image: Ctherine Perez-Shakdam foto:Courtesy of Catherine Perez-Shakdam imagofeminae XLVV summer 2025- OPINION

Catherine Perez-Shakdam — French journalist, political analyst, and commentator specializing in West Asian and Islamic affairs. Born into a secular Jewish family in France, with grandparents who resisted the Nazis and survived the Holocaust, she holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and two master’s degrees in finance and communications from the University of London. A former consultant to the UN Security Council on Yemen, she has written for media worldwide — from The Guardian to Iranian state outlets such as Mashregh News, Tasnim News, Mehr News, and the Supreme Leader’s website Khamenei.ir. Her career includes roles at Wikistrat, Access Media, Veritas-Consulting, and advisory work for the late Prince Ali Seraj of Afghanistan. Perez-Shakdam is also the author of several books, including Arabia’s Rising: Under the Banner of the First Imam(2015), From Mecca to the Plain of Karbala: Walking with the Holy Household of the Prophet(2016), and A Tale of Grand Resistance: Yemen, the Wahhabi and the House of Saud(2016).

In the Court of the Maniacal Tyrant:

From Tehran’s Inner Sanctum to the Defence of Israel

Published: August 12, 2025 Berlin

Essay

By Catherine Perez-Shakdam - Executive Director We Believe In Israel 

Before I could ever sit in that room — the sanctum of the maniacal tyrant who presides over the Islamic Republic of Iran — my life had already been devoted to an undertaking of such improbable danger that, at times, it felt almost unreal. From my earliest years, I was on a path not of my choosing but of my making: a path into the heart of darkness. By the age of ten, I had begun what would become a long and deliberate infiltration of the Iranian regime.

This was not a caper from the pages of Le Carré. There were no tuxedos, no Aston Martins. It was instead the slow, painstaking work of adaptation and concealment — learning their language, absorbing their customs, inhabiting their world so completely that I could move through its labyrinthine corridors without raising suspicion. It was a life lived in the shadows, in service to a cause I could never openly name: the defence of Israel, the only Jewish state in the world.

And always, always, I carried my Jewish name like a talisman: Esther. It was hidden from sight, spoken only in the privacy of my own mind, yet its presence was constant — a quiet reminder of who I was, even when the disguise felt most complete. Esther waited in the wings, unseen, unheard, yet ready for the day she could step into the light.

Years passed in this dual existence. I watched, I listened, I learned. I saw the regime’s machinery up close — how ideology was forged into policy, how loyalty was bought and enforced, how fear was cultivated as both crop and currency. I moved through ministries, through gatherings of scholars, through the vast and airless architecture of a theocracy convinced of its own immortality.

And then came the day. The summons to meet Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is not something one refuses, nor is it something one stumbles into. It is the culmination of years of manoeuvring, the slow, inexorable tightening of a web until one is face-to-face with the spider.

The man himself is, at first glance, underwhelming — spare of frame, his features more ascetic than imperial. But the eyes — the eyes tell another story entirely. Cold, appraising, calculating. This is a maniacal tyrant who has perfected the art of ruling without needing to raise his voice. He does not bluster or roar; he emanates the quiet authority of one who knows that his word is final, his will unchallengeable.

Around him, courtiers and advisors form a kind of human halo, each one attuned to the subtlest shifts of his tone, each one ready to leap at a nod or a glance. The atmosphere is not one of debate but of deference. Here, there is no “perhaps,” no “on the other hand.” There is only the Leader’s hand, and all else bends to it.

It was in this setting — this carefully choreographed theatre of absolute power — that I heard the words as he meant them to be heard: Marg bar Esra’il. Death to Israel.

I had heard the phrase before, of course. It is the drumbeat of the regime’s public life, chanted in streets, emblazoned on banners, intoned in Friday sermons. In the West, it is often dismissed as a slogan, a bit of rhetorical excess meant to satisfy the faithful without alarming the pragmatic. “Don’t take it literally,” some say. “It’s just politics.”

But in that room, there was no doubt. This was not theatre. This was doctrine. Israel’s destruction is not, for Khamenei, a negotiating point or a metaphor. It is a divine commandment. In his cosmology, the Jewish state is not merely an opponent; it is an offence against the natural and moral order of the universe. Its eradication is not a wish — it is an obligation.

And the regime’s entire foreign policy apparatus is geared towards fulfilling it. Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Shi’a militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen — each is a limb of the same body, a node in the same network, a tool in the same campaign. Every shipment of weapons, every training camp, every clandestine meeting serves the singular purpose of tightening the noose around Israel.

The most unnerving aspect of Khamenei’s delivery was its composure. He spoke of Israel’s annihilation the way a man might discuss the changing of the seasons — not with anger or passion, but with the serene confidence of inevitability. It was this serenity, more than any display of rage, that revealed the depth of his obsession.

For me, sitting there, the moment was one of complete clarity. For years, I had lived as someone else, serving a cause I could not name, unsure whether my work would ever see the light. Now, in the heart of the beast, I knew exactly what I was fighting and why. I also knew that the time was coming when Esther could no longer remain hidden.

Israel’s survival is not an abstract concern. It is not merely a diplomatic puzzle or a matter for academic debate. It is the survival of a people who, for millennia, had no home, who wandered from exile to exile, from ghetto to ghetto, from pogrom to pogrom — until, in the ashes of the Holocaust, they reclaimed their ancestral land. Israel is the only guarantee that Jews will never again be without refuge.

To defend Israel, therefore, is not an act of chauvinism. It is an act of justice. It is to insist that the Jewish people are entitled to the same right of self-determination enjoyed by every other nation on earth. It is to draw a line against those who would see them once again scattered, defenceless, at the mercy of tyrants.

And make no mistake: when Khamenei says “Death to Israel,” he means exactly that. Those who minimise it, who dress it up as metaphor, are engaging in a dangerous self-deception. It is the same murderous logic that animated Hitler, updated for the age of satellite television and encrypted messaging apps.

Since that day, my life has been an open declaration of the cause that once had to be concealed. I have spoken, written, lobbied, and campaigned with the knowledge that there will be costs — personal, professional, even physical. But I accept those costs gladly, because the alternative is to do nothing in the face of an avowed plan for genocide.

And this is not merely Israel’s fight. Should Israel fall, it would embolden every autocrat, every fanatic, every zealot who sees democracy as a weakness to be exploited. The Middle East would slide further into darkness, and the ripple effects would reach far beyond its borders.

I sometimes think back to that meeting, to the look on Khamenei’s face as he spoke of Israel’s destruction — not fiery, not jubilant, but satisfied. It was the satisfaction of a man who believes history is bending to his will. That look is why I will never stop opposing him, why I will never stop defending Israel, why Esther will never again be hidden.

The tyrant has had his say. Now it is our turn — to say, clearly and without apology, “Yes to Israel.”