IRANIAN-AMERICANS hope that Iran will be next:

Despite a generally festive celebration at San Rafael’s McNears Beach Park last night in anticipation of the end to the Iranian calendar year tomorrow, the mood for at least some was tempered by a looming war in Iraq and the hope that perhaps the next step in America’s Middle East plans would include their former homeland.

“I think most everybody here is for it,” said San Rafael resident Iraj Zolnasr, 40, who left Iran in 1975 to study accounting at San Francisco State University, of the nearly 1,000 attending the festivities on a crisp night under a full moon. . . .

Even though he still has family living in Iran, he said he supports a U.S. war because that part of the world desperately needs democracy. The militant administration ruling the country fosters suicide bombers by not providing decent homes and jobs, he said, and does not represent how the majority of Iranians feel.

“Most people don’t like them,” he said, referring to the Iranian government.

I suspect that quite a few Iranians in Iran share these hopes.

UPDATE: Pejman Yousefzadeh has some thoughts.