TEHRAN – The recent US and Israeli military aggression against Iran is over, but a more complex battle over national narrative and social cohesion is just beginning, a leading sociologist told a conference at Tehran University on Wednesday.
Professor Vahid Sharsi of Allameh Tabatabai University argued that the ultimate victory in recent conflicts will be decided in the public sphere, not on the battlefield. “Although the military phase has ended, the cultural and social clock of war has not yet stopped,” Sharchi said at the “Resistance as a Social Phenomenon” conference. “Winners and losers in the future will be decided in public.”
Sharchi described the attack as a “serious shock” that shook Iranian society from what he called a state of “historical oblivion” and said the event forcibly reinvigorated collective memory and emotions, leading to a revival of national identity and a return to the country’s “reserves of civilization and culture.”
“This war ended the forgetting of parts of the history of colonialism and oppression against Iran,” he explained, adding that elements of the opposition that advocated this “forgetting of history” were effectively discredited by the unanimous reaction of the people.
Professor Sharchi issued a stark warning about the critical importance of the next steps. “If we don’t provide the right narrative, our adversaries can capitalize on our successes on the ground to cause further damage,” he says. He stressed that the conflict continues “in the field of narrative and identity” and that failure to define the correct relationship with the enemy could lead to the collapse of society.
He pointed out that the experience of the young generation is a crucial factor. Unlike their predecessors who lived through the Iran-Iraq war, this new generation saw that foreign enemies “do not differentiate between sects, ethnic groups, or peoples when attacking Iran,” Sharchi said. This common experience, he argued, created a powerful new common memory and understanding that the enemy sought nothing less than Iran’s destruction.
In order to ensure national unity and independent security, Sharchi argued that a country cannot function with just “30% public participation.” He called for the construction of a national narrative in which “70 to 80 percent of the people can feel a sense of ownership.”
To achieve this, he outlined a list of key actions: documenting the conflict through oral history, preserving and strengthening national memories and identities of resistance, using language and stories that are relevant and appealing to new generations, focusing on both famous and anonymous heroes, and avoiding narratives that exacerbate existing social divisions.
“Sometimes our vocabulary doesn’t attract new generations,” Schalch said. “We must provide new and accurate narratives that respond to the mindset of today’s young people.”