiles after the start of the ceasefire — while condemning Israel for predawn strikes of its own.

One of those attacks killed a high-profile nuclear scientist, Mohammad Reza Sedighi Saber, at his father-in-law’s residence in northern Iran, Iranian state TV reported.

As Trump spoke to reporters at the White House before departing for the NATO summit, he expressed disappointment with both sides.

Iran “violated it, but Israel violated it too,” Trump said. ”I’m not happy with Israel.”

Trump’s frustration was palpable, using an expletive to hammer home his point.

“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f—- they’re doing,” he said.

Later, however, he announced that Israel had backed off its threat to attack Tehran and would turn its jets around.

Netanyahu’s office said Israel struck an Iranian radar site in response to the Iranian missile attack early Tuesday, but Israeli forces held off on something bigger.

Following Trump’s conversation with Netanyahu, “Israel refrained from additional attacks,” Netanyahu’s office said.

Breakthrough announced after hostilities spread

Netanyahu said Israel agreed to a bilateral ceasefire with Iran, in coordination with Trump, after the country achieved all of its war goals, including removing the threat of Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

It’s unclear what role Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s leader, played in the talks. He said earlier on social media that he would not surrender.

Trump said Tuesday that he wasn’t seeking regime change in Iran, two days after floating the idea himself in a social media post.

“I don’t want it,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “Regime change takes chaos and, ideally, we don’t want to see much chaos.”

Before the ceasefire was announced, Israel’s military said Iran launched 20 missiles toward Israel. Police said they damaged at least three densely packed residential buildings in the city of Beersheba. First responders said they retrieved four bodies from one building and were searching for more. At least 20 people were injured.

Outside, the shells of burned out cars littered the streets. Broken glass and rubble covered the area. Police said some people were injured while inside their apartments’ reinforced safe rooms, which are meant to withstand rockets but not direct hits from ballistic missiles.

The attack followed a limited Iranian missile attack Monday on a U.S. military base in Qatar, retaliating for earlier American bombing of its nuclear sites. The U.S. was warned by Iran in advance, and there were no casualties.

Drones attacked military bases in Iraq overnight, including some housing U.S. troops, the Iraqi army and a U.S. military official said Tuesday.

A senior U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly, said U.S. forces shot down drones attacking Ain al-Assad in the desert in western Iraq and at a base next to the Baghdad airport, while another one crashed.

No casualties were reported, and no group claimed responsibility for the attacks in Iraq. Some Iran-backed Iraqi militias had previously threatened to target U.S. bases if the U.S. attacked Iran.

Conflict has killed hundreds

In Israel, at least 28 people have been killed and more than 1,000 wounded in the war. Israeli strikes on Iran have killed at least 974 people and wounded 3,458 others, according to the Washington-based group Human Rights Activists.

The group, which has provided detailed casualty figures from Iranian unrest, said of those killed, it identified 387 civilians and 268 security force personnel.

The U.S. has evacuated some 250 American citizens and their immediate family members from Israel by government, military and charter flights that began over the weekend, a State Department official said.

There are roughly 700,000 American citizens, most of them dual U.S.-Israeli citizens, believed to be in Israel.

Reporting by Jon Gambrell, David Rising and Melanie Lidman, Associated Press