Abstract
This article focuses on the place of intellectuals in the main social movements for a century in Iran. Four social movements have been chosen according to their importance during this period: the post-World War II nationalist movement around the nationalist government of Mossadegh, the great anti-monarchy social movement (1978-79) at the origin of the overthrow of the dynasty Pahlavi, access to power by the Islamists and the advent of the Islamic Republic in Iran. The Green Movement accused the Islamic Regime of electoral fraud in 2009 and the great popular revolts of 2017 and 2019 put into question the legitimacy of the Powers that Be, its corruption and the lack of future for the majority. The article attempts to analyze how the role of intellectuals has evolved through contemporary history. So we went from a nationalist social movement (1950-53) in which intellectuals had a significant role to popular revolts (2017-19) against poverty, unemployment, state corruption without the effective participation of intellectuals. The article proposes a typology of modern Iranian social movements in relation to intellectuals: those with “prophetic” intellectuals, those which give birth to their own intellectuals on the spot, and those which are devoid of intellectuals. The article pinpoints the crisis of Intellectuals in the recent social movements in Iran.
