Yann Richard is a French historian who has studied Iran for nearly forty years. A Professor of Iranian studies at the Sorbonne (Nouvelle) University in Paris, he is the author of numerous books and articles on Shi’ism and Iran.  Recently, the Dutch publishing house, Brill, introduced his new edited book titled East and West of Zagros, the memoirs of an English officer, C.J. Edmonds, who went to Iran in the 1900’s and according to Richard was involved indirectly in the 1921 coup. Edmonds observes the following: “They (the Persians) are a very keen and observing people,... they will peruse us and, from what they hear and see, form their opinion of our country.” In November of this year, I had a chance to talk to Yann Richard at the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) conference in Boston, where he spoke on the role of the Europeans in early 20th-century Iran.  

Rooz: Can you tell us about your experience in Iran and how you became interested and why?

Yann Richard (Richard): The first time I went to Iran was in 1970.  As a student in Lyon I had become acquainted with an Iranian student who was a musician and a poet, Ahmad Mastan. He worked with a student choir and he invited the group to go to Iran to perform, which was still possible at that time. A full bus of young students, male and female, traveled from Lyon to Tehran.  He and I went by car; it took us one week to get to Tehran.   I was warmly welcomed by his family who made me feel at home.  From the very beginning, I loved the country, the landscapes, the people and the manners.  I was interested in languages so I promised myself to learn Persian very seriously.  I bought a grammar of modern Persian by Gilbert Lazard and I read it a couple of times until I got the basic structure of the language and some idiomatic formulas. I started conversing with Iranians in Persian; I was lucky to get a two-year contract with the French government, teaching French at the French Institute of Tehran, from 1970 to 1972, which was a very good experience for me.   

Rooz: How long did it take you to learn?  

Richard: After two years I could speak fluently, engage in everyday conversation and read passages of the Golestan, the Shahnameh and the classical poets. By then I was fluent in colloquial Persian as well.  I could even read without having to look at a dictionary; Then, I went to Tübingen in Germany where I had one and a half year of classical lessons in Iranian literature, Arabic, and Islamic studies. I read a lot of books on the history of Iran and Islamic philosophy.   Then I came back to France to finish the Diplome des Langues Orientales (diploma of Eastern Languages) in Paris.   I was very lucky, because when I was in Iran I met Henry Corbin and his disciples, people like Shayegan and his sister, Yeganeh, and I continued to be interested in the history of mysticism, in Iranian history, of Sufism and Islamic philosophy.  I decided to do research on the 17th-century philosophy of Abdorrazzaq Lahiji, which was my PhD thesis. I was sent to the French Institute of Iranian studies as a research fellow. They were looking for someone who could speak Persian, had good relations with the country and who was involved in the field.  I was lucky to have been selected. That was in 1975. I spent altogether 8 years in Iran, 6 years from 1975-1981.

Rooz: So you were there during the 1979 Iranian revolution?

Richard: I was there before, during and after the revolution.  First during the repressive time when the Rastakhiz Party was announced, to the time the calendar was changed, and finally during the rise of dissent.  It was then that I became interested in modern issues.  When the revolution broke out I was a part of it and participated in many demonstrations.   When foreign journalists would come to Tehran to report about Iran they would ask me to translate for them or to explain what was going on.   I also wrote for Le Matin de Paris and Le Monde on the events.  But to my dismay, I was forced to leave in 1981 when a kind of civil war was beginning with the Mujahedin.  I was compelled to go back to France in a very uneasy period. Then the repression began. Communications at times were difficult. I did not get a visa to go back to see my wife’s family. I was hired at CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) to do research on the modern sociology of Islam in the revolutionary period, to study people like Shariati and all the modern religious thinkers.
 
Rooz: Did you see the Revolution coming?  Were there indications that there would a revolution in Iran considering that you had studied the country so well and had lived there?

Richard: I remember back in October 1977, I had a talk with one of the French diplomats living in Tehran and he asked me whether the Shah or his son had a chance to go on and continue the dynasty.  At that time, I told him there was tremendous discontent within the population and I didn’t think the dynasty was going to last a long time. I didn’t know exactly why I gave this answer. It was both a feeling and the result of what I had witnessed. Afterwards I thought to myself why did I answer it this way?  It came true afterwards.

Rooz: You were in the intellectual milieu and part of the middle class of Iran; what did you observe?

