Iranians and Persians in Boston: Community and History

Iranians and Persians in Boston are a small but visible part of Greater Boston: roughly 1,800 residents of the city of Boston reported Iranian ancestry in recent Census Bureau survey data, with several thousand more across nearby cities and towns such as Brookline, Cambridge, Newton, Watertown and Belmont. This article draws on federal data, the Iranian Association of Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts and local reporting from the Boston Globe, NBC Boston, WCVB and Boston.com. Where the public record is thin, it says so.

Key Takeaways

About 1,814 Boston residents reported Iranian ancestry in the 2024 American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year data, about 0.3% of the city, according to a CensusEasy tabulation of Census Bureau tables. Statewide the figure is about 9,287.
Ancestry, birthplace and nationality are different counts, and survey estimates for small groups carry margins of error. Real numbers are likely to differ, and no source I found measures the community exactly.
Nationally, the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) counted 385,000 Iranian-born immigrants in 2019, a highly educated group, many of whom first arrived as students or after the 1979 revolution.
The community’s anchor institution is the Iranian Association of Boston in Watertown, active since 1989. Universities, the Museum of Fine Arts and a cluster of restaurants round out its public life.
In 2026 the war with Iran, postponed Nowruz events and new visa limits have shaped daily life. Local reporting shows people with a wide range of views rather than a single position.

How Many Iranians and Persians Live in Boston?

No single number settles this. The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey asks about ancestry, and the Bureau’s detailed tables (such as B04006) report people who name Iranian ancestry. A CensusEasy ranking built from the 2024 ACS 5-year estimates puts Boston first among 58 qualifying Massachusetts cities with 1,814 people, about 0.3% of 672,973 residents. Brookline (599), Cambridge (594), Newton (461), Wellesley (407), Waltham (383), Watertown (294) and Belmont (210) follow in that tabulation. The same site lists about 9,287 people of Iranian ancestry statewide and 518,774 nationwide.

Three cautions apply. First, “ancestry” is self-reported and is not the same as being born in Iran or holding Iranian citizenship. MPI, for example, counts the foreign-born, and separately estimates a diaspora of more than 577,000 people nationally who were born in Iran or reported Iranian ancestry (2019 data). Second, ACS figures for small places are estimates with margins of error. Third, some people may not report Iranian ancestry at all, for reasons that range from mixed family backgrounds to privacy concerns, so undercounting is possible. I did not find a published count of Iranian-born residents of the city of Boston alone.

Iranians and Persians are not the same thing. “Iranian” refers to nationality or origin in Iran. “Persian” is an ethnic and linguistic term. Britannica identifies Persians as Iran’s largest ethnic group and lists Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Lurs, Bakhtiaris and Baloch among others. MPI notes that migration after the revolution included religious and ethnic minorities such as Baha’is and Armenians. Some people from Iran use one word, some the other, and the community cannot be assumed to share one identity, religion or politics.

History: Students, the Revolution and Later Arrivals

MPI traces the broad national pattern. Iranians have lived in the United States in small numbers since the 1930s. From the late 1940s to the 1979 revolution, arrivals were mostly international students, professionals and tourists. Iranians were the largest group of foreign students in the United States in the 1974-75 and 1979-80 school years, at 53,300 students (18%) in the latter. After the revolution and the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, the Iranian-born population grew from 122,000 in 1980 to 283,000 in 2000 and 385,000 in 2019, and many students stayed after graduating.

Boston-area stories fit that pattern. MIT’s news office records that physicist Ali Javan was born in Tehran in 1926, came to the United States in 1949, and joined MIT in 1961. In 1960, at Bell Laboratories, he invented the first gas laser. The Boston Globe reports that Mohsen Tehrani, co-owner of Caspian Persian Cuisine in Watertown, came to the United States in 1979, and that restaurateur Babak Bina arrived in Brookline the same year at age 13. These are individual accounts, not a count of how many people arrived when.

Universities, Research and Work

Greater Boston’s universities are one reason Iranians have come here. Nationally, the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors data counts 12,656 students from Iran in the United States in 2024/25, up from 12,430 the year before, and about 80% were graduate students. I did not find a published breakdown for Massachusetts or for MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, Boston University or Tufts individually, which is a real gap. Open Doors lists Massachusetts as hosting 84,097 international students overall.

