“The Unlikely Connection: Mahsa Amini’s Death, Iranian Protests, Jimmy Carter’s Last Days and a Shared Historical Episode”

Two events that have a priori nothing to do with each other. Since September 2022 and the death of the young Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini, the protest has left no respite to a mullahs’ regime which continues to tighten repressive measures using surveillance cameras and facial recognition to impose the wearing of the veil. . In place for more than 44 years, the Islamic Republic is today more contested than ever, but persists. At the same time, in his home in Plains, Georgia, former US President Jimmy Carter, in palliative care, is living his last days. A historical episode, however, connects these two stories: the taking of 52 hostages, on November 4, 1979, at the United States Embassy in Tehran by the “students” of the Khomeinist revolution. A former Swiss diplomat, Flavio Meroni, experienced this politico-diplomatic chapter live and recounts it in a collective work entitled America hostage. 444 days of secret diplomacy in Iran (2023, Editions Riveneuve). The weather met him during his visit to Geneva.