Amélie Chelly is an Iranologist, researcher at CADIS (EHESS-CNRS) – (National Center for Scientific Research), professor at Dauphine University in Paris, reporter for the presidency of the republic, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Parliament as well as security reporting officer for the military.
The interview took place at my home in Paris on Saturday October 1st.
…
GA: Good morning. The reason I asked you for this interview is the latest events in Iran related to the death of young Maksha. In relation to the protests and reactions across the country over Mahsha's death, what do you think? Is this really something extraordinary that is happening?
Amélie Chelly : The event itself is not rare, of course this does not mean that we have such demonstrations every time, here we should say that the publicity that the event received is really impressive. Protests exist, they are not that rare, what is special is the publicity the events get and the way they are presented by the media, how they interpret them and the importance they give. There were demonstrations, revolutionary uprisings against the regime, much more important than those of the last few weeks but nobody was talking about them in the west, at least not in this intense way.
GA: Are you referring to demonstrations and uprisings for the same reasons and causes or for other reasons?
Amélie Chelly: Sometimes for the same reasons, but other times for completely different reasons. I will mention the student demonstrations of 1999 which were really much more important than the recent ones, they had a strong political and anti-establishment character and ended with terrible repression and hundreds of victims who were hanged in public. In 2009 we also had large political protests against the election result due to the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the election was considered fraudulent, which it was in the end. The uprisings were very violent and were generally against the theocratic system that exists after the Islamic revolution of 1979.
GA: The political system established by the Islamic revolution is a dictatorship and if I am not mistaken, demonstrations are prohibited. Does this mean that citizens are taking a big risk when they take to the streets?
Amélie Chelly: Yes, it's a dictatorship, that's why the citizens sometimes rebel and the protests often have victims. The citizens of Iran are generally outraged by the political and economic situation in their country.
GA: When did this opposition to the regime begin to be expressed? From the first time of its establishment, or later?
Amélie Chelly: This began to be felt especially after the end of the war with Iraq in 1988. Since then until now there have been occasional uprisings and demonstrations against the political system.
GA: Do you think that what is happening in the last few weeks in Iran is something very serious and profound that can initiate processes and other developments in Iranian society?
Amélie Chelly: What we observe is that the uprisings and demonstrations that took place all over the country because of the death of young Mahsa quickly took on a political and counter-establishment character. There are people today who are 45 years old in Iran and have never known another political regime, but thanks to the Internet they are informed about what is happening in the world and how people live elsewhere, at the same time they do not have the guilt of previous generations who saw the establishment of the Islamic theocratic rule and they couldn't do anything to prevent it, so there is a clear difference in the way the youth approach the regime.
GA: Is the media coverage and interest considered excessive in relation to the event?
Amélie Chelly: The interest of the media is quite simply strong because such themes sell more. A woman who is killed because she doesn't wear the headscarf properly, a homosexual perhaps who asks for recognition of his rights, all these are of more interest to the public of western countries, that is clear.
GA: Are you saying that events are presented and interpreted based on the Western way of thinking and we measure their significance with our own codes that are completely different from those of countries like Iran?
Amélie Chelly: Yes, of course, there is that, as well as the fact that the media generally follows the contours created by international relations. For example, when France and the other 6 countries signed the nuclear agreement that would allow Iran to once again become an honest and reliable interlocutor in the international political field, we saw on the various channels broadcasts, documentaries, tributes with a very positive sign about Iran, its wealth, rich historical tradition, queues for tourist visas, at some point it had become one of the new exotic destinations of Europeans. If at some point Iran does some actions that the West will not like, the image that the media will give will be negative.
GA: I have always had the impression that Iran, in relation to the rest of the states of the Middle East, is something special, that there is a particularity and something completely different from its neighbors. It's like that;
Amélie Chelly: Yes, it is a fact, I would even say that it has two particularities and not one and these are what make it stand out. The first is that they are Shiite Muslims and the second is that they belong to the Muslim world but are not Arabs, the majority of the inhabitants are Persians (50%), Turkic-speaking leaves (Turks, Azyrs, Kurds, etc.) population groups related to Pakistanis (Baluchs, etc. .a). In this double peculiarity they are in the minority in every case. They are Shiites, that is, in the minority branch of Islam, and they are not Arabs.
Let me remind you that in the Muslim world 90% are Sunni and only 10% are Shia, there is also a small branch which is mainly the sultanate of Oman but it does not play that big a role in the Muslim world or the geopolitical situation.
