Why France must be angry with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei?

The offensive caricature of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, by the French publication Charlie Hebdo is not unexpected in light of the current political context, given that the French government has been engaging in similar malicious actions. Emmanuel Macron, the leader of a nation that is a member of the United Nations Security Council, the third largest economy in Europe, the so-called cradle of democracy, and the birthplace of thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Montesquieu, has degenerated to the point where he meets with a notorious and low-level figure like Masih Alinjad.

What should one expect from the Élysée Palace? Accordingly, we can expect nothing from an infamous Parisian satirical magazine. Of course, France must be enraged with Iran. At one point, Paris and London had enough power to split up the Ottoman Empire’s West Asian possessions under the Sykes–Picot Agreement. Following World War I, the modern-day Lebanon and Syria went under French mandate. For the French, Syria was a vital colonial outpost, so when the pro-British Faisal I (son of Sharif Hussein of Holy Mecca) was crowned in Damascus, they waged a military campaign and overthrew him.

Alternatively, France had the final say in Lebanon. After Lebanon’s sham independence in 1943, all Lebanese presidents were elected with France’s blessing. After Beirut’s harbour explosion in August 2020, poor Macron, who imagined France had a similar colonial sway over Lebanon, flew there as a godfather and set a deadline, but no one took him seriously, and he was utterly ignored. Imam Khamenei, the chief architect of Iran’s foreign policies, is the target of understandable resentment from France, which has been thoroughly outmanoeuvred in Syria and Lebanon.

Iraq once used to be France’s milk cow. In return for billions of dollars, Giscard d’Estaing intended to sell the Ba’athist regime nuclear facilities for military use during his tenure. In recent years, Macron has continuously pushed to implement General de Gaulle’s Middle East road map in Iraq by delivering French goods and weapons. However, the French failed miserably as successive pro-Iran administrations gained control in Baghdad. In addition, Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme harbingers the rise of a new force in this arena.

Without a doubt, Iran, a nation with unrivalled geopolitical, military, and energy capabilities, will end the western monopoly on nuclear technology in the coming years. If slightly modified, Iran’s Qaem-100 satellite carrier will easily reach Paris, and the world will witness a new power equilibrium between an emerging Asian power and European powers. Take all of this and add it to the fact that the Iranian people have shown absolutely no interest in any of the attempts made by the Élysée Palace over the last three months to broaden the scope of the insurrection in certain parts of Iran. On the other hand, with the Islamic Republic of Iran’s indirect intervention in favour of Russia to undermine the vicious designs of NATO and the West, the Ukraine conflict, which has a direct impact on the security and economy of the European Union, has entered a new chapter.

The Europeans’ incapacity to prevent Iran from supplying Russia with advanced UAVs has been proven by the pathetic satirical cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo. The main reason why Macron and other western politicians have failed in West Asia is because of Ayatollah Khamenei’s wise and divine leadership. The cowardly assassination of General Qasem Soleimani did not undermine Iran’s regional clout, since Imam Khamenei is at the helm of Iran’s general foreign policy.

In reaction to the Islamic Republic’s achievements, Macron and his other Western colleagues can only caricature a great statesman who has emancipated the West Asian nations from their tyrannical yoke. The French are still blind to the irreversible changes that have occurred since the dark colonial era.