What Happened at the International Women’s Day Meeting in Italy?
Main Story:
On March 8, International Women’s Day, a meeting was held in Italy that took a political approach to the works of two Iranian opposition women activists. This event received extensive coverage from Voice of America. Despite the organizers’ claims that the event was intended to honor Iranian women, it was ultimately designed to exclude them.
✍|News Analysis By Ms. Soghra Ashouri
“The fate of any country must be determined by its own people.”
This slogan has been repeatedly echoed by American and European politicians and widely disseminated by media outlets aligned with U.S. policies. However, in practice, this principle holds no place in American and European foreign strategies. This contradiction marks the very foundation of dictatorship. U.S. and European interference in Iranian affairs is not limited to the Islamic Republic; it extends back to the Pahlavi and Qajar dynasties and even earlier, as far back as the Achaemenid Empire.
For years, Italy’s adversarial stance toward Iran has remained unchanged, as evidenced by the recent Women’s Day event. The supposedly celebratory gathering turned out to be an exercise in erasing Iranian women.
The Misrepresentation of Iranian Women
A brave Iranian woman is naturally defined by Iranian cultural and historical standards—values rooted in Iranian and Islamic civilization. Yet European countries such as Italy, France, and Germany, in alignment with U.S. policies, have repeatedly imposed incongruous criteria for what constitutes a “strong Iranian woman.”
One key takeaway from Europe’s engagement with Iran, particularly Italy’s role, is that these countries do not act independently. Rather, they are themselves subject to a new form of colonialism. The intermittent tensions between the EU and the U.S., which intensified under Donald Trump, along with the EU’s persistent alignment with American policies, are clear indicators of this reality.
The Political Agenda Behind the Women’s Day Meeting
At the highest levels of global diplomacy, where the U.S. dictates ideological frameworks and methodologies, it is unrealistic to expect European countries to engage in fair and professional policymaking. The Italian event primarily aimed to exert maximum pressure on the Islamic Republic to facilitate its downfall—while Iranian women themselves were not even the central focus of the discussion, even by European standards.
Even when Iranian women opposition figures are present as representatives, they are unable to assert their own identities. Why is this the case? Why is the European definition of the “Iranian woman” merely a tool for Western politicians? Could it be that this Europeanized version of the Iranian woman has been stripped of value to such an extent that she is treated in this manner?
These are fundamental questions that any honest and truth-seeking individual must confront.