Here I would like to say since I mentioned the Sultanate of Oman that it is the negotiating channel for the Middle East, something like Switzerland for Europe. When there are contradictions between the Arab countries, they try to find points of convergence and diplomatic contacts always through the Sultanate of Oman. Between Iran and Saudi Arabia the relations are very bad and the dialogue is never done directly but through Oman.
The split between Shiites and Sunnis is fundamentally political and dates back to immediately after the death of the prophet Muhammad. According to Tabari's chronicles a minority of the Muslim world is said to have heard shortly before his death the prophet giving the order of succession to his nephew and son-in-law Ali while the majority of Muslims had not heard such a thing. The word Sunni means one who holds to the traditional way of succession of power, the word Shiite means one who disagrees, who is heretical in some way in relation to the tradition.
Iran is the only Muslim State in the world where the vast majority of the inhabitants are Shiites, there is of course another state where the Shiites are the majority, it is Azerbaijan, but there this particularity is not so important because in Azerbaijan - a former Soviet Republic - religious customs were much more relaxed.
Another important feature of Iran is that it acquired, "gave birth to", an ideology. Ideologies, ideological currents have been a feature of the west – we have seen the failure of ideological currents and the countless victims they have caused.
The ideology Iran was gifted with is what we call Theocracy. The rulers are simply the intermediaries, their role is to implement the orders they receive from God to the people.
Iran managed to create this ideology and implement it at the state level. It is unique in the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia doesn't have a theocracy either. There is a two-headed system, on the one hand the political power with the princely family and on the other the religious power. These two powers are in constant negotiation without one imposing itself on the other, the supreme authority is not religious, while in Iran the supreme ruler is the ayatollah who is the religious leader.
…
GA: You talked about the ideologies of the West before. So that I can understand better, are you referring to the ideologies of the 20th century such as communism, fascism, Nazism or in general to philosophical ideological currents of the 19th and 18th centuries?
Amélie Chelly: Yes, I'm referring to them, but more generally to all these currents that experienced a systematic application that resulted in the elimination of the borders between the private and public spheres, under the cloak of totalitarianism.
An ideology always aims to be implemented, and the highest level of implementation of an ideology is to enforce it as the one, absolute and infallible truth, and this can only work in a totalitarian environment.
GA: In other words, could we say that Iran in its historical development had an (intentional or unintentional) Western-oriented approach in some way?
Amélie Chelly: It is a fact that since 1925 when the last Pahlavi dynasty came to power (the last Shah who fell in 1979 was of the Pahlavi dynasty) they had decided to take a conscious direction towards the West - the penultimate Shah was a great friend of western spirit and clearly tried to give such a direction to the country - this was continued by the last Shah. Iran wanted to modernize and follow Western standards and structures in all areas, and to do this the Shah sent the country's best students to study in Western and American universities. This was both good and bad in the end. Those who studied philosophy and humanities were greatly influenced by the Western way of thinking and especially the way and methods of using humanistic studies and ideas, so we have the birth of a category of people who reflect and produce thought and ideas (in a Western way - since there they studied - From them the ideology of Theocracy was created, a child of this caste of people is also Ayatollah Khomeini who took power in 1979.
GA: Is it the ideology of theocracy established by the Islamic revolution that makes the regime so radical and cruel? Would a girl like Mahsha Amini have the same fate in another Arab state in Saudi Arabia for example?
Amélie Chelly: As strange as this may seem to you, Saudi Arabia is even tougher than Iran. Morals and customs are even more conservative and we would say much worse, and there are many reasons for this. There may not be a theocracy in Saudi Arabia as we said before, but the way they see and interpret Islam is much stricter.
GA: Could we make a parallel of the differences that exist in the Christian religion between Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants and the differences that exist between Shiites and Sunnis?
Amélie Chelly: Between Shiites and Sunnis there is a war, open, relentless and on all levels. And a lot of hate. For this reason, after all, Daesh was created. I will explain how:
Neighboring Iraq is a country where there is a small 60% Shia majority and a large 40% Sunni minority. When Saddam Hussein was in power, who came from the Baath party, he favored the Sunnis and always oppressed the Shiites and especially the Kurds. When in 2003 Saddam fell from power, the Anglo-American alliance tried to hold parliamentary elections in a manner similar to that of Western European countries, but there was certainly a peculiarity in Iraq. The Shias voted exclusively for their own candidates and the Sunnis likewise for theirs.
