Israel and Iran: Vladimir Mitev talks about the Persian Bridge of Friendship and the people of the Middle East amidst war
Interview for Darik Radio on the need to see the human being in the people of the Middle East, to realise that everyone loses in war and that the way forward for both our region and theirs lies in emancipating ourselves from the hegemonic interests in our societies and empowering our citizens
Hristiana Taseva, Darik Radio, 24 June 2025
Interview by Hristiana Taseva from Darik Radio with the founder of the Persian Bridge of Friendship, Vladimir Mitev. He explains how his Persian blog tries to humanise the people of the Middle East during the war, which was a loss for both Israelis and Iranians. Vladimir also points out that the future of the region lies in regional integration and peace. He recalls some of the achievements of contemporary Iranian literature. He explains that the stigma attached to those involved with Iran in Bulgaria must be removed.
Hristiana Taseva: Bridges are an exceptional symbol of connectivity. In fact, however, they can be more than just physical structures. Cyberspace gives us the opportunity to build bridges between different nations and different parts of the world.
Here with me today is a guest who does just that. He builds bridges. I am joined by the journalist and author of the blog ‘The Persian Bridge of Friendship’. Hello! This is Vladimir Mitev.
Hello! It is very kind of you to refer to me as a bridge builder. I hope that is what I am doing.
Thank you for accepting our invitation. Let's start there. What is ‘The Persian Bridge of Friendship’?
You invited me because since 2020 I have been developing a modest blog, which may have important content and is dedicated to the Middle East and especially Iran. I have developed it to a certain extent because, historically, I speak Persian. I had the opportunity to learn this language at university. And somehow, after reading certain books and interacting with people from this region, I feel that I may have something to say.
In this particular case, we have a war in the Middle East. It prompted me to create a Viber channel for the Persian blog. The reason was that in our media we discuss the Middle East, Iran or any country that is not entirely Western from our point of view, through the language of war, through the language of security. And we often forget that there are ordinary people there too. Not everyone in those countries is a dog of the military, just as not everyone in our countries is a dog of the military.
That is why it is perhaps normal to have interpersonal relationships, to care and to think that we are all human beings. We are not just pawns or foot soldiers in some endless war.
What does your blog actually contain? If you could tell people who are not familiar with the various articles.
When I started the blog, I was doing a PhD on contemporary Iranian literature, more specifically on prose before the Islamic Revolution. Even in the first text of the blog, I say that I created it partly because I needed to organise and make sense of a huge amount of knowledge. It has several publications that are from this PhD. This PhD is not yet complete.
These publications have appeared in journals in Bulgaria and abroad. There are interviews with Iranians, including people who understand international relations, but also, for example, people who are involved in the translation of Bulgarian literature into Persian. A few years ago, there was a very active Iranian translator who translated Nikola Vaptsarov into Persian, as well as contemporary Bulgarian writers. For example, Alek Popov has a book translated into Persian. So there are some connections between our region and Iranians, which are also interpersonal. The blog also has articles about events in Bulgaria or Romania that are in some way related to Iran.
There are many different topics on the blog. I notice that interest in Iran is largely related to politics and international relations. I have articles on these topics. I started this blog myself, throwing myself into it to some extent. Although it is not large, it requires time. Over time, however, a group of Iranians living in Europe has emerged with whom I keep in touch online and who have something to say, as Iranians as a people have a predisposition for intellectual life. Iranians in the diaspora are often people who have been through a lot, who have experienced difficult things in their country, which prompted them to leave.
What kind of things have they experienced, for example?
I haven't asked them in detail myself. But, for example, one of the friends of the Persian blog, an Iranian writer who lives in Sweden and is called Rana Soleimani, supports the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement. She is the author of several novels that are very difficult to read and comprehend. For example, she has a novel about several Iranian women who have been sentenced to death and are in the notorious Evin prison, which is perhaps one of the harshest prisons in Iran. She follows the last moments of their lives. She also has a book about a transgender young man growing up in Iran. There is also a book that has been translated into English about an Iranian immigrant in Sweden who goes through a lot of violence and many trials. The book is called The Odyssey Syndrome. From this Iranian woman, I learned that the Odyssey syndrome is a specific condition of migrants in general, i.e. a state in which they are simply subjected to great hardship because they have no home and everything they experience rejects them.