The record on faculty is easier to document for individuals. Harvard’s physics department lists Cumrun Vafa, born in Tehran in 1960, as a professor. Harvard’s Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations department includes Iranian studies as a PhD subfield and offers Persian language courses. Student groups include MIT’s Persian Students Association and the Harvard Iranian Student Association, which the Harvard Crimson reported hosted a Nowruz event in 2023.

On work, the data are national and statewide, not city-level. MPI found that 62% of employed Iranian immigrants nationally worked in management, business, science and arts occupations in 2019, and 59% of those 25 and older had a bachelor’s degree or higher. For Massachusetts, CensusEasy’s 2024 ACS tabulation lists 81.3% of people of Iranian ancestry with a bachelor’s degree or higher and a median household income of $125,739. Those are group averages and say nothing about any individual. Local reporting includes Iranian Americans in data science and medical AI, such as the scientists quoted by the Globe, but I found no systematic study of Iranian contributions to Boston’s biotech or medical sectors, so this article does not claim one.

Organizations and Cultural Life

The Iranian Association of Boston (IAB) describes itself as a cultural and social nonprofit serving the Iranian-American community in Greater Boston since 1989. It says it is nonpartisan and non-religious. Its hall is at 17 Nichols Ave. in Watertown, and its site lists a library, a Chaharshanbe Soori fire festival, and events such as a storytelling evening on October 18, 2026. It also lists member businesses, including a Persian market and a restaurant.

Nowruz, the Persian New Year that begins at the spring equinox, is the main annual celebration. IAB had planned a Nowruz celebration for March 13, 2026, and its event page lists it as postponed because of the war. The Boston Globe also reported that the association postponed other events.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, holds Persian art in its Arts of Islamic Cultures collection. Its online collection includes folios from a Shahnama, the Persian national epic by Firdawsi, and Safavid-era album pages. I could not confirm which of these are currently on view, so check the museum before visiting. Food is another public face of the culture. Our guide to Persian restaurants in the Boston area covers the restaurants, which are mostly in Watertown and Belmont rather than in the city itself.

Current Issues: War, Nowruz and Visa Limits

The US-Israeli attacks on Iran in late February 2026 and the war that followed have been a dominant issue. The Globe reported that on the day of the first strikes, demonstrators in Copley Square celebrated while another crowd on Boston Common denounced the attacks as illegal. The paper described rulers of the Islamic Republic as deeply unpopular among many Iranian Americans in Massachusetts, while noting fears about repeating past interventions. NBC Boston found “mixed emotion,” quoting Cafe Vanak owner Zohreh Beheshti: “Some people are happy, some people are not.” Reza Zadeh, who moved from Iran 26 years ago, told the station he wanted the government replaced. WCVB quoted Boston resident Bahar Sharafi on fears about infrastructure and Reza Hassanzadeh on relatives who, he said, support strikes.

In April, after a ceasefire and talks in Islamabad, the Globe quoted IAB president Saeed Shafiyan-Rad: “I don’t know if the peace process will help the Iranian people, or if it’s just a delay tactic for starting bombing again.” Boston.com reported a rally of nearly 150 people on Boston Common on April 8, organized by the National Iranian American Council and local peace groups. These accounts show the range of views, and each speaks only for the person quoted. For the wider conflict, see our report on the Iran war in 2026 and the latest on the Iran blockade and Hormuz.

Immigration policy matters too. The State Department says Presidential Proclamation 10998 took effect January 1, 2026, fully suspending visa issuance to nationals of 19 countries including Iran, with exceptions for diplomats, lawful permanent residents, dual nationals using another passport, and immigrant visas for persecuted ethnic and religious minorities in Iran. The proclamation applies to people outside the United States without a valid visa on that date, and the State Department says no earlier visas were revoked. Student visas are among the categories affected, so new Iranian students cannot generally enroll from abroad. Opinion and student-press coverage also report a pause in OPT work-authorization processing for Iranian students; I could only see summaries of those pieces, so confirm details with a university international office.

What We Could Not Verify

A reliable count of Iranian-born residents of the city of Boston, as opposed to people of Iranian ancestry.
Iranian student and faculty numbers at each Boston-area university.
Any measure of Iranian contributions to Boston-area biotech, medicine or tech beyond individual examples.
The current display status of Persian objects at the MFA.

Sources

Photo: Nasir al-Mulk Mosque in Shiraz, Iran, by Laurens R. Krol, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Iranians and Persians in Boston: Community, History and Culture