Emergency service paramedics could do nothing to save the victims whose bodies were riddled with bullets. The terrorists reportedly made sure their victims were dead by shooting them from close range after the initial fusillade. One of the victims was pregnant, stated police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld. A Zaka volunteer who arrived on the scene broke down in tears when he neared the car and discovered that one of the victims was his wife. The IDF is combing the area, searching for the terrorists.

Israel’s national rescue service stated the victims were two men and two women. The four were all citizens of Beit Hagai. The victims are a husband and wife, parents of ten, and two passengers. Their names were cleared for publication Tuesday night by local police:

Yitzhak and Talia Ames, parents of six
Kochava Even Chaim
Avishai Shindler

Some 500 Israeli Jewish citizens live in heavily fortified enclaves in the city amid more than 100,000 Arab Palestinian settlers. Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel stated at the scene that serious soul-searching must be done “in order to find out how it is that Israeli Jewish citizens are deprived of the basic right to defend themselves.”

It was the deadliest Palestinian attack against Israelis since March 2008, when a lone assailant gunned down eight students in a Jerusalem rabbinical seminary.

IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi arrived on the scene of the attack along with Head of Central Command Major General Avi Mizrahi and Judea and Samaria Commander Brig.-Gen. Nitzan Alon. Ashkenazi stated: “There is no doubt that this is a very difficult event. First, we express our condolences to the victims’ families and to Beit Hagai. We are working in several directions since the event occurred and we will continue to act until we capture the terrorists. IDF along with other security agencies will continue to operate until we capture the murderers who were responsible for this incident. ”

Upon arriving in Washington for this week’s talks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the attack and said “terror will not determine Israel’s borders or the future of the settlements.” Borders and the fate of Jewish re-settlements on land Arab Palestinians want for a future state are key issues in the negotiations.

Netanyahu faces some domestic opposition from elements of his hard-line coalition of religious and nationalist parties. He has stated that protecting Israel’s security interests will be his top priority in the talks. Heading into a meeting with Clinton, Netanyahu said in the statement he would tell her, “This criminal murder proves again the need to stand firmly on Israel’s stringent security demands, and there will be no compromise on them.” The attack disrupted a relative lull in the West Bank. The last fatal attack occurred in June, when Palestinians opened fire on a police vehicle near Hebron and killed one officer.

Asked about the shooting, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley stated the U.S. is aware “there are those who will do whatever they can to disrupt or derail the process.”

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak promised a tough response to an attack he said was aimed at sabotaging the talks. “Israel will not allow terrorists to raise their heads and will exact a price from the murderers and those who send them,” he said in a statement.

U.N. envoy Robert Serry issued a statement condemning the attack and urging all parties “not to allow the enemies of peace to affect the negotiations about to be launched.” There is widespread opposition to the resumption of the peace talks among Palestinians. Hamas opposes any contact with Israel and has harshly criticized Abbas for agreeing to resume the negotiations.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s office issued a statement charging the attack was aimed at undermining his government’s effort to build international support for the Palestinian position and ending the (Israeli) “occupation of the Jewish Holy Land.”

Hamas, a fierce rival of the Western-backed Palestinian president, expelled Abbas’ forces from Gaza in 2007 and took over the territory. Abbas has been trying to limit the Islamic militants’ reach in the West Bank, jailing activists and even cracking down on mosque preachers. Hamas, responsible for dozens of suicide bombings in Israel, is considered a terrorist group by the U.S., Israel and European Union.

Opposition to resuming talks is also coming from within the Palestine Liberation Organization, an umbrella group headed by Abbas. Some Fatah activists threaten to try to depose him if he makes concessions and several hard-line PLO groups plan a demonstration in the West Bank administrative capital of Ramallah on Wednesday to protest resumption of negotiations.

The Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility. About 3,000 people joined a rally in Gaza to celebrate the attack. Hamas military wing spokesman Abu Obeida was among them and told The Associated Press: “The Qassam Brigades announces its full responsibility for the heroic operation in Hebron.”

The terror attack is typical of Arab attacks that intentionally target civilian victims. A survey carried out by an Arab Palestinian Authority organization in early August found that among the Arab public in the Palestinian Authority, over 55% view violence as either essential or desirable, nearly 31% see it as either acceptable or tolerable, and only 13.7% say it is unacceptable. Evil knows no barriers, civility, morality or God.
A previous U.S. launching of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks was also accompanied by deadly violence. Palestinian gunmen shot and killed an Israeli in the West Bank before then-President George W. Bush convened Israeli and Palestinian leaders for a summit in Annapolis, Maryland, in November 2007. The gunmen stated the attack was “an act of protest against the Annapolis conference.”