The very fact that Rana Soleimani is interested in such complex and difficult topics suggests to me that her experience has been difficult and that she is seeking to make sense of it and move on.
Is there any interest in these topics in Europe? We often talk about hate speech. We label people who are far away from us and whom we may not always understand.
But, in fact, we are part of the European Union. And at the heart of the European Union as a whole are the principles of human rights. What exactly is the reason for this hate speech and for the fact that we sometimes hate those who are different? Or those who we feel distant from?
How do I explain the fact that we hate people we don't actually know and reduce them to something we hate, but refuse to see that they are more than that? I explain it to myself as something like a cultural gene that we perhaps pass on through the media, in our communication, and perhaps cultivate within ourselves. It is the cultural gene of a kind of competition in a negative sense, domination, hegemony, as some people put it. It is an inability to connect with others as equals.
As for Iran, I think there are prejudices. I don't justify these prejudices, of course, but I can understand that in some respects it is more difficult for some people to accept Iranians as equals or as human beings simply because the country is more isolated internationally. Especially in our region, I don't think there are many Iranians. There are more Iranians in Western Europe. In Sweden, for example, there are. In Greece, too. But in Bulgaria and Romania, which I know better, there are relatively few Iranians.
And accordingly, there are more stereotypes, more prejudices that make us see something negative in them. But if we develop the ability to transform this negative thing, then perhaps suddenly relations will change a lot. We will no longer be burdened by seeing something negative in them. We will see that we are changing the environment with our lives, our communication and our work.
You also mentioned that there is a lot of talk about war in the media. Yes, it is a topical and very important issue at the moment. In our preliminary conversation, you said that mainly military terms are being used, but aren't we somehow forgetting the purely human perspective on what you have said so far? Do you think that the human perspective is being left behind in social media and the media?
To give specific examples, what is the Persian blog doing in this regard? The start of the Israeli military strikes was accompanied by a video of the Israeli prime minister saying that the time of freedom for Iranians was almost upon them. And I think it was logical for journalists to ask whether Iranians want to be liberated in this way and whether they see these bombings as liberation.
Rana Soleimani, whom I mentioned, is an opponent of the Iranian government and, as far as I can see, has no intention of returning to Iran, but she is against the war and says that bombs will not bring freedom.
The same or a similar position was expressed by an Iranian political refugee living in Greece. His name is Siyavash Shahabi. He also gave me an interview. He said that it is even offensive to think that Iranians are embracing these bombings of their civilian population and civilian infrastructure, because some of them are not only targeting military sites.
I think it is important to have Iranian perspectives. When we talk about Iranians as people, especially if we believe that almost all Iranians are in some way subordinate to their regime, we can see on the Persian blog that there are two people who are opponents of the government in Iran and they are also against the war.
I also published a statement by the Iranian Writers' Union. Anyone who has dealt with Iran knows that the Iranian Writers' Union has been a leading dissident organisation since the time of the Shah, but it continues to play this role in the new era after the revolution. In their statement, they said that these air strikes are destroying the achievements of the democratic movement in Iran, which has held numerous protests in recent years, and are reinforcing the military trend we are talking about.
But let's take a look, because it's important to have two points of view. For now, we're mainly talking about Iran. Let's look at the fact that Israel also has its reasons for doing what it's doing. What do you think about their point of view?
I think that both the Israeli and Iranian people are losing out in this war. We can see the damage this war is causing – human casualties, destruction of civilian infrastructure. For me, this war is not simply a matter of taking one side and accusing the other of being wrong about everything, while the first side is right about everything. For me, it is more interesting to think about how peace can be restored. And in my opinion, the idea should be for both peoples to win, not for both peoples to lose. So I see the interest of both peoples, in my opinion, in their very essence, in living in peace.
And the fact that the military lobbies prevail is probably also related to the social conditions in the Middle East, their conditions internationally, the conditions in which they are placed by their governments, including. And again, work must be done to strengthen the understanding of Iranians, Israelis and people from the Middle East in general as human beings, not just as appendages of their governments.