Richard: I remember in November 77, when the Shah went to Washington and wept in front of the White House [from tear gas]; in Tehran people saw the scene on Iranian TV.  The servants at the Institute told me the Shah was weeping and it was a shock to them. Now, it occurred to them that the Shah was not God but an average man.  From January ‘78 onwards, demonstrations began to erupt in Tehran. I remember the conversations I had with one of my friends in a period of 2-3 weeks in the Spring when the name of the Shah was not printed in the front of the newspapers. His photos were not on the front page.  I said to my friend there is something going on, something wrong. My friend told me “no you are wrong.”  It is a trick, they want to fool us, don’t believe anything is going to change. Later that summer, during Ramazan, I witnessed more demonstrations. There were many banners, of ayatollahs, of Mossadegh, and Shariati; it was something unexpected.  Nobody imagined that something like this was possible.  The amazing thing was that it was all without violence; people just wanted to have more liberty, more rights.  I must say I was a bit scared only on specific occasions but usually I was among the people and I felt safe. Of course, I was not looked at as a foreigner. I was with Iranians, among the population.  They thought of me as one of them.

Rooz: Do you believe it was more economic factors?

Richard: It was a combination of factors –culture, political, economic.  People who knew what was going on were upset with decisions made by a clique around the Shah, without any discussions in the Majlis. There was no political liberty, no freedom of speech for the opposition or for other parties. [At that time the Shah had declared the Rastakhiz the only party-his famous phrase was, whoever doesn’t like it can leave Iran.] The Press was not free and none of the newspapers could write freely. People wanted to express themselves.

Rooz: Why did the Revolution assume a religious form in your opinion?

Richard: Actually, at the beginning we did not see it. Of course it was heavily influenced and guided by the Mullahs.  It was in Ramazan that a huge crowd came out in Tehran.  But on the other hand, many people connected to the National Front or the Mossadeghi movement with modern ideas thought that the mullahs were paving their way to take over and that the population would just follow the mullahs who were not ready to run the country. We who studied in Europe and in the States thought that those intellectuals and the mullahs would have to rely on us. So they collaborated with them in the demonstrations. The name of Khomeini became like a banner to mobilize people towards a leader. But the National Front was convinced that in the end they would be the winners.  They didn’t realize that things were much more complicated and moving at a fast pace.  The discontent among the population not only against the Shah but against foreigners, especially the Americans, was deeply rooted.

Rooz: In your latest book L’Iran: Naissance d’une Republique Islamique, (Iran: the birth of an Islamic Republic) you only dedicate 35 pages to the IRI, why?

Richard: My concern was not to write the history of the IRI but to explain how this Islamic Republic came into being.  How this violence and the very tough anti-Western discourse came about in Iran after 1979. This revolution initially had the support of Western intellectuals in France and the U.S.: they were against the dictatorial methods of the Shah and naturally sided with the opposition, as was  echoed in the Western press.  Then progressively I felt that the Iranian question was only being reported in negative terms; the women’s issue, the suppression of ethnic minorities, notably the Kurds, the newspapers which were closed. This gave the revolution a negative image, and I just wanted to understand myself and make others understand that there were reasons for the emergence of this movement. This is why I went back to the beginning of the 19th century, in an attempt to find some causes for the feeling that Westerners only had aggressive motives and unequal relations vis-à-vis Iranians. Fundamentally the reasons lie in the very bad encounter between Iranian and Europeans. From the beginning relations have really been one-sided, uneven rivalry, war with the Russians and with the British, and economic concessions obtained by means of corruption, and the arrogant behavior of the Europeans. Just think about the Capitulation Law that came into being in 1828 after the Turkmenchai Treaty with Russia. This was always an issue with the nationalists up to the time when Reza Shah eventually abolished the Capitulations in 1928, exactly 100 years after they were put into effect.   Remember in 1965, when the right of immunity was given to the American army personnel in Iran. Khomeini took the issue and labeled it capitulation. This was very sensitive to Iranians.  So the resentment towards the West is very deep rooted. The Iranians have always felt that they were played with, that they were toys in the hands of Western powers who wanted to just have their share of the economic plunder, of oil and other resources.  For example, in 1907, when the British and the Russians made an agreement that was signed in Petersburg, the Iranians learnt of the agreement after it had already been signed. European empires wanted to have their zone of influence; these two powers would negotiate and never even informed the Iranians beforehand that they wanted to divide Iran into three zones, one in the north for the Russians, a neutral one in the middle and one in the East for the British. When the Iranians learned of this, they were naturally upset.  

Rooz: Don't you think that Iranians should also take some responsibility? They always blame others for their misfortune.

