The Western Narrative and the Reality of Iranian Identity.
Collapse or Iranian Identity Resistance? Which One?
- Western Narration and Iranian Reality
Western media, both due to a lack of tradition in maintaining correspondents and offices in Iran, a certain dependence on the mainstream information and the existing problems between Iran and some European countries, are generally deprived of Iranian realities. In critical moments such as the Israeli attack on Iran, they try to use Iranians living in their countries as eyewitnesses and homegrown storytellers. The repetitive narrative of these pseudo-experts, according to the preferences of the mainstream media, is the collapse of Iran – for at least four years Iranian society and, by extension, the Iranian government have been portrayed as having collapsed in the Western media! But why does this narrative continue to have a profound distance from what is actually happening in Iran? Who wins in this distortion and cognitive war?
Iran is a very diverse (heterogeneous) society and in the past decades, especially with an urban and young demographic structure, it has witnessed accelerated cultural changes. According to the highest estimates, about seven million Iranians live in various countries around the world, especially in the United States and Europe, constituting a diverse and unstable diaspora. This means that it does not even reach ten percent of the Iranian population of about ninety million. The presence of some of these Iranians who master the language of the host media, as we have seen in Italian television networks in the last two weeks, can lead to cognitive distortion and strategic misunderstanding.
The media, although given control and agenda based on investors and ownership, should never forget professional responsibility and long-term interests. One of the manifestations that has remained unknown in the West with Eurocentrism and non-native parameters is the lack of accompaniment of Iranians with the opposition supported by the external West and their unprecedented solidarity in the face of aggression from the enemy or “foreigner”.
- Iranian National Identity: Tradition and Modernity
The Iranian nation has its own definition; it cannot be considered a nation in the modern sense of the term. In the modern sense, it is mainly the material and modern indicators and aspects such as geography and language, which, although important in their own right, have had and have the power to build the nation. But in the realization of the idea called the Iranian nation, we have witnessed an unprecedented connection between spiritual and material components.
Documents, literature and historical works show that both before and after Islam, the orientation towards justice was one of the most important components of “Iran”. This made them unite quickly and without hesitation in the face of the external enemy. This component was united with the spiritual and family orientation. Ethnic diversity in Iran is also mainly oriented towards strengthening national strength: Turks, Kurds, Baluchis, Lurs, Arabs, Turkmen, Persians and dozens of other ethnic groups and dialects in Iran cannot ignore their common and interconnected history.
But is all this not enough for the persistence and permanence of a nation based on a common ideal and national honor, unless these same peoples with the same proportion and significance were present during the Mongol invasion (1219-1256 AD), the Afghan invasion (1722), the occupation of the Caucasus by Tsarist Russia (two periods: 1803-1813 and 1826-1828), the unofficial occupation during the Second World War by the Allies (1941)?
So why did the attacker, at least initially, succeed in achieving his goals?
During Saddam's invasion of Iraq, when Iran was going through the post-revolutionary period and was internally involved even with the terrorist groups of the opposition to the system, did Saddam's ground forces manage to advance all the way to Tehran or even all the way to Ahvaz?
- The Role of the State in the Formation of National Identity
The answer is clear: for the realization and construction of a collective “we” and the formation of the authority of a territory (as a real nation), a fighting and resistant state is also necessary. In all the previous examples we were dealing with a weak state, not in practice but in motivation and theory. The ideology necessary for national independence has been laid in the basic structures of the state in today’s Iran (such as Articles 9, 43 and 154). The leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, both with the understanding of the bitter experience of colonialism in the Islamic world, have not been creators of enemies but fighters against enemies, this while declaring friendship and the need for communication with the whole world.
Collective identity can in practice, and not in dreams, reach a consensus on the idea of homeland when the framework and the framework of this resistance exist, that is, the “strong state”. The unaware pawns, the empty thrones, the illusory despotisms, the gendarmes by proxy and for hire certainly do not have the capacity to make the nations of solidarity and resistance lean on them. What happened in the occupation of Iraq or in the collapse of Gaddafi's Libya is a lesson before us.
Power, from the Iranian perspective, is first of all based on science, labor and endogenous capital and secondly it is at the service of the national ideal and the general will. This is how resistance is not missile or atomic, but identity-based. Today, only by breathing in the streets of Tehran can one perceive the remnant of an identity in its historical continuity, not through repetition and indoctrination!
- Iran: The Last Geography Against “De-nationalization”
Complete and healthy national identity leads to practical independence, and independence generates civilization. Israel is an anti-national identity idea (national identity with both subjective and objective pillars), that is, someone who produces strength from within himself; that is, societies that have endogeneity. The formation of this number of “non-nations” around us was made possible by the presence of Israel.
The Iranian nation is among the last geographies that resisted against “de-nationalization” and found itself in the moment of awakening and created the endogenous force from within itself. This nation has thus managed to place itself in the position of “historical man”. This is a real geographical contradiction that manifests itself on earth and it is not just something related to minds or theories and ideologies. This happens on earth. Where does it happen? There where they tell you that you have no right to create your own prosperity!
This force produces “non-nations” from nations. Today, mostly, “development” in the Middle East is exogenous development. When you want to have a force of your own, this movement of yours is repressed because of the presence of Israel. So what is Israel? Israel is the most important force that produces “non-nations” around us; it produces “non-nations” from nations.
The peoples of our region are ancient peoples and they all share great histories; a history that is repressed. Israel is the repression of that history, and that history has been the mother of the history of humanity. The genealogy of Iran's identity resistance must be found here.
Sayyed Majid Emami
Director of the Cultural Institute of Iran- Rome