With this proportion of the population it was logical that the Shiites would come to the government and of course the first thing they did was to start hunting and oppressing the Sunnis in retaliation for those who had suffered for so many years during Saddam's rule.
This whole situation took such dimensions that the branch of Al Qaeda (in the majority of Sunnis) that was operating in Iraq instead of dealing with the traditional target, i.e. the Americans, the Jews and the Westerners, Christians in general, aimed more at the Shiites and their windows. This caused the intervention of the two al-Qaeda leaders Bin Laden and Zaouri many times, who addressed the leadership of the Iranian al-Qaeda and reminded them that the organization's primary target is not the Shiite Muslims but the Americans in particular. The head of Al Qaeda in Iraq continues to act and at some point splits from Al Qaeda and creates the Islamic State of Iraq. Later during the civil war in Syria, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Levantines) is created and as a continuation we have the creation of Daesh.
GA: Is Iran's intense hostility towards the Americans religious or political in nature? Are they bothered by the idea of the infidel American or the imperialist American?
Amélie Chelly: I would say neither. Shiites don't have a problem with Christians, Sunnis do, they hate non-believers. I would rather say that it is an enmity of a national nature. The seizure of the American embassy for over a year by Iranian revolutionaries is the cornerstone of the Islamic revolution. The identity of the Islamic revolution is its opposition to Israel and America which is the embodiment of the West but there is another main reason. When we make a revolution we want to completely reject what existed before and in the case of Iran this was the regime of the Shah who was pro-Western and had particularly privileged relations with the Americans.
GA: Did the revolution against the Shah also have ideological, socio-political motives? Was it the new against the old? Progress against maintenance and authoritarianism? Because let's not forget the Shah's regime was a dictatorship.
Amélie Chelly: Yes of course, there was clearly this dimension, we should say that the revolution was not only made by the Islamists but mostly by the people of the left in Iran. In the 1970s, there was a communist party in Iran for the first time in a Middle Eastern state, which was directly connected to the Soviet Union, in fact, to describe the closeness of the relationship, it was often said that "when it rains in Moscow, we open the umbrellas in Tehran". Of course, initially a problem was created because communism could not be established throughout the country, because we know it, we have seen it everywhere, it is a constant all over the world that they are true communists from the beginning they are people who come from the big bourgeoisie, that is people who read a lot, listen to music, have studied, are very cultured, have a good intellectual level and have all their time and clarity to wonder and listen to the problems of this unfair world we live in, and then these ideas spread to the rest of the population. How would this be done in a country like Iran with a huge majority of the rural population, completely illiterate, without cultivation and above all, with a very strong religious faith - while the idea of communism includes, includes atheism?
The Islamists were against the Shah because he was close to the West and wanted to change the morals and customs little by little. When for example he allowed the cinema and people watched American movies, this was considered by the Islamists as a scandal against the religion. they felt that the Shah's pro-Western policy would alienate the world from religion and faith.
After all, the slogan of the Islamists in the revolution against the Shah was "Not in the East (communism), not in the West (capitalism), Islamic Republic" so they could and did touch the whole world, it was a kind of Gaulism ala Iran. This of course did not stop the Islamists when they took power to imprison and kill most communists and pro-Westerners.
GA: Could we say that the regime of the Shah compared to the Islamic Republic of today was more liberal in terms of morals and customs? the position of the woman?
Amélie Chelly: The Islamic Republic is clearly much worse. In the Shah's regime the state, the state was ahead of the deeply conservative society.
The Elite, the intelligentsia, the high social classes lived like the people of the West. The position of women has always been difficult but for social reasons, due to morals and not laws.
GA: Would what happened to young Maksha happen under the Shah regime?
Amélie Chelly: No this could never happen for the very simple reason that the scarf in the time of the Shah was prohibited in the state administration and was not compulsory. Today the scarf is mandatory and the tie is prohibited for men in government offices and government officials, because it is seen as a symbol of the western way of life. Have you seen an Iranian politician wearing a tie? It is strictly forbidden.
GA: I would like to ask you one last question. What prompted you to get involved with Iran? to become an Iranologist? you told me there are only six in all France.
Amélie Chelly: The reason is one. The language of the country. When I heard it for the first time I fell in love with it and wanted to learn to speak it. Language is culture. That's where it all started. The rest followed.
GA: Thank you very much
Amélie Chelly: Me too