There is something else that interests me. Why have the countries surrounding Iran isolated themselves and remained silent? They are quite close in this region, but they do not seem to take a specific position on the issue. What could be the reason for this?
I may have missed something that you have noticed, but my feeling is that there is now a difference compared to the situations that may have existed years ago. In the sense that Iran's relations with Saudi Arabia are much better now than they were before China brokered a reconciliation between them, and let me remind you that US-Iranian negotiations on a new nuclear agreement were underway literally days before these bombings began. These negotiations sought a solution as to whether Iran could continue to enrich uranium within certain limits on its territory or whether it should completely abandon uranium enrichment.
And what was interesting was that, literally in the days before the bombings, an idea was put forward by an Iranian diplomat with very good connections in the United States, Seyed Hossein Mousavian. The idea is to create a consortium in the Middle East that would somehow control Iran's nuclear programme, with Iran sharing some of the control with the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. For this idea to come about, the level of trust between them must be much better than it was in the past.
Because these countries did not directly oppose Israel and did not defend Iran. Perhaps I have misread the situation.
I cannot expect them to jump against Israel. There are ongoing negotiations for reconciliation at a higher level in the Middle East, including between Israel and Saudi Arabia. I suppose that when this is possible, Saudi Arabia will recognise Israel.
There were examples during Trump's first administration when other Arab countries in the Persian Gulf recognised Israel. So if we take a step back, if we move away from the specific military actions, we will see that there is a general trend in this region towards reconciliation and integration. But in the Middle East in particular, this is happening more slowly, with more obstacles, perhaps again because it is a region overly dominated by both these security and defence trends and by mistrust in relations between people and between nations.
But again, if we take a step back and look at the bigger picture, I think we will see that it is in the interest of all countries, perhaps in the medium term, to reconcile more and more, and I at least see this as a positive development. The question now is how — probably through certain negotiations, including the intervention of international forces, whether the United States or European countries — how to achieve a ceasefire and once again reach some kind of solution that, I hope, will allow Iran's nuclear programme to be brought under the necessary control and Iran to be integrated. In my opinion, everyone loses from Iran's isolation.
Is peace really a utopia? We are not just talking about Iran and Israel, Ukraine and Russia, but about peace in these and all countries around the world.
It may sound very naive if someone says they believe in peace or something like that, but on another level, I think that social conditions encourage or hinder certain processes, and it depends on how the balance between different social forces is determined in certain regions or countries. We see how in the European Union, for example, a consensus has somehow been reached that we will not wage a hot war against each other. Perhaps countries will compete economically, but there will be no military action. We see borders falling, including for us. We are already in Schengen.
When social conditions are created for us to invest our energy in more creative activities, or in more intellectual activities, if you like, or in more human activities, in activities that affirm humanity, this can happen. The relevant conditions and policies simply have to be in place in the societies concerned.
When you said more intellectual activities, what is actually the most interesting thing about Iranian culture? We were saying that we often neglect Iranians. But their country also has art and culture. What do you find most interesting about them?
It's difficult to give a quick and easy answer. I find it interesting that in their prose they express their traumas and sensitivities, but also laugh at themselves. For example, a novel that some of you may be able to find online, Halfway to Heaven by Said Nafisi, is an example of this. Or some of the stories and works of Sadegh Hedayat, who is the greatest writer of modern Iran.
These works strongly and grotesquely mock Iranian and global flaws and weaknesses. And they provide food for thought, as long as we can overcome the huge gap that exists in our countries, where these works are completely unknown. I think that even in universities that are somewhat interested in the Middle East, they are unknown and have not been translated.
An effort is needed, including the need to remove the stigma surrounding the study of Iranian culture, but there also needs to be an effort to see exactly what contribution Iranians have made, because I believe they have contributed to world culture and art even today, not only with their classical poetic works, not only with their mysticism. For example, the first novel written by a woman in Iran, published in 1969, is called ‘Suvashun’. It provides a great insight into the development of Iran during the monarchy and even afterwards. The author of this novel, Simin Daneshvar, was the first chairwoman of the writers' union, which I mentioned had taken a stand on the war. She studied at Stanford, but this did not prevent her from developing an idea of women's emancipation in the spirit of the second wave of feminism in her novel, an emancipation that takes place within the Iranian tradition rather than in opposition to it.
