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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama noted Wednesday's 30th anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, while insisting he wants the U.S. and Iran to move beyond "suspicion, mistrust and confrontation."

Last week, I had the opportunity to address over forty members of the United States Congress with the goal to encourage their recognition of the importance of engaging the Iranian people and their ongoing struggle for human rights and democracy. I began my remarks by asking, "If the U.S. is to continue to assert engagement as the path forward in the case of Iran, whom precisely should the engagement be with?" The answer: the "Green Movement" of the Iranian people. If the U.S. supports the Iranian people in their struggle for democracy -- for human rights and liberties -- it...

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Thirty years ago, Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran from exile to found a totalitarian theocracy -- the likes of which we have not seen for hundreds of years, perhaps even since medieval Europe. Thirty years ago, Iranian militants took American embassy workers hostage. Thirty years ago was the last time I saw Iran. To this day, I have not been able to return. In 1979, the new Iranian clerical regime promised the Iranian people a republic. By definition, a "republic" is a state in which the supreme power...

Reza Pahlavi, son of the late shah of Iran, has lived in exile in the United States since 1979. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, he reveals how he has aided the recent opposition protests, why he believes Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has lost his legitimacy as supreme leader and his hopes of returning home. SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Pahlavi, are you still politically active? Pahlavi: I have been politically active in opposition to the clerical regime in Iran for the past 29 years. Throughout these years, I have maintained broad-based contact with a variety of Iranian groups SPIEGEL ONLINE: So you're...

The son of the late shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, was Monday carrying in his breastpocket a photograph of the slain protester known as Neda said to have been killed in the Tehran protests. "I have added her (Neda) to the list of my daughters. She is now forever in my pocket," Pahlavi told AFP fighting back tears, after calling at a press conference for Western media and governments to stand strongly alongside the protest movement in Iran. The former crown prince of Iran took from his left breastpocket photographs of his wife, Yasmine, and three daughters, Noor, Iman and...

The exiled son of the late shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, warned Monday of dire consequences for the volatile Middle East and the rest of the world if the popular uprising in Iran is crushed. The defeat of the movement protesting the outcome of presidential elections 10 days ago would not only threaten global stability but could lead to nuclear war, Pahlavi told a news conference here. The exiled son of the late shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, warned Monday of dire consequences for the volatile Middle East and the rest of the world if the popular uprising in Iran...

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Watching Iran's fierce anti-government demonstrations on TV this week, Farah Pahlavi has marveled at how familiar it all seems, and yet how different. The young protesters are the same age as those who drove her husband Reza Pahlavi from power and chant some of the same slogans -- but there's one obvious difference. She hasn't seen a single demonstrator with a long beard, the trademark of the Islamic fundamentalists who seized power in Iran in 1979. ''Look at the faces of the young people in the streets, and compare them to the people who were demonstrating against us,'' says the...

US President Barack Obama made a major gesture of conciliation to Iran on Thursday when he admitted US involvement in the 1953 coup which overthrew the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. "In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government," Obama said during his keynote speech to the Muslim world in Cairo. It is the first time a serving US president has publicly admitted American involvement in the coup. (snip) Obama also said: "For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to...

“I did not know it then – perhaps I did not want to know – but it is clear to me now that the Americans wanted me out. Clearly this is what the human rights advocates in the State Department wanted … What was I to make of the Administration’s sudden decision to call former Under Secretary of State George Ball to the White House as an adviser on Iran? Ball was among those Americans who wanted to abandon me and ultimately my country.” – Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran These were the words uttered by the distraught...

East German Spy Shot West Berlin Martyr The name of Benno Ohnesorg became a rallying cry for the West German left after he was shot dead by police in 1967. Newly discovered documents indicate that the cop who shot him may have been a spy for the East German secret police. It was one of the most important events leading up to the wave of radical left-wing violence which washed over West Germany in the 1970s. On the evening of June 2, 1967, the literature student Benno Ohnesorg took part in a demonstration at West Berlin's opera house. Mohammad Reza...

ADDRESS GIVEN BY Reza Pahlavi of Iran "Iran-US Relations At a New Cross Road" University of California – Irvine Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 Members of the faculty, students, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen: I am very happy to be back at UCI today. It is a special privilege for me to have the opportunityof addressing you at this important crossroad in the relationship between our two countries, and the significance it has for the future of peace and stability in the Middle East. Let me begin by saying that a good university where one can study in peace and freedom...

