Iran announced Thursday the closure of the oldest and most important French study center in the country, as a first response to the publication by a French satirical magazine of cartoons deemed insulting to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Iranian authorities had warned France on Wednesday that they would take action after the publication the same day by Charlie Hebdo of these drawings featuring the highest religious and political personality of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“The ministry is ending the activities of the French Institute for Research in Iran (IFRI) as a first step,” the Iranian foreign ministry said in a statement.
According to its website, IFRI is affiliated with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Asked by AFP, the French embassy in Tehran said it had no immediate comment.
In its press release, the Iranian ministry accuses the French authorities of “continued inaction in the face of expressions of anti-Islamism and the spread of racist hatred in French publications”.
He asks the French government to demand accountability from the “authors (of the propagation) of such hatred”, stressing that the “Iranian people” would follow “seriously” the response that France would provide.
The ministry also calls on Paris to carry out “a serious fight against Islamophobia”.
The cartoons published in the satirical newspaper were selected as part of a contest launched in December, as demonstrations continued in Iran to protest the September 16 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurd arrested for violates the country’s strict dress code.
Ambassador summoned
Iranian officials, who generally denounce such protests as “riots”, say hundreds of people have been killed, including members of the security forces, and thousands more arrested.
Charlie Hebdo argued in December that this “international competition” was aimed at supporting “Iranians who are fighting for their freedom”.
The issue contains several sexual cartoons featuring Ayatollah Khamenei and other Iranian clerics, as well as cartoons exposing Iran’s use of capital punishment as a tactic to intimidate protesters.
Two Iranians were executed for their involvement in the protests. And Thursday the Iranian justice pronounced a new death sentence in first instance against a man who participated in the demonstrations.
Before the announcement of the closure of IFRI, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs Catherine Colonna indicated that “freedom of the press exists (in France) contrary to what is happening in Iran”, recalling that the offense of blasphemy does not exist in French law.
“The bad policy is the one followed by Iran which practices violence against its own population”, she added Thursday, questioned on the French television channel LCI.
“Hate Act”
On Wednesday, his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian denounced “an insulting and indecent act” which will “not go without a firm response”.
French Ambassador to Iran Nicolas Roche was summoned the same day by Foreign Affairs in Tehran.
“Iran in no way accepts the insult of its values […] Islamic, religious and national […] and France has no right to insult what is sacred […] for Muslim countries under the pretext of freedom of expression,” ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said on Wednesday.
Iran “considers the French government responsible for this heinous, insulting and unjustified act”, he added.
The headquarters of IFRI, in the center of Tehran, had been closed for many years. It had reopened under the presidency of the moderate Hassan Rohani (2013-2021) as a sign of the warming of Franco-Iranian relations. It includes a rich library, used by students of the French language and Iranian scholars.
IFRI was born in 1983 after the merger of the French Archaeological Delegation in Iran (DAFI), created in 1897, and the French Institute of Iranology in Tehran (IFIT), founded in 1947 by Henry Corbin, according to its site .