This project is situated in the recent cultural shift in Iran and the arrests of women who’ve protested various moral laws pertaining to sartorial choice and public behavior, in relationship to the influence of social media communities. As an extension of the vast scholarship on counterpublics by Michael Warner (2002), Charles Hirschkind (2006), and others, this paper argues not only that women’s protests in Iran occupy spaces in opposition to Iranian publics (so-called), but that they are part of a larger international and largely digital community of counterpublics. In this realm of counterpublics and new communities, where geopolitical boundaries recede, I further demonstrate that digital Iranian communities collaborate globally in a digital diaspora. That is to say, by broadening the definition of diaspora I argue that there is a relationship between counterpublics and diasporas in their occupation of certain subversive spaces, physical as well as digital ones. Among many iterations of diaspora, I focus on the Iranian doctoral student community in the US. Interested in how culture (Persian) is preserved while studying abroad, I look at a group of students who read Mowlana’s Masnavi and how it shapes their identities within American educational institutions while at the same time they remain engaged with the broader Iranian international community, through the mechanism of the digital diaspora. In analyzing the Masnavi group, I interview female participants in particular to examine the women’s movement with respect to Iranian-ness, Mowlana, perspectives on women’s social roles, as well as, protests over veiling. Through this paper, by extending the ideas of diaspora and counterpublics, this work may contribute to the broadening of scholarship on communities and speak to gender, ethnic, racial, sexual, socio-cultural elements that are currently shaping ideas about Iran and its identities.