خدیجه حجتی

Iran valued and positioned France and its culture inside a conceptual image of its own civilization prior to the Islamic Revolution. Even if France lags behind Iran in solid political connections and contacts, its cultural richness, led to the highest degree of presence in Iranian society and among its intellectuals in the cultural sphere. Such a link was susceptible to a social and political upheaval in Iran, following the country's revolution. This study employs unstructured interviews to examine a representative sample of 19 political, cultural, and academic elites, comprising both pre-revolution Francophones and post-revolution executives, focussing on their perspectives and elite experiences within the historicalcultural context of bilateral relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and France. This research focuses on the question of how the Islamic Revolution and the subsequent establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran faced the continuity and persistence of this historical cultural trend and what relationship it established with it through a distinct process.