By deleting their crimes from education, the mullahs are courting Russia to counter US sanctions

The mullahs regime is still looking for a savior to get it out of the crises that it is going through, especially in light of Washington's continued imposition of new economic sanctions on Tehran.

Deleting Russia's crimes

The Iranian Ministry of Education deleted the past few days, negative content about Russia from the curricula, especially the part related to "the history of the crimes of the Soviet Union" from the subject of history in high school curricula, which sparked controversy, and activists interacted on the site "Twitter" February 3, 2020, critically.

The mullahs took such a measure and saw that this system seeks to "polish Russia" and hide its crimes from the curricula in exchange for political and economic privileges to confront the American sanctions, and some of them saw this step as normal, because it comes within the framework of the rapprochement between Russia and Iran.

This controversy came after the publication of the Iranian education expert, Adel Barakom on February 2, 2020, announcing that Russian historical crimes in Iran were removed from the book "Farsi 2" for the eleventh grade, and included in his tweets pages from the revised textbook and showed some deleted phrases.

According to the report published by the Neighborhood Press website on February 17, 2020, Barakom said that the word "Russians" has been replaced by the term "Russian army", and among the paragraphs that were deleted is a paragraph that says "raising the flag of the Russians over the soil filled with the blood of innocent people," and was replaced by a new paragraph "The Russian army invaded the region”.

Mullahs' officials commented on what was circulated. Ali Zoualem, director of the Iranian Organization for Educational Research and Planning, indicated on February 4, that “our basic view, regarding what happened in history, is that Russia's Tsarist crimes cannot be deleted, nor do we deny that the way the bloc interacted Eastern was dominant under the Soviet Union, and we will never ignore it from textbooks, but rather correct the methodology in dealing with historical information”.

Zoualem stressed that even if Iran and Russia today had dealings and political alliances, this does not mean that part of our history is disregarded, and we accept the forgery of history.

While Hassan Melki, deputy director of the Educational Research and Planning Commission in Iran, confirmed to the Iranian News Agency "ISNA" in a scientific meeting on February 16, 2020, the correctness of the news circulated about the deletion of part of the curriculum speaks negatively about Russia, but he denied that this step was for "polishing Russia" as some have claimed, noting that the deletion was to adjust the size of the book, and that the spread of this news raises mistrust and psychological disorder in some individuals.