AP Photo/Richard Drew
Tensions between the United States and Iran continue to escalate following President Donald Trump's controversial ordering of a deadly strike on Iran's top general, and allegations that a Ukraine International Airlines flight might have been shot down by an Iranian missile.
Despite increasing tensions between the two nations, there are Iranian-American communities across the country, and they make up a vital part of the US. The Census Bureau estimates that nearly half a million Americans self-identify as having Iranian heritage. The over 27,000 Iranian-Americans living in the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metropolitan area are especially crucial to Silicon Valley, where skilled tech workers are in high demand.
Business Insider has assembled a list of major companies helmed or founded by Iranian-Americans.
Many of the business leaders included on this non-exhaustive list fled Iran in the late 1970s and early 1980s following the Iranian Revolution that overthrew a monarchy and implemented an Islamic Republic. Dara Khosrowshahi, the current CEO of Uber, arrived in the US as an Iranian refugee when he was 9 years old.
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Khosrowshahi is the former CEO of Expedia. He took over as Uber CEO in 2017. He fled Iran as a child when his prominent family's major pharmaceutical conglomerate was seized and nationalized by the Iranian government.
At a luncheon in December 2019, Khosrowshahi said the best piece of advice he ever received was from Herbert Allen of boutique investment bank Allen & Co.: "I bet on people, not companies. But in a world where so much is changing — businesses change, environments change, countries change — one constant is that people stay good."
Second-generation Iranian-American Arash Ferdowsi dropped out of MIT to cofound Dropbox.
AP Photo/Richard Drew
Ferdowsi was studying electrical engineering at MIT when he met Drew Houston in 2008. Houston was looking for a business partner to secure backing for his cloud-storage idea from Y Combinator.
A week later, Ferdowsi dropped out and helped launch Dropbox. The company went public in March 2018.
Hospitality and entertainment mogul Sam Nazarian was born in Tehran in 1975.
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As the CEO and owner of SBE Entertainment, Nazarian owns several nightclubs, hotels, and restaurants, including SLS hotels and Umami Burger. He grew up in California after his Persian Jewish family left Tehran following the Iranian Revolution. His father made a fortune as an early investor in Qualcomm Inc.
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