The Canada Border Services Agency Agents found the drugs concealed in a shipment of rugs from Pakistan. The CBSA stated nearly 11 kilograms of heroin was hidden within the hand-knotted woollen fibres of the rugs.

The pair, Ahmed Mohamed Nasser al Soofi of Detroit, Michigan and Hezem Abdullah Thabi al Murisi were both charged with “preparation of a terrorist attack,” according to U.S. law enforcement officials.

Al Soofi began his flight in Birmingham, Alabama, while al Murisi started in Memphis, Tennessee. Although both are Yemeni nationals, both have been living legally in the United States. Each flew separately to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, and sent his bags on to Washington D.C.’s Dulles International Airport, to be sent on to a flight to Dubai, and eventually, to Yemen.

However, neither man boarded that flight. Instead, they both changed their flights at O’Hare, and boarded a United Airlines direct flight to Amsterdam, raising suspicion. Federal air marshals were on the United Airlines flight to Amsterdam, according to U.S. law enforcement officials. Security personnel in Birmingham were the first to pick up on the fact that something was wrong.

Despite the sultry August heat in America’s Southland, al Soofi was wearing bulky clothing and carrying $7,000 in cash. He was also carrying in his checked luggage a cell phone taped to a Pepto-Bismol bottle; a “kind of mock explosive,” the FBI stated, as well as three other cell phones taped together, several watches taped together, a box cutter and three large knives. Law enforcement in the United States is a methodical process. It is not illegal to carry knifes or taped cell phones and watches in checked baggage on domestic American flights. Because there were no explosives in the bags, the luggage was cleared for the flight, and al Soofi was allowed to go. “This was almost certainly a dry run, a test,” stated a law enforcement official.

In Chicago, officials noticed that al Soofi did not board the Dulles-bound flight with his bags, which were headed for Dubai and Yemen. They also noticed he was joined by a second man, al Murisi, and notified officials in Washington. It was at that point that Customs and Border officials issued an alert, ordering the plane to Dubai to turn around and return to the gate. Al Soofi’s bags were pulled off the flight and searched a second time. Officials said no explosives were found, but once the suspicious items were discovered, Dutch authorities were notified.

Most relocated to camps at the entrance to cities, and have no access to electricity or running water. The residents complain that there are no schools, either, in the camps, and that many of the children have to work to sustain their families.

Those who remain in the villages sell their belongings for food and require aid from the UN and the Syrian government. The World Food Program (WFP) has begun distributing food to more than 200,000 people who stayed on the farms, and the Red Cross is funding delivery of water to them. “We don’t want to provide assistance to these people where they are now, and create a dependency syndrome,” stated Muhannad Hani, WFP country manager, regarding the refugees who reached the camps. “Those people are farmers.” “We’re working in partnership with the government to make sure that those people return to that place and resume what they’ve been doing for decades and centuries.”

[Note: The Divine Authority uses natural law - Genesis 12:3]

Jordan is plotting to assist the Palestinian Authority in its upcoming talks with Israel. PA sources told the London-based Al Quds Al-Arabiya newspaper that Jordan opened its archives and will give the PA old maps and aerial photos of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.

Jordan controlled these areas from 1948 until 1967; only Pakistan and Great Britain recognized its sovereignty there. Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994, under which it gave Jordan 300 square kilometers of land and 50 million cubic meters of water each year; and granted three-quarters of Yarmouk River waters to Jordan.
Talks are to begin in Washington, under the auspices of the United States and with the participation of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah. As of August 31, 2010, the talks might not last more than one day, however, PA chairman Abbas has threatened to walk out if Prime Minister Netanyahu does not extend the Jewish construction freeze in Judea and Samaria.

Turkey, also has come to the PA’s aid in the talks. Nabil Marouf, the PA’s representative in Turkey, stated in April 2010 that the Turkish government had opened the microfilmed Ottoman land ownership archives to the PA alleging this will help the Palestinians prove ownership of lands that are threatened by official Israeli elements and settler organizations.

The Ottoman Turks invaded the land previous ruled by the Byzantine Empire. [Note research the 6000 year history of the Holy Land]. The Ottoman Turks ruled the Holy Land from 1517 until 1917, when the British took over. Documentation from 1517 until 1917 which includes photographic and archealogical evidence establishes limited Arab populations living throughout the entire region prior to 1948. The majority of the Arab population were mirauding barbarians living off of raids on Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Prior to 1948 the land was barren desert and swamp infested with malaria and disease.

