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A group with Iranian flags took to the slopes at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort over the weekend to celebrate the joint strikes by the United States and Israel.
A video posted to social media shows people singing and raising glasses celebrating inside Teton Village’s Four Seasons hotel. It was posted the day after an attack killed Iran’s supreme leader and spurred retaliatory strikes across the region. The skiers weren’t alone in celebrating the fall of a 47-year-old regime.
A video on social media showed revelers at Teton Village the day after the U.S. attacked Iran. (Screenshot)
Jeff Neishabouri, owner of Kismet Fine Rugs in Jackson, said he looks forward to returning to the country for the first time in decades if conditions stabilize.
Reactions across the U.S. have been more mixed, with some critical of the Trump administration acting without the approval of Congress. Others were outraged by the strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran that reportedly killed more than 160 children.
“I would love to go one day as a tourist and ski there and look at the Caspian Sea, which was so beautiful, and go see the historic area and yeah, that would be my dream,” Neishabouri told KHOL on Monday, days after the strikes.
He has spent the past 36 years in Jackson, apart from his extended family and frustrated by what he called a “brutal” government of repression.
Iran responded to the U.S. strikes with a connection blackout, making it difficult for Neishabouri to call his aunts and uncles there.
“For one minute I could make a connection and the connection was so bad, I was like ‘Are you guys okay?’ They said ‘Yes, we are fine,’ and the phone got disconnected.”
He looks forward to a day when his children can meet their cousins and reconnect with their culture.
The Iranian community is relatively small in Jackson and around the state. Only 79 people in Wyoming identified their country of origin as Iran, according to a 2023 count compiled from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Neishabouri said he’s heard that a few other Persians reside in town, referring to the majority ethnic group of the nation, but he hasn’t met them.
Rosie Read, founder of the Wyoming Immigrant Advocacy Project and a longtime immigration attorney in Jackson, said she doesn’t have any clients from Iran.
Still, toppling the Iranian regime sends a broader message of liberation to the rest of the world, said Neishabouri, who fled the country as a teenager.
“I’m grateful for the 90 million Iranians. They will soon be free. They can choose their own president, not by force. And this way they can live peacefully among each other and help the world live peacefully,” the 59-year-old said.
Wyoming’s congressional delegation continues to monitor American forces as they fight Iranian retaliation.
U.S. Sens. Cynthia Lummis and John Barrasso released statements celebrating the show of American strength, while U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman called Iran’s violent leadership “a crusade that must be stopped.”
“Congress has been in close contact with administration officials as the White House works to eliminate the Iranian threat once and for all,” she said in a statement to KHOL.
Gov. Mark Gordon did not respond to a request for comment and has not weighed in publicly.
