Lawrence resident Abbas Rezayazdi, left, wearing a Kansas University T-shirt, voted in the recent Iranian elections. Rezayazdi, a native of Iran, has lived in the U.S. since 1977, but he is still eligible to vote in his homeland. With him, from left, are his wife, Carolyn Hoang, his sister and his mother. The ink stains on their fingers indicate that they’ve voted.

As the world watches protests and violence unfold in Iran, Lawrence resident Abbas Rezayazdi is pretty sure he knows what will happen next.

“I think things will die down,” Rezayazdi said. “As oppressive as it is going to be, as hard as the police are going to come down on protesters, that is what will happen.”

Rezayazdi should know better than most. The Lawrence engineer and his wife, Carolyn Hoang, were in Iran and participated in this month’s historic presidential election.

Wearing a Kansas Jayhawk National Championship T-shirt, Rezayazdi cast his ballot in the election while visiting his mother, sister and other family members in Iran. Although he came to America in 1977, Rezayazdi is still eligible to vote in Iranian elections. He said he went back to Iran mainly to visit family, but ended up voting in the election after seeing the energy that pervaded the country.

He left just hours after the polls closed June 12, and by the time his plane landed in Amsterdam, incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner in a landslide.

Since then, Rezayazdi — who is an engineer for the Kansas Department of Transportation — has been watching the events unfold via what media coverage has come out of the country.

“After the results have come out, things have really gone for the worse,” said Rezayazdi, who has made five trips back to Iran since 1999.

For awhile, this trip was among the more encouraging. Rezayazdi said that before the election the rallies for opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi were inspiring because of how freely the crowds were allowed to oppose Ahmadinejad.

“The energy of the crowd, the amount of freedom of speech, I never thought that would happen in a million years,” Rezayazdi said. “I was very energized. I was out in the middle of the rallies. There were human chains of supporters for miles and miles. I never thought I would feel that way going back to my old country.”

Hoang, who is Vietnamese, also participated in rallies. Being recognized as an obvious foreigner, Hoang said marchers frequently asked her to spread the word that change was afoot in Iran.

“They would come right up to me and say ‘you tell the world that this is the Iran nation and that we are fighting for our freedom,'” Hoang said.

Now some of those same people may be facing serious repercussions. At least 19 protesters were killed over the weekend in Iran, according to various media reports.

“It has been disheartening, very sad,” Hoang said.

But perhaps something good will come out of it, Rezayazdi said. While he thinks the street protests will soon fade away, he does not think the impact of the election will so quickly disappear.

“I just hope there is a seed out there,” Rezayazdi said. “Hopefully there is a change. It may not be now. It may be five to 10 years down the road. I just hope these people did not die in vain.

“I just hope it planted a seed for people to be a little more vocal.”

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