The PA is planning to hire experts in the Turkish language of 100 years ago, and will accept requests from Arabs who wish to prove their ownership of land by possible forged documentation. Arab affairs expert Dalit HaLevy reports that PA prime minister Salam Fayyad announced the continued efforts in anticipation of the formation of a Palestinian state.

Islamic Jordan did not waive its rights to sovereignty and responsibility over the JewishTemple Mount, the Hashemite Kingdom’s Minister of Islamic Affairs and Holy Sites, Abdel Salam Abbadi, stated. The Minister stated that in its 1988 decision to disconnect from Judea and Samaria, Jordan had not disengaged itself from Jerusalem and the holy sites, the Al Quds newspaper reported.

Observers stated that Jordan is plotting  to stake out its claim to Jerusalem because the Palestinian Authority is currently demanding the Holy City for itself  and Jordan does not want to be left out.

Senior PA officials are currently in the US, poring over “maps” and “other documents” that they intend to present before the American administration as proof that the PA is capable of controlling areas under its authority. [Note there is no mention of suicide bombers, rocket attacks, and their ongoing terrorist activites]  The presentation is intended to bolster new demands from Israel for territorial handovers, including areas of Jerusalem such as Abu Dis.

It is evident the Arabs will continue to disrespect and deny the historical evidence of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, and all other historical documentation of the Holy Land.

Yahya al-Hindi, a former member of the Islamic Jihad terror organization who is responsible for having built a global jihad network in Gaza that functions as a regional “exporter of terrorism” is also known as Abu Kathada al-Shami. His 11-man jihad team included Moroccans from Casablanca, Azilal (in the Atlas Mountains) and Oujda (in the eastern part of the country).

In 2006, al-Hindi’s group named “The Unity of Allah and Jihad in the Land of Ribat” took responsibility for multiple rocket attacks fired at Jewish communities in the western Negev. According to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), the land of the ribat, “frontier” in Arabic is the term for the outskirts of Muslim territory where battles are fought with the infidels to defend Islamic lands. The term is used to refer to “Palestine” which is considered “occupied” (by Israel).

Arabic media reported that al-Hindi traveled the following year to Afghanistan for training with al-Qaeda terrorist operatives and others at Taliban camps who taught him how to prepare explosive devices and a variety of military techniques. He spent the next three years staying in touch with the group via jihadist internet web sites.

This past May 2010, al-Hindi traveled to Morocco hunting for a site in which he could organize and train his terrorist network – but entered the country under the pretext of preparing to marry a young Moroccan woman. Officials had previously denied him entry four times before, but he was allowed to pass through for marriage. Barely a month later, Moroccan security forces realized al-Hindi’s terrorist cell was operating in the country and moved quickly to capture the group.

Government volcanologist Surono, stated Mount Sinabung in North Sumatra province started rumbling a few days ago and the minor morning eruption had mostly stopped. He stated Mount Sinabung last erupted in 1600, so observers don’t know the volcano’s eruption pattern and are monitoring it closely for more activity. The government has distributed 7,000 masks to refugees and set up public kitchens so people can cook food, stated Priyadi Kardono, spokesman for the National Disaster Management Agency.

It sent sand and ash up to a mile (1.5 kilometres) high but lava only moved near its crater. It caused no major damage and only dust covered plants and trees. Evacuations on the volcano’s slopes started Friday at the first signs of activity. Up to 10,000 people who fled are staying in government buildings, houses of worship and other evacuation centres in two nearby towns.

The present-day elite Persian community in Beverly Hills, got its start in the early Seventies, when four brothers of the Mahboubi clan who had grown rich at home from their virtual monopoly on chewing gum moved to Los Angeles and sank their money into real estate on Rodeo Drive. One of the brothers, Dar Mahboubi, backed haberdasher Bijan during the Eighties, and younger Mahboubis continue to manage the family’s considerable property holdings. Another group of brothers, the Yadegars, also arrived in Beverly Hills before the revolution and began snapping up real estate. Today so many Persians own stakes in Beverly Hills’ Golden Triangle, the prime streets between Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards, that the area is known to some as “Tehrangeles.” (Another Persian shopping district in Westwood has also earned that moniker.)