I find this a very valuable and interesting observation because when we are in Europe, when we are at the centre of world culture or society, women's emancipation perhaps follows a certain logic, but at the time when the novel was set and written, tradition was clearly very strong and things were different.
We take our rights for granted in a certain way, is that how we should interpret it?
These are very complex issues. I'm not sure I'm approaching them in the best way. But I think that we in Bulgaria continue to lack knowledge about these issues related to contemporary Iranian culture or Iranian social struggles in general. Somehow, after 1990, our country, which is a good thing, of course, turned its attention to Western Europe. It ignored certain regions of the world, where struggles are also taking place that are similar, perhaps to some extent, to ours.
In fact, you have another blog, ‘The Bridge of Friendship,’ which is a digital bridge between Bulgaria and Romania. How difficult is it to create a blog that bridges an entire sea?
It's difficult, partly because it's not easy to travel in Iran. And connections are not easy in general, i.e. what the Persian Bridge of Friendship is, is perhaps a promise or a declaration at the moment, or still an attempt at an early stage. But I personally need to follow this path and see how far it can go. And the principle behind building a bridge across a sea or an ocean, i.e. between societies divided by a chasm, is to develop the Other within yourself in some way, to realise that there is a part of the Other within you and to get to know that part over time. And when this happens on an equal footing, without hegemony, then we have a bridge of friendship. That is the philosophical formula.
Is it difficult for different nations to communicate? Because it seems to me that it is difficult.
I have experience from Bulgaria and Romania. And it seems to me that certain stereotypes have been built up over a long period of time, for example about Bulgarians in Romania, whether it is Bulgaria as a country, as a society, or as a people, it has not communicated very clearly that there has been an evolution in some things or that these stereotypes are not true at all. Bulgaria seems to have had no interest in communicating.
With Romanians, I think that to some extent these stereotypes remain, or are only now evolving after the war in Ukraine, when it became clear that Bulgaria is taking a pro-European stance on Ukraine. Perhaps there is some evolution here now, especially with the accession to the eurozone. Suddenly, Romanians are discovering that Bulgarians are also doing well financially, because Romanians are currently experiencing financial problems.
In other words, practice and life in general show who is where and what they are, but I still think that in order for relations to develop positively, there is a need for people and organisations that act as bridges, simply because there must be an exchange between people and nations.
However, interest in interaction between them is often greatly reduced. For example, some people think they can make a lot of money from the Romanian market in some way, or Romanians think that something can be easily achieved in Bulgaria, such as bringing in workers from third countries. And if there is no deeper, more lasting, conscious and committed interest, when they encounter certain obstacles, which are inevitable when you are in another country, they become disappointed and repelled. And you give up.
So, in my opinion, these relations between nations require a certain commitment in order to work, as there are inevitably difficulties and obstacles and it is not easy. It is not as simple as saying ‘I am developing relations’ and then doing it. Obstacles must be overcome.
At the end of our conversation, how do you think we can ensure a space without hatred? We talked about ensuring a space without wars. That is more difficult. But is there a way to not hate each other, even when it comes to different nations?
It seems to me that hatred is often based on quasi-political principles, on certain political identities, which may be related to a party, a country, gender, etc. People are simply reduced to something that is not acceptable to someone else. And there is an attempt to impose a stigma on this thing that is not acceptable, so that its bearers cannot exist at all.
In this context, if someone instils hatred as a process, the opposite process may be to humanise people, to see, for example, in people who have a different identity in any sense, that they also have human emotions that are like ours and to be able to understand their emotions. To see that they have a value system that we may also be able to understand, etc. To discover the human being in ourselves and in them. That is, roughly speaking, the solution. I know it sounds abstract and philosophical, but perhaps the situation requires us to start with something fundamental as an approach.
Thank you very much for this conversation! Vladimir Mitev, on Darik Radio. Stay tuned to our programme!