Richard: An Iranian proverb says az mâ-st ke bar mâ-st, what happens to us is from us. The sufferings of the past should not be an excuse for the bad deeds of today. Of course, the Western nations have given a bad example by using corrupt Iranian politicians to reach their goals in Iran, and they have refrained from encouraging true democratic movements. Today, Iran has achieved its independence but at the price of reducing political rights.  Corruption, as acknowledged by the present leaders of the Islamic Republic themselves, is still a scourge. Another reason for this failed democratization is the huge oil income. To my knowledge, the only country which has been able to cope with huge revenue coming out from the earth without specific human labor is Norway. But in most oil producing countries, the perverse effect of this wealth entailed both corruption and uneven development. Why should Ahmadinejad have cared for the industry and social justice when a barrel of oil was almost 150 US$? He could subsidize whatever he wanted when people showed dissatisfaction, and no deeply rooted reform has been implemented.

Rooz: How is the situation of Iranian studies in France?

Richard: It is in a difficult stage. Basically after the revolution the audience for Iranian studies has changed. Beforehand, we always had people who were training for diplomatic service.  Later, they were not interested anymore and Persian was even deleted from the syllabus. Every year, we had people who were training to go to Iran to work on archeological sites since we had an important archeological mission doing excavations in Khuzistan. Even those who worked on the Sassanid period felt that, at some point, they needed to know some modern Persian. And nearly every year you had priests or nuns who wanted to go to Iran to work in schools. And there were foolish (!) persons like me, who were fond of Iranian literature, who wanted to make Persian literature and civilization better known. Now you have this negative image of Iran and the difficulty of getting into the country to study or do research. It is hard to get a French student to specialize in a country so difficult to have access to.

Rooz: Were there budget cuts?

Richard: We were actually lucky, at least at the beginning. We had this research Institute in Tehran. But now the problem is being able to go to Iran, to get a visa.  We did not need a visa before the revolution.  With a French passport you could go to Iran and stay for three months. When the Islamic Republic wanted to annoy us, to humiliate us or give them some back service, they would give a visa and make us feel it was obtained through their benevolence.  We were lucky actually.  Among the Europeans, the French had been fortunate to keep the Institute in Tehran open all during this period (Institut Français de Recherche en Iran (IFRI), see www.ifriran.org) Even when political relations between the two countries were down, the Institute was up and running. They were publishing books; it was a place where foreign researchers could come and stay, find a room and a library.  

Rooz: Why do you think Ahmadinejad and the hardliners took power? Why did they reject scholars?  During Khatami, there was a lot of cultural exchange. There was more engagement with Iran, people like you could go to Iran and do research. Why this total rejection now?

Richard: The truth about the IRI is that until 2005, it was a republic, with elections and apparent possibility of change in political rule with an Islamic overtone.  I think we all hoped that something could be done, that some good might come out of this IRI.  In a way, Khatami gave us false hope that may be things could be changed or reforms could open up things.  That may be this Islamic republic could have a democratic face and open a space for public freedom, for free speech, for pluralism, for other parties, for difference of opinion. Of course it was still an Islamic republic but with more freedom for other ways of thinking even for non-Muslims. But progressively I think when the reforms of Khatami were curbed by Khamenei, the hope turned into a nightmare. When Mahmud Ahmadinejad was first elected, we didn’t see this very clearly. Yet already the election in 2005 was full of fraud. In fact, the 2005 election of Ahmadinejad turned out to be the taking over of Iran by a new class of people who had come out directly in the revolution, in the war with Iraq, people with an extremist ideology.  They were also close together, they were a militia, a military class who had very strong economic interests; they were clearly organizing to take hold of major industries such as oil, transportation and nuclear energy.  All that is important in Iran is in the hands of the guardians of the revolution. The bottom line is that, in my opinion, the change that has occurred in Iran has transformed the country from a Republic to a dictatorship.  The ones who represent this new class are not just the Revolutionary Guards but also the Basij.  They were the basis of this new power.

Rooz: What do you admire most in Iranians and what do you dislike about them?

Richard: What I like about Iranians is their proclivity for poetry. There is really no gap between the literary tradition going back all the way to Ferdowsi and the present.  People today read Ferdowsi and other traditional literary works.  Even the popular culture is full of stories taken out of the Book of kings. This is something amazing. And I am fascinated by this culture. The negative side is that there is some latent political violence in the society; I am one of the casualties of this violence.  The main victims are the people who express their desire for liberty and are suppressed.  For me it is hard to believe that all my life I tried to spread the love of Iranian culture and at the end I am a mamnu` ol-vorud.  Basically I am “not allowed to enter the country”; a very idiotic measure indeed.  

Rooz: When was the last time you were there?

Richard: The last time was in 2005, for only four days, one month before the elections.  I had a visa but when I arrived, they told me that I was forbidden from entering Iran!

Rooz: Do you believe in the theory of Islamic democracy?  Do you think it is something viable for Iran?