The area’s attractions were obvious: Beverly Hills was synonymous with wealth and status, plus it delivered a beautiful climate, safe residential neighborhoods and a well-established Jewish community. But perhaps the key asset was the then top-notch school system. Sam Nazarian’s sister-in-law, former psychology professor Angella Nazarian, recalls that her father bought a house here in the early Seventies so her brother could attend Beverly Hills High School. “My father had no plans of coming to the U.S.,” she says over a lunch of tuna tartare in Westwood. “It was more ‘This way my son can go to a really good school.’”

Later in the decade, as Ayatollah Khomeini’s followers denounced the freedoms that had enabled Jewish prosperity, some in Tehran began to worry, says prominent hostess Mahroo Moghavem, whose husband was a successful appliance distributor at that time. “We thought investment in other countries would be good,” she says during a brunch with friends at her home in the hills above Sunset Boulevard. “We were happy, but we thought that one day the Shah would pass away and what would happen then?”

As armed students took to the streets of Tehran in late 1978, the Moghavems whisked their children off to Los Angeles for a vacation. Events unfolding on television made clear that they would not be returning home. The Moghavems were among the lucky ones, however. Thanks to their investments outside of Iran, they were able to buy a house in Beverly Hills from billionaire John Kluge and then sink money into a development project parceling the estate of silent-screen star Harold Lloyd into a 16-home subdivision.

These days Nazarian hardly needs an introduction in Hollywood and Beverly Hills: At 33, he has built an empire that includes trendy nightclubs, an archipelago of restaurants and the flashy SLS Hotel, with further hotels planned for Miami and Las Vegas. His circle, however, extends well beyond the celebutantes courted by his businesses. Nazarian and his family, who like many Iranian Jews left Tehran during the 1979 revolution, are leaders of a powerful Persian Jewish elite in Beverly Hills. One hint of the community’s influence in Los Angeles is a framed commendation on Nazarian’s sitting room wall from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. “I was one of his first supporters,” explains Nazarian. “We’re very, very close.”
The interior decor of Sam Nazarian’s $18.9 million mansion high above the Sunset Strip might be described as nightlife moderne. Glossy stone floors and glass walls are set off by glam touches like a Roy Lichtenstein print—This Must Be the Place, cheekily hung in the bathroom and a black crystal chandelier. But what’s inside the Nazarian house is secondary to the view: the city of Los Angeles spread like a vast Persian carpet laid at Nazarian’s feet. It is, in more ways than one, a view from the top.

Not so many years ago, Nazarian, whose family arrived in the U.S. when he was three, was taunted at Beverly Hills High School with insults such as “camel jockey.” “It wasn’t a very welcoming group of people,” he recalls of his schoolmates. Nazarian’s courtly 78-year-old father, Younes, who today sits alongside his youngest son at a table laden with crystal bowls of dates, berries, cucumbers and other refreshments—a typical display of Persian hospitality—was a successful tool-and-dye manufacturer in Iran. But in fleeing his country’s political turmoil, he had to leave most of his assets behind, arriving at a run-down hotel in Santa Monica with, as Younes recalls, “four suitcases and four children.” (The Nazarians are now part owners of the hotel.)

Younes and his brother, Parviz, relied on contacts with other Persian Jewish immigrants, “Our best asset in this country was our few friends,” he notes and established a factory building machine parts for such clients as the Department of Defense. Several years later, the brothers were brought into a fledgling telecom company, Qualcomm, and their millions ballooned into billions. Now Younes, like his son, is leaving footprints all over Los Angeles: He is chairman of his son’s business, SBE, and he serves on boards at the Rand Center for Middle East Policy and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, in addition to being a major donor to the University of Southern California. This philanthropic spirit makes Younes something of a pioneer, notes Sam, since the older generation by and large has not adopted the American ethic and tax strategy of giving money to nonprofits.

A different all-American motto, however, has been fully embraced by the Nazarians and many other Persian families who have earned fortunes here: If you’ve got it, flaunt it. Parviz became famous in his community and notorious in Beverly Hills for building a mansion that exemplifies an architectural style known in these parts as Persian Palace. From the street, the Nazarian pile looks like a particularly frothy wedding cake propped up by a forest of fluted columns. The interior, according to visitors, is an extravaganza of polished marble, sweeping staircases and gilt rococo furniture, a nominally French style favored by Iran’s late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. (A famous story recalls Bill Clinton’s visit to the Nazarian home for a fundraiser: He supposedly remarked, “This makes me realize I really do live in government housing.”)

In addition, Persians didn’t understand that American-style membership in a prestigious synagogue like Sinai Temple meant paying annual dues and getting involved with fundraising. “The other members looked at them as freeloaders coming and taking but never contributing,” he explains.

