BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

Hello, I'm James Reynolds.

Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

In BBC conversations, we bring people together to share their experiences.

This time, I'm in central London to meet Iranians.

This area of London, just north of Oxford streets, one of the city's busiest shopping areas,

has almost every international cuisine you could possibly imagine. If you want Chinese, Indian,

Turkish, even Scandinavian, you can find a restaurant or a cafe right

around here. And that reflects the rich cultural diversity of the UK's capital, home to immigrants

from around the world for hundreds of years. A few days ago, I came to a Persian restaurant here,

Naurun, where we brought together five Iranians to discuss events of the

past week, their hopes for the future, and to sample some food and drink from the country.

You'll hear from Reza. He's the co-owner of the restaurant. Raha, she's lived in the UK for three

years after coming here for her master's degree. Amira is a freelance journalist

and content creator. Erfhan works in London after leaving Iran five years ago and 26-year-old Kaylee.

She grew up in the US and Iran and now lives here in the UK. We began our conversation

with their reaction to the start of the Israeli and American airstrikes on Iran a week ago.

Seeing the Iranian people experience joy makes me experience joy.

And seeing them nervous and scared and sad makes me feel the same.

So I feel like my emotions since Saturday have very closely echoed those of the Iranian people.

My phone hadn't been on charge, so I woke up to put it on charge to get ready for the day

ahead and glanced at it, and a friend of mine had messaged me saying, my love, I'm so sorry to

...