France’s foreign minister once had no trouble finding words for young people in the street. When Iran’s security forces turned on demonstrators this winter, Jean- Noël Barrot wrote that the “unbearable repression” of a peaceful uprising could not go unanswered.
Paris, Washington and the rest of the G7 had signed a joint state-ment urging Tehran to show “full restraint”, condemning arbitrary detention and demanding that people be able to assemble without fear of reprisal.
French schoolchildren are now testing whether those words apply at home.
Since late September, secondary school pupils have been marching for supply teachers, smaller classes and buildings that do not leak.
By October 9, France’s Justice Ministry had counted 6 877 people placed in police custody, 86% of them minors.
For scale, the spring 2024 campus protests over Gaza, the largest wave of student arrests in the United States in half a century, produced about 3 130 arrests across 65 colleges over seven weeks.
France more than doubled that in under three months and most of those it held were teenagers.
Then came Saturday.
Unions and yellow vests joined the pupils, masked groups looted shops and attacked public buildings and more than 2 300 people were arrested.
On Monday, Lyon, Marseille and Nice imposed curfews for minors. Two protesters each lost a hand. A 17-year-old girl in Mulhouse lost an eye. Emmanuel Macron promised that those who “sought to bring down the Republic” would be held accountable.
The vocabulary moved with the geography. In Tehran it was a peaceful uprising. In Paris it is urban violence.
Iran did not miss it. Its foreign ministry summoned France’s ambassador and lectured Paris on young people’s right to assemble and to an education. Spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei asked why the same conduct is judged one way when the protester stands in Iran and another when he stands in France.
On scale, the comparison collapses. The Iranian government put January’s death toll at 3 117. Tehran hanged protesters after the 2022 uprising. France is not Iran. But that is the wrong test. Washington should care about the right one.
Western statements on protest are not sermons. They are an instrument, one of the few non-military levers the G7 holds over Tehran. They depend on sanctions committees, diplomats and foreign publics believing the authors mean them.
Each time Paris detains another busload of 15-year-olds, Iran’s foreign ministry gets fresh material, at no cost to itself.
Washington is hardly helping. Donald Trump declared that France’s unrest had nothing to do with schools and everything to do with mass migration and Islam.
The French public sees it differently. An Odoxa poll found 62% of French adults believed the pupils’ mobilisation justified, rising to 73% among those under 35. An Elabe survey found 72% considered their demands legitimate. Macron’s own trust rating stands at 17%. The government is arguing with its own voters and Washington is arguing with the facts.
Three features of France’s response would draw a G7 statement if they happened anywhere else.
First, the mass custody of children. Some 5 900 minors had passed through garde à vue (police custody) by October 9, many of them released without ever seeing a judge. Had Tehran held schoolchildren on that scale, the G7 would have called it arbitrary detention. It used that phrase in January.
Second, the curfews. A curfew for minors targets an age group, not an act. It makes being 16 after dark in central Nice the offence. Western diplomats have a name for that elsewhere: collective punishment.
Third, the police investigating the police. Complaints against officers go to the IGPN, the national police’s own inspectorate, which had opened 36 investigations by October 13. If a teenager in Tehran lost a hand to a police grenade, Paris would demand an independent inquiry before nightfall.
None of this denies France the right to restore order. Saturday’s violence was real: nearly 1 000 police and gendarmes were injured and intruders broke into Marseille’s city hall. The January state-ment never denied Iran that right either. It demanded restraint and accountability. That is the standard France helped write and Washington co-signed.
Meeting it costs Paris little.
Before the unions’ next national day of action on November 5, the government could suspend explosive crowd-control grenades at any pro-test led by school pupils.
It could also send every serious injury case to the Défenseur des droits, the independent rights ombudsman, rather than leaving them with the police’s inspectors.
Neither step weakens the police against looters. Both would tell the G7’s next target that the rules travel in both directions.
November 5 will show which France turns up: the one that signed the January statement or the one that signed the curfew orders.
If the grenades are still on the officers’ belts that day, the next G7 state-ment on another country’s protesters will be harder for Paris to sign, and easier for Tehran to answer. Dr Imran Khalid is a columnist and geostrategic analyst.