VS’is an interview that caused a lot of talk in Iran. As the country is shaken by a huge wave of protests following the tragic death of the young Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian who died after being arrested by the morality police for improperly wearing the veil, Emmanuel Macron met in New York ultra-conservative Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. Organized on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the interview focused on the Iranian nuclear issue, which is now at an impasse after Iran ended up refusing the European compromise proposal that was presented.
According to the final press release from the Élysée, the meeting was also an opportunity to discuss the situation in Iraq and Lebanon. An exchange which deeply shocked in Iran, while numerous demonstrations of anger across the country were violently repressed by the security forces. For now, at least three people have been killed in the Iranian province of Kurdistan, according to its governor Ismail Zarei Koosha. “The news of the meeting between Emmanuel Macron and Ebrahim Raïsi has upset many Iranians”, explains from Tehran an international relations specialist who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. “It was a very bad idea on the part of the French president, because this interview gave international legitimacy to the Iranian president while human rights are trampled on in the country. »
READ ALSOIn Iran, the revolt of women exposed
Macron “shocked” by the death of Mahsa Amini
According to the website of the Presidency of the French Republic, the Head of State would nevertheless have told his Iranian counterpart of the “shock that was his at the news of the death of Mahsa Amini after his arrest”. He would also have insisted on “the need for a transparent investigation to shed light on this tragedy”. Speaking to the foreign press after the meeting, Emmanuel Macron said he “insisted on respect for women’s rights” in the country.
“The French president evacuated the subject with a simplistic sentence which has no value”, the source in Iran is indignant. “The problem is that asking for a transparent investigation does not lead to anything in the Islamic Republic. Whether it was for the murder in prison of Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi in 2003, for that of blogger Sattar Beheshti in 2012 or for the destruction by the Revolutionary Guards of the civilian plane of Ukraine International Airlines in 2020, the investigations carried out in Iran have never led to anything. If Emmanuel Macron wanted to mark his disagreement with the repression, he should have refused to meet Ebrahim Raïssi. »
READ ALSOHow the death of a young woman rekindled the debate over the compulsory veil in Iran
In Paris, it is explained that the President of the Republic, who has already spoken several times by telephone with his Iranian counterpart, wished to take advantage of the opportunity given to him to meet him directly for a bilateral exchange on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, as he has done with other Heads of State. However, the interview with the ultra-conservative president is all the more inappropriate since the latter issued a directive on July 5 calling for stricter application of the law on “hijab and chastity” in Iran, thanks in particular to the assistance of the morality police, the unit which arrested Mahsa Amini on September 13 for “inappropriate attire”.
Elected to head the executive in June 2021 after a disputed ballot, during which the majority of moderate candidates were eliminated by the government, this former judge of the revolutionary court also has a bleak record in matters of human rights. He is accused by several human rights organizations of having been part of a “Death Committee”, which condemned and executed thousands of Iranian political prisoners in 1988, which Ebrahim Raïsi has always denied.
“Europe and the United States turn a blind eye”
“What helps the Islamic Republic are its relations with Western countries”, denounces to the Point the journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, at the origin of the campaign against the compulsory wearing of the veil in Iran, which in recent years has seen many Iranian women take off their headscarves and film themselves on social networks. “This is why this regime maintains negotiations on Iranian nuclear power at all costs, she judges, so that Europe and the United States turn a blind eye to the mass killings perpetrated in Iran. »
In June 2009, during the fierce repression of the green movement contesting the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the Iranian presidency, the former head of state Nicolas Sarkozy did not hesitate to publicly denounce the violence of the security forces in against peaceful demonstrators, unlike Barack Obama, whose reluctance to support the democratic aspirations of the protesters at the time had been decried by the Iranians.
READ ALSOEbrahim Raisi, elected official of the Islamic Republic of Iran
“Obama! Barack Obama! You are either with them or with us,” chanted protesters in major cities across the country. “Barack Obama was in fact on the side of the Islamic Republic”, estimates today Masih Alinejad. “While Iranians were being killed, the former president wrote a secret letter to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei [pour une meilleure coopération entre les deux pays]. His own administration told me at the time that it did not want to send the “bad signal” to the Iranian regime that it supported the green movement. Barack Obama’s outstretched hand to the Islamic Republic nevertheless allowed the opening of secret negotiations between the United States and Iran, which culminated in July 2015 in the signing of the Iranian nuclear agreement ( JCPOA), a text which considerably restricted Iran’s atomic capabilities in exchange for the lifting of international economic sanctions.French priority
But the Democrat’s successor to the White House, Republican Donald Trump, unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, leading to a resumption of controversial nuclear activities in Tehran, which could today allow it to obtain atomic weapons. “It is normal that the fact of wanting to prevent the acquisition by Iran of the nuclear bomb is a pressing subject”, explains the entourage of the President of the Republic. “The Europeans’ priority is to see to what extent we can ensure that Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear agreement. »
Remarks deemed unsurprising in Tehran. “We have long since understood that France, which prides itself on being the country of human rights, is content with vague hollow slogans on this subject to better put its interests first”, denounces the Iranian specialist bitterly. international relations. “We see this in the French relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran, but also with Saudi Arabia, especially when Emmanuel Macron welcomes Crown Prince Mohammed ben Salmane to the Elysée Palace, despite his involvement in the assassination of the Saudi journalist. Jamal Khashoggi. »