Delshad proved to be a major force in bridging these antipathies when, after 12 years of campaigning, he was elected in 1999 as Sinai’s first Sephardic president. He insists that tensions have since eased and notes that Persians today account for approximately 25 percent of membership. (They constitute 20 percent of the overall population of Beverly Hills.)

In 2003 Delshad took a leave from the technology company he started in 1978 to run for the Beverly Hills City Council. Ironically, he recalls, some of the toughest votes to get were Persian: Iranian Jews had no experience voting under the Shah and were wary of joining any bureaucratic roster, even the Beverly Hills voting rolls. Delshad nonetheless prevailed and in 2007 was elected mayor, despite a major kerfuffle over municipal election ballots printed in English, Spanish and, for the first time, sinuous Farsi script. “I had nothing to do with that,” Delshad insists. (Federal law does require that non-English-speaking voting blocs be provided with ballots in their own language.) “But the way they did it was to put the Persian bigger than the English,” he says. “It looked like a Farsi restaurant menu. Hundreds of people called the city to object.”

The outcry over the ballot which made the front page of The Wall Street Journal was an eruption of tensions that had been simmering for decades. A complaint sounded by Beverly Hills old-timers was that the Persians could be clannish, self-segregating and indifferent to the established norms of the community they were entering. There is some truth to that charge, acknowledges Angella Nazarian. Thanks to their wealth and numbers, Persians didn’t need to adapt. Instead, they developed a self-sufficient Farsi-speaking enclave, complete with grocery stores, restaurants and even taxi services. And rather than courting the local social establishment, rich Persians stuck to their own social world, which revolved around lavish 1,000-person bar mitzvahs and weddings. “My mother really doesn’t need to speak English, although she does,” says Nazarian. “Cultural preservation is one part of the experience of being displaced, and as with any immigrant community, we naturally want to associate with one another. Middle Eastern countries also tend to be very tribal.”

Today many younger members of the Persian community favor a less ornate style and in this as well as in many more-important matters—they represent a generational pivot between the Persian Jewish community’s past in Tehran and its future in Los Angeles. Thirty-six-year-old Natasha Baradaran, an L.A.-born and -bred interior designer whose husband, Bob, is the only Persian partner at white-shoe law firm Greenberg Glusker, is a prime example. “Especially for women, the revolution was the best thing that could have happened,” says Natasha, who earned a master’s degree in international relations at Columbia University before choosing a more creative career path. “It was hard for a lot of people who lost everything. But their kids—we learned that the sky is the limit.” Less insular and more civic-minded than their elders, these young parents, professionals and entrepreneurs represent some of America’s wealthiest and most educated immigrant offspring. The time has clearly come—as politicians, savvy businesspeople and charity fundraisers have realized to meet the neighbors in Beverly Hills.

In his office above Wilshire Boulevard, architect Hamid Gabbay, 66, traces the dazzling success of the Persian community in Beverly Hills back to Tehran before the revolution. The Sixties and Seventies saw a full-tilt economic expansion, fueled by the Shah’s dream of westernization and financed by vast oil reserves. “The real-estate boom was incredible,” explains Gabbay, who founded an architecture firm with his brother in Tehran. “We got to design a city projects I can’t even dream of now.”

The country’s Jewish minority thrived, at least in Tehran’s educated quarters, thanks to the Shah’s official policy of religious tolerance and cultural openness. But radical Muslim clerics gained strength during the late Seventies, and in January 1979 they overthrew the ailing monarch. Gabbay left in November 1978, landing a job with an L.A. firm that he had been interviewing to work for him just four months earlier. “I went to the firm,” he recalls, “and said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t hire you. But would you hire me?’”

Even before the revolution, a few Iranian Jews had already decamped to California. Jimmy Delshad, who made local history in 2007 by becoming the first Iranian-American mayor of Beverly Hills, left modest origins in Shiraz in 1959 and attended California State University at Northridge with his brothers. “I don’t think there were more than 10 or 12 [Persian] families we knew in Los Angeles,” he says.

The present-day elite Persian community in Beverly Hills, though, really got its start in the early Seventies, when four brothers of the Mahboubi clan, who had grown rich at home from their virtual monopoly on chewing gum moved to Los Angeles and sank their money into real estate on Rodeo Drive.

