- 14 January 2010
- 1 Comments
- Civil Rights Legislation, Congress, Immigration Policy, Iranian American activism

Shahram's story became well known after Newsweek featured a photo of him.
New York – When Shahram Hashemi saw an airplane fly into the second World Trade Center building and smoke spewing from the first tower, he knew it wasn’t an accident. So Shahram, a young Iranian university student who had only been in the U.S. for three years, made a remarkable decision. As others fled the scene, Shahram found himself running toward the epicenter of the worst terrorist attack ever seen on American soil.
“A few minutes after the first tower collapsed, I found myself in a war zone,” Shahram said. In the middle of the chaos, he began helping move shocked and confused people away from the towers to a safe place.
Seeing him in his business suit, a local fire chief threw his heavy coat over Shahram’s shoulders and handed him a mask. Just then, the second tower began to buckle and he sought refuge in the nearby AmEx Building. Emerging from the building, Shahram joined a group of civilian volunteers to extinguish fires and clear rubble for the search and rescue teams. All day he worked until the soot, dust and exhaustion took hold of him.
That day, Shahram helped save over a dozen lives – while here in America on a student visa.