Friendships are breaking, families have stopped talking, and the Iranian American community is tearing itself apart over a question far more agonizing than the old regime debate: how much destruction is an acceptable price for the Islamic Republic to fall? Political scientist Vali Nasr, himself an exile since the 1979 revolution, has described the fracture in an interview with Bloomberg.

The old dividing line was manageable, "Hvylya" reports, citing Nasr's conversation with Bloomberg's Mishal Husain. "It used to be: are you for the regime or not? And that was a much easier answer," Nasr said. The new question - do you support the war or not - cuts deeper, because it forces Iranians to weigh their hatred of the theocracy against the physical survival of their homeland.

"There are those abroad who say that they're willing even for Iran to be divided, to lose territory - war at any cost for the regime to go," Nasr said. Others, including many who despise the Islamic Republic, cannot stomach watching their country burn. "Our most difficult conversations now are actually with our own kindred," he added.

Nasr drew parallels with two earlier crises he lived through: arriving in the US as a teenager during the 1979 hostage crisis, and the post-9/11 experience of Muslim Americans. "Now once again, it is a similar kind of situation - that America is at war with Iran. And for a lot of Iranian Americans, this is again as difficult a moment as being a Muslim American was after 9/11."

His own family's story mirrors the broader pain. Nasr's father, a renowned scholar of Islam who served in the Shah's government, fled Iran in 1979 with his family. All their property was seized by the revolutionary government. Now, the older generation that remembers prerevolutionary Iran is watching the country's physical destruction - some of them old enough to also remember the famines of World War II. The fear of a full-scale state collapse haunts diaspora Iranians regardless of where they stand on the regime.

Also read: "This Is the Third Gulf War": Ferguson's Historical Warning About How It Will End.