Pahlavi, son of the late shah of Iran, acknowledged that sentiment in Washington for launching a dialogue with Iran's hard-line rulers is growing. But the administration should also "open a line of dialogue with the democratic opposition," he said. Pahlavi lives in Maryland and remains an active presence among Iranian exiles in the United States and Europe who oppose the Shiite cleric-led government in Tehran, which took power in 1979 after a revolution that deposed his late father. He spoke of the continuing "quest for democracy" in Iran, adding, "We seek a secular alternative." The 48-year-old Pahlavi brushed aside a...

(EXCERPT) ...allow me to frame today’s US-Iran predicament from the perspective of one who has had a daily front-row seat into my country’s domestic theatre, and whose primary concerned is the individual fate of 70 million Iranians who’s legitimate aspiration for liberty, freedom and humans rights cannot be discounted under any circumstance. In my view, we should first and foremost reflect on the big picture: First, the clerical regime’s ultimate goal, Second, my compatriots national aspirations, and Third, the free world long term interests. On the first point, we need to remember that the regime’s raison d’être is to establish...

On the official website of UK embassy in Iran, the Queen of England passes along her "warmest greetings" to genocidal Iranian mullahs in celebration of the 30-year anniversary of the Islamic revolution in Iran: Queen Elizabeth's message to the Iranian people (09/02/2009) It gives me great pleasure to send the people of the Islamic Republic of Iran my warmest greetings on the celebration of your National Day, together with my best wishes for good fortune and happiness in the coming year. Barf!!! What's up with these Royals? We all know that Prince Charles may have already converted to Islam. I...

Iran's new leaders built their state on foundations of violence and corruption, making millions of us refugees Nazenin Ansari / 14 January 2009 Life for me as I had come to understand it ended on 15 November 1977. Standing next to a group of young elementary school children from one of Washington DC's inner-city schools on the Ellipse facing the South Lawn of the White House, I was one of a thousand greeting the visit of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and his Queen to the United States. The children were waving the US flag and I, a university student, the...

Many of Barack Obama’s national security policies are sideways, backward-looking and re-treaded from the Carter Administration. As examples, Obama supports direct negotiations with the Iranian theocracy, opposes support for pro-Democracy Iranian groups, and advocates open lines of relations with the most corrupt members of this despicable regime. All of this works only to legitimize the dictatorship, both in the eyes of the beleaguered Iranian people and in the eyes of the world, friends and foes alike. if enacted, this would be another very dangerous and short-sighted strategic blunder, and one from which we may never recover.

Reza Pahlavi: Leadership for Democracy in Iran March 30th, 2008 For almost three decades, Reza Pahlavi has been a strong voice for freedom and democracy the world over. Now, with the support of freedom seekers around the world, he is ready to lead an international effort for a new era in his native country. A letter to the World The recent parliamentary election in Iran, and, for that matter, all previous elections, have been a travesty, a sad farce, with the ruling government again making promises it cannot fulfill. During 28 years of involvement as a secular democrat, I have...

Since the hostage crisis of 1979, a state of undeclared war between Iran and the United States—begun by the mullahs—has become ever more bitter and intense. Militant anti-Americanism has become the central core of Tehran's foreign policy, as its rulers have opposed the interests of Washington and its allies everywhere—most notably in the Muslim world. The result of almost three decades of hostility, exacerbated by Iran's nuclear ambitions and its agitation in places like Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Afghanistan is that conflict in the region seems possible once more. Should war break out, those likely to suffer most will be...

Dying from cancer a quarter-century ago, the deposed Shah of Iran pressed on me a fundamental point about his nation that has become even more vivid over the past two weeks. What the Shah said, and almost said, then sheds light on the current confrontation between Iran and the world's great powers. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi died weeks after our 1980 conversation in Cairo. It has taken the ayatollahs and other Islamic radicals who followed him to reveal how far backward, and forward, stretched the deeper meanings of the words he spoke, which had to be condensed into a conventional news...

Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 Democracy & Security Conference Prague, Czech Republic Ladies and Gentlemen: I have come to Prague to ask for your solidarity with the people of Iran against a common enemy: Islamist preachers of intolerance who turn young men and women into walking bombs, shouting death to America, death to Israel, death to whosoever resists their murderous ideology. To the realpolitik cynics who say Islamist theocracy is a reality we have to live with, I respond: funny – they never said they can live with YOU! To those who say the theocrats can reform if we are nice...