Richard: Democracy is something that is connected to modernity. It implies separation of religious authority and political authority, because in the religious realm, the believer is not supposed to discuss and to elect, but to participate and obey only. No country has fully separated religion and politics and even in an old democracy like Great Britain, the head of state is the Queen and she is also the head of the Anglican Church. Religion and state are not quite separated yet it is also a democracy.  So we can invent new forms of democracy which are adapted to a nation’s culture and history. In fact, in Iran, the constitution of the IRI has some very interesting features trying to arrange the sort of deep respect for religion and religious principles with the sovereignty of the nation. This system is very sophisticated maybe too sophisticated but it has been distorted by extremists.  These were helped by the hostility of the West in the war between Iran and Iraq. The pressure put on Iran by the Islamic countries and the West allowed Khomeini to turn a nascent democracy with a pluralistic system, with freedom of speech etc., into an authoritarian regime He changed everything around, so only one voice could be heard.  Afterwards the pressure the West, particularly the Americans, put on Iran gave more legitimacy and more strength to the regime, enabling it to suppress freedom and liberties. If new sanctions are decided, they may weaken the regime, which has already lost a lot of its popular support, but they may also be used as an excuse to suspend public liberties.

Rooz: Are you critical of Sarkozy’s approach to Iran?

Richard: The positions of Sarkozy regarding Iran are wrong. He sided with Bush’s extremist positions and was first destabilized when Obama offered talks with Tehran.  Sarkozy has not only jeopardized French commercial interests in Iran, he has wiped out some existing links which gave the French access to Iranians, helping them to the negotiation tables, to get out of their ideological strongholds. Tehran (and Iranians) has always shown interest in maintaining friendly relations with France, which has a seat at the UN Security Council and can bring alternative ways in international diplomacy.

Rooz: What is your take on the recent movement, what is referred to as the Green Movement?

Richard: It was very interesting and heartwarming to see this huge crowd of people demonstrating against Ahmadinejad.  Actually, I don’t know where they are going or which leader will lead this movement. But I don’t think that Mousavi is the right leader because his own background in the IRI includes the early killings in huge numbers- of Mujahedin, of leftists, of liberals and other opponents of Khomeini. Mousavi has tried to take lead in the movement and has made some liberal statements.  I am just waiting for him to acknowledge that he has changed.  Instead, in the campaign against Ahmadinejad, he kept saying that Khomeini has always approved of his political actions. He took his legitimacy from Khomeini instead of from the people. He has not come out and said: “I have changed now and I want a liberal Islamic Republic; I think people are looking for something else”.  Iranian demonstrators probably do not want to get rid of the Islamic Republic. The color, not necessarily the green color, but the Western color behind their movement and the accusation of being a velvet revolution gives the impression that it has been manipulated by the West. This is not a very good sign. The more we give open support to these demonstrations in the West, the less legitimacy the movement would have to continue. It has to be from within Iran.

Rooz: Which famous Iranian personalities do you most admire, and why?  

Richard: I admire someone like Amir Kabir, like most Iranian intellectuals.  May be you are waiting for me to say Mossadegh. I have great respect for Mossadegh but he failed. He was a great leader; he gave a lot of hope to the Iranian nation, but he did not respect democratic rules. I deeply respect someone like Bazargan who acknowledged that he was a moderate; he was not a revolutionary; he worked with Khomeini even though he was not in full agreement with him; I give you the name of one living person whom I just deeply respect, Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari. He is a rather typical provincial theologian. He was very traditional in the beginning and he got involved in political Islam progressively; he was interested in Shariati.  After the revolution, he became a Majlis deputy but soon he became disappointed with Khomeini and yet he had the courage of changing his mind. He had the courage of criticizing the new institutions and has been fired from any public offices, even his professorship at the Tehran faculty of theology. I deeply respect people who are courageous enough to say, yes, I thought differently before but now I converted myself to new ideas. Just as Kadivar said, Mojtahed Shabestari is open to new ways of thinking. The second conversion of Mojtahed Shabestari is his encounter with the West in Germany when he met with academics; he met with Christian circles and questioned his own Islamic faith afterwards. He read books about hermeneutics and the interpretation of the Bible and he tried reshaping the Islamic faith as he had witnessed the critical discourse in the Christian world. This change may have occurred after a terrible personal experience in the form of an accident which killed his daughter and left his wife injured and paralyzed. He has a sort of personal experience of what faith means. This man is now a victim of the IRI; he is not allowed to teach anymore; he writes books and articles.  He has many supporters amongst intellectuals.  He is the right model of somebody who had the courage to change and a new way of expressing his ideas and beliefs.