TEHRAN, Iran — It was just after 1 a.m. in Tehran when a truck in the southern French city of Nice rammed into crowds on Promenade des Anglais, killing more than 80 people. Many Iranians continued to stay up as news of the attack emerged, following the latest developments on news channels, the popular smartphone messaging app Telegram and the internet. There were reactions from Iranian officials and local media, and the attempted coup in Turkey later on July 15 eclipsed the news of the attack in Nice. Nonetheless, in a rare display of cross-factional unity, all sides of the Iranian political spectrum — including Reformists and conservatives — mostly took positions indicating that the French government had a double standard on terrorism.
One of the first reactions came from conservative politician Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel, a former speaker who failed to get enough votes to secure a seat in the Feb. 26 parliamentary elections. He quickly took to Twitter to express his view on the Nice attack, using one of famous 13th-century Iranian poet Saadi Shirazi’s poems to imply that France should have seen it coming.
