On June 15, in the middle of the night marked by the Israeli strikes on Tehran, Iranians stuck in a tunnel north of the capital, fleeing the war, began to dance between parked cars, to the sound of traditional music. This scene which embodies a form of resistance by joy, in frontal opposition to the ideology of mullahs, symbolizes the Iranian people, their resilience, their revolt and their influence in the region. In the 8th century, most of the poets, architects, scholars, doctors and philosophers who contributed to the development of the Abbasid Empire (750-1258), led by the Arabs, came from this culture.
It is in this context that a major philosophical movement was born: mutazilites, which placed reason at the heart of faith, when there was a divergence of interpretations of the Koranic text. For them, this text had been created in time and was therefore not eternal, a position allowing to submit it to criticism in all its forms. This intellectual current, of surprising modernity, has enabled many spirits to advance reflection throughout the region. Those who ensured continuity were, for the most part, Persians. Anchored in a millennial humanism, this rich culture differs deeply from the recent ideology imposed by the Ayatollahs since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
Sîbawayh, Avicenne …
In Syria, in the 2000s, relations between the regime of Bashar el-Assad and that of Iran knew a honeymoon period. Together, they created, with Hezbollah, what they called “the axis of resistance” against Israel. The portraits of Khameini, Assad fils and Nasrallah rubbed shoulders with the streets of Damascus. Iran was present everywhere, through this “resistance” and its nuclear project, as a challenge launched in the imperialist West.
Later, at the university where I studied Arab literature, I discovered that at the time of mutazilites, the Arabic language faced real challenges after Islamic conquests, which had led to the need to codify it and fix the rules. The figure that played the most decisive role in establishing its grammar was called Sîbawayh. He was not Arab, but Persian. It was surprising to discover that the greatest minds that shaped the Arab region were of Persian origin: Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Nasir al-Din al-Tui and many other philosophers and scholars. I also learned that the oldest nucleus of A thousand and one nights comes from a Persian book today lost, entitled HAZAR AFSAN (“A thousand legends” or “a thousand tales”). This influence was prolonged until the 20th century, where the press and publications contributed to the dissemination of literature and modern ideas, in parallel with the birth of secular and liberal political parties, like that of the Renaissance (“Revival Party”), created in 1920.
The tragic rupture of 1979
The arrival of Khomeini in power has not only constituted a tragic break for the great Persian culture, but also for the whole region. The same year, in 1979, the Sahwa movement, or “awakening”, was born in Saudi Arabia, in reaction to the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran. His goal? Impose a Salafist reading of Sunni Sharia law, perceived as a bulwark against Shiite expansion. The Middle East was thus taken in noise between two opposite radical currents, which dominated the political landscape for several decades. Israel has become the recurring pretext through which the Arab and Iranian regimes justified their use of political Islam. The growing tension between Arabs and Persians has gradually replaced mutual intellectual influence and the reciprocal enrichment of the past. She crystallized in the devastating war between Iran and Iraq (1980–1988). Saddam Hussein feared that a parallel Islamic movement will contaminate Iraq, a country where more than half of the population was Shiite.
But the Iranian population has always managed to keep a significant distance from their ideological regime. Leftist parties and secular movements, such as Tudeh, opposed it from the start, denouncing the strengthening of the doctrine of Wilayat al-Faqihor government of the jurist theologian, as a theocratic drift incompatible with the democratic aspirations of the country. The Iran National Democratic Front (NDFF), founded in 1981, quickly established itself as a major opposition in exile against the Ayatollah regime. At the cultural level, contemporary Iranian cinema, combining narrative finesse and humanist depth, shines with its exceptional capacity to capture the beauty of everyday life, offering the world of works that are both poetic, committed and deeply touching.
This distance manifests itself in cultural diversity still visible in Iran: Zoroastrians, Muslims, Jews, Bahaïs coexist despite the pressure. Meanwhile, the mullah regime imposes a rigorous Shiite religious identity, placed above institutions. If he manages to maintain himself, it is thanks to a formidable security apparatus and a manipulative and hybrid discourse, mixing religious rhetoric and nationalism.
Historical links with Israel
Under the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1941-1979), Iran was one of the few countries in the Middle East to maintain official diplomatic links with Israel. This collaboration, initiated in the 1950s, resulted in an exchange of embassies and agreements in the fields of security, intelligence, and the economy. Trade included the export of Iranian oil to Israel as well as the importation of Israeli technologies and products. These links have contributed to accentuate the tension between Iran and the Arab regimes hostile to the Hebrew state. Iran then envisaged a prosperous future of development, despite religious differences with its allies, unlike the mullahs regime, marked by fundamentalism and a rigid ideology.
Today, Iran is at a historic turning point, with a unique opportunity to reconnect with its true identity. While Saudi Arabia and several Gulf powers start a remarkable turn, abandoning political Islam in favor of more modern and open systems, Iranians aspire to a democratic and social uprising. They can draw inspiration from the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911, a period when Iranian society had massively mobilized to establish a rule of law guaranteeing fundamental freedoms. If Iran is liberalized and overturns the theocratic regime, the Israeli far right, embodied by Benyamin Netanyahu, would lose its pretext to justify new devastating wars. This dynamic could well mark the beginning of the end of political Islam throughout the region. The Iranian people, who once radiated culturally and politically on their neighbors, retains their symbolic power, their historical heritage and their openness to the world intact. His release would not only be that of a country, but a breath of freedom for an entire region; Just as its repression painfully resonates beyond its borders, throughout the Middle East.
*Writer and poet born near Damascus in 1987, Omar Youssef Souleimane participated in the demonstrations against the regime of Bashar el-Assad, but, tracked down by the secret services, had to flee Syria in 2012. He has just published Arabic smiled (Flammarion).
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