A Projection Surface Has No Face. A reply, in the spirit of the philosophy of education, to Nima Mina's report on Reza Pahlavi's European tour

Nima Mina's report on Reza Pahlavi's European tour in the spring of 2026 is among the most careful contributions the Iran debate has produced in these months. This response takes it seriously and thinks beyond it. It begins with the word that carries the whole analysis — that Pahlavi has become a "projection surface" for competing narratives — and asks what that word costs: a surface has no face. With Emmanuel Lévinas it becomes visible how a language that turns a human being into a surface keeps the projections and lets the face slip away. From here the form of the report is examined: whether its high objectivity at times loosens itself from the fellow-humanity it ought to serve; whether a balanced account sets victim and perpetrator before the same measure, where the killing of 8 and 9 January happened and is no narrative; and whether the decisive rift does not run within Iran — between the few who live off the apparatus and the many who suffer under it. The pattern of 1979 is recalled, federalism is distinguished from secession, and against the charge of emptiness stands a worked-out transitional document that deserves a calculated assent, bound to conditions. Fidelity to the matter is the beginning of all education; it is fulfilled only where, amid the registering of the camps, the human being who suffers the situation does not disappear.