One of the brothers, Dar Mahboubi, backed haberdasher Bijan during the Eighties, and younger Mahboubis continue to manage the family’s considerable property holdings. Another group of brothers, the Yadegars, also arrived in Beverly Hills before the revolution and began snapping up real estate. Today so many Persians own stakes in Beverly Hills’ Golden Triangle, the prime streets between Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards, that the area is known to some as “Tehrangeles.” (Another Persian shopping district in Westwood has also earned that moniker.)

The area’s attractions were obvious: Beverly Hills was synonymous with wealth and status, plus it delivered a beautiful climate, safe residential neighborhoods and a well-established Jewish community. But perhaps the key asset was the then top-notch school system. Sam Nazarian’s sister-in-law, former psychology professor Angella Nazarian, recalls that her father bought a house here in the early Seventies so her brother could attend Beverly Hills High School. “My father had no plans of coming to the U.S.,” she says over a lunch of tuna tartare in Westwood. “It was more ‘This way my son can go to a really good school.’”

Later in the decade, as Ayatollah Khomeini’s followers denounced the freedoms that had enabled Jewish prosperity, some in Tehran began to worry, says prominent hostess Mahroo Moghavem, whose husband was a successful appliance distributor at that time. “We thought investment in other countries would be good,” she says during a brunch with friends at her home in the hills above Sunset Boulevard. “We were happy, but we thought that one day the Shah would pass away and what would happen then?”

As armed students took to the streets of Tehran in late 1978, the Moghavems whisked their children off to Los Angeles for a vacation. Events unfolding on television made clear that they would not be returning home. The Moghavems were among the lucky ones, however. Thanks to their investments outside of Iran, they were able to buy a house in Beverly Hills from billionaire John Kluge and then sink money into a development project parceling the estate of silent-screen star Harold Lloyd into a 16-home subdivision.

Generational shift, slow though it may be, has pushed the Persian community toward the American mainstream or at least the Beverly Hills version of it. Still, the community clings tightly to its core values of respect for family, faith, education and success, and some age-old customs remain. Friday-night Shabbat dinners are sacrosanct, and the meal can easily include 60 people. (Persians often cite such gatherings as a reason they need large houses.) Likewise, a majority in the younger generation choose to marry fellow Persians, much to their parents’ relief. “They don’t have to marry Persian,” says Jasmine Yadegar, in a tone suggesting that she hopes her two twentysomething daughters—both of whom still live at home, eventually will. “All I want for them is to be happy and find people with the same background.”

“For me,” says daughter Sabrina, an aspiring fashion designer, “I think it’s a lot easier to fall in love with someone who has the same ideas and experiences.”

“I need to love their family, and they need to love mine,” adds older sister Jessica, a documentary filmmaker. “Some of my American friends have told me that you’re not dating the parents. They say you don’t need to meet the parents on the first, second or third date. That’s not my view. I think the longer you postpone the introduction to the family, the longer it takes you to get to know if this is someone you want to spend the rest of your life with.”

Among much older women, the Iranian custom of the doreh—a semiformal circle of women who meet to eat home-cooked Persian fare, play cards and gossip in Farsi has also proved resilient enough to make it to the 21st century. But whether the tradition survives two generations in America is an open question as women’s roles change. “The younger generation works more,” says grandmother Jacqueline Moradi during the brunch gathering at Moghavem’s house. “In our generation in Iran, that was unheard of.”

The Baradarans represent this new face of the Persian upper-middle class. Natasha, who has a busy career, doesn’t attend a doreh, and Bob shares the job of raising their two young daughters. The Baradarans’ circle not only includes Persian friends but also his colleagues, her clients and other parents from the girls’ prestigious private schools. “I am raising kids in a city in which I was raised,” says Natasha. “This is my home. I don’t feel like a transplant.” And why should she? After 30 years in Beverly Hills, few, if any, Persians still hope to return to Tehran. “It’s a reality,” says Gabbay of his community’s new life in California, as he gazes out his office window at the Golden Triangle. “We are a reality.”

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A third earthquake in less than six weeks has hit Iran, killing at least three people and injuring 21. The 5.9-magnitude quake hit the city of Damghan in northern Iran, 175 miles east of Tehran, late Friday August 27,2010. Fifteen villages were reportedly damaged.

Experts have warned that Iran’s propensity for earthquakes, its non-strict building codes, and the fact that several of its nuclear facilities are situated near densely-populated urban areas could have catastrophic consequences for Iran. Experts estimate that an average of one serious tremor hits the country every day.

Seven years ago, 26,000 people were killed by a 6.6-magnitude quake in the historic city of Bam in south-eastern Iran.