From Charlie to Silence: Macron’s France Today

Until this week, I proudly identified as half-French—not by passport, but by soul. French literature raised me. Sartre, Camus, André Malraux, the Surrealists, the French New Wave—and Mr. Shapour Bakhtiar—taught me to think, to resist, to feel the weight of contradictions. Paris was not a city. It was a feeling.

That feeling broke when President Emmanuel Macron publicly opposed efforts to change Iran’s regime—at a moment when Israel is at war. His words—that seeking regime change would be a mistake—felt personal. For those of us who have lived under the Islamic Republic’s repression and witnessed its reach in exile, this wasn’t diplomacy. It was betrayal.

Iran’s theocracy has long relied on Western legitimization. France played its role in 1979, harboring Ayatollah Khomeini and exporting revolution under the guise of asylum. That moment wasn’t just historic—it was lucrative. Oil and influence seemed to matter more than the lives left behind.

Years later, when Mr. Shapour Bakhtiar—the last Prime Minister before the Islamic Regime—was assassinated in Paris, many eyes remained closed. It reminds me of Mr. Sadegh Hedayat, the acclaimed Iranian writer who died in self-imposed exile in Paris. He once foresaw a France that “will lick the feet of Islam.” He died in 1951, but his warning still echoes.

Jean-Luc Godard, one of France’s greatest cinematic rebels, dissected this very ambivalence in his film Two or Three Things I Know About Her, where consumerism and moral detachment blur into soft complicity. His view of French society was a mirror many still refuse to look into.

Maybe Macron should start watching  Godard Films —it might help him tell the difference between political pragmatism and ethical paralysis.

In 2015, France faced its own reckoning with extremism in the Charlie Hebdo attacks—yet even now, it struggles to draw clear lines when faith turns into political violence.

My main question: why are the French unable to protect Iranian intellectuals, yet remarkably effective at empowering radicals like Khomeini and exporting them to Iran?

My own life intersects painfully with France’s choices. I was 19, a young filmmaker in Tehran, when the French Embassy dismissed me. I had made two short films and asked them to help submit my work to festivals. They refused—even a single VHS cassette—while promoting state-aligned figures like Mr. Abbas Kiarostami, whose cinematic subtlety masked a quiet compliance. His films traveled the world not because they challenged the regime, but because they didn’t.

I was labeled “anarchist” and “anti-regime,” not for any act of protest, but for daring to question authority. That night, I cried alone in the rain outside the Embassy—faithless, but not voiceless. Years later, when my life was in danger in Turkey, even with a formal invitation, I was denied a French emergency visa. One call from Iranian officials was all it took to close the door.

I’ve been insulted by French press abroad, watched cultural offices choose silence over solidarity, and argued with radicals who fantasized about turning France into an Islamic republic—inside French institutions. I saw firsthand a government more concerned with preserving appearances than protecting principles.

I say this not with bitterness, but with clarity: I am now an American citizen because I could not trust France to choose justice over diplomacy. The same distrust Israeli citizens now feel. The same clarity Iranian people have long yearned for.

France should no longer pretend to be neutral. Its government must state clearly where it stands—whether it values democracy and human rights, or prefers oil, opaqueness, and appeasement.

For those of us who loved France—for its poets, its painters, its rebels—this is not easy to say. But it must be said.

We have already survived one exported Ayatollah. We don’t need another.