“All Iranians who follow politics expected the American attack, but based on reactions expressed in Iran on social media, supporters of the regime did not. They are in shock,” said the Iranian Tinouche Nazmjou, a theater director, editor and founder of the Parisian bookshop Utopiran. Le Monde spoke to him by phone just hours after the sudden strike carried out by the United States against Iran on June 21.
Nazmjou launched a series of debates titled “Debates Before the Fall,” the second session of which is scheduled for June 26 at the bookshop. The discussions were filmed and broadcast on a Telegram channel followed by 100,000 people, most of them in Iran. Bamdad (who did not wish to give his last name), 45 years old and the son of a communist opponent, is a regular.
“After America’s attack, we’re getting closer to a scenario like Iraq or Libya. I don’t support the mullahs, but I’m even more afraid of the chaos that would come from a power vacuum,” he explained by phone.
On June 20, before the Israel-Iran war took a turn with America’s intervention, Bamdad and about 40 other Iranians – some recently arrived in France, others who have been here for more than 40 years since the fall of the shah – gathered at the bookshop in Paris’s 15th arrondissement. On the counter, a granita machine was churning out yakh dar behesht, or “ice in paradise,” a saffron-colored dessert that reminded them of home.
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