Iranian Opposition to Hold Paris Confab Kenneth R. Timmerman June 5, 2007 A broad cross-section of Iranian political activists and organizations plans to hold a loya jirga-style meeting in Paris to create a new "coordinating council" that could become the face of tomorrow's Iran. They are calling their movement "Solidarity Iran." And just like the Solidarity movement in Poland during the Soviet occupation, they are hoping to build broad popular and international support for the struggle of Iranian labor unions, women's groups, students' organizations, and ethnic minorities. "Solidarity Iran aims to bring together activists and organizations from across the political...

The latest Presidential National Security Directive names the Islamic Republic of Iran as the greatest threat to international peace, security and stability. That is principally because permitting the foremost state-sponsor of terrorism to acquire nuclear weapons is unthinkable. What has changed from Herman Kahn’s era is that mutual assured destruction (MAD) worked against a rival that defined its interests in this material world. Messrs. Khamenei, Ahmadinejad and many of their cohorts do not. How can assured destruction deter those who glorify self-destruction and call it martyrdom? Just as suicide bombing has changed domestic security policies, dealing with the nuclearization of...

The prospect of Washington-Tehran dialogue is moving up the political agenda. But the United States must consider the moral and strategic price of such engagement, says the former crown prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi. Public frustration with the stalemate in Iraq in the United States, reflected in the mid-term elections on 7 November, has now reshaped Congress, heralding a new era. The current strategy is being rethought and in anticipation, President Bush has commissioned two prominent Americans, James A Baker and Lee Hamilton, to lead the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to produce a fresh approach. As an outsider I can...

LONDON -- Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday. Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq's neighbors _ including Iran _ if progress is to be made in the region. "If you mean by 'military victory,' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support,...

-Snip- Gigot: You heard,... President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech. He has also been giving some interviews. What do you think he's trying to accomplish this week with these appearances? Pahlavi: ...I think the grandstanding of Mr. Ahmadinejad is a carefully planned move to gain more popularity on certain Arab streets, as a champion of the cause of extremists who simply don't look at the world the same way we do. The truth is he is losing more and more popularity at home, based on complete dysfunctionality of our economic situation. People are tired, are miserable. They have a lot of economic...

Senator Slams 'Phony Negotiations' With Iran Kenneth R. Timmerman Friday, Sept. 15, 2006 WASHINGTON -– The United States and its European partners "should end phony negotiations" with Iran over its nuclear program, an influential U.S. senator up for re-election this November said Thursday. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., who has been trailing his Democratic challenger, Bob Casey, in opinion polls until recently, said the United States should "increase sanctions" on Iran and "fund, promote and support the pro-democracy movement, both inside and outside Iran." Speaking with Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., and Reza Pahlavi, son of the former shah of Iran, Santorum...

Reza Pahlavi Offers Senators Three-Pronged Approach on Iran; Confront and Pressure the Regime, Support the People 9/14/2006 WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Hosted by US Senators Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Mel Martinez (R-FL) Reza Pahlavi of Iran affirmed the world needed to focus on the big picture regarding the crisis facing his homeland, proposing an integrated three- pronged policy approach to the clerical regime of Iran. Offering his views to US law makers, he said "the best way to deal with the Iranian regime is by confronting it, pressuring it, at the same time supporting the Iranian people." Elaborating...

Torture Victims Blast Khatami Visit Kenneth R. Timmerman Friday, Sept. 8, 2006 WASHINGTON –- Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., introduced legislation Thursday that would refocus U.S. government-funded broadcasting into Iran to "stand with the people of Iran." The Iranian regime's record of "repression, oppression, beatings and abuse ... was "a story that has been told too little," Brownback told reporters and Iranian-American activists. His "Iran Human Rights Act" would also appoint a "special envoy" to pro-democracy groups in Iran and in exile. "While we are focusing on [Iran's] nuclear weapons development, as we should, we cannot deny the human suffering of...

Interview: Reza Pahlavi on Iran: 'A Race Against Time' August 27, 2006 Rachel Makabi What does 'seriously talk' really mean? Will the regime seriously discuss its violations of human rights at home? Reza Pahlavi was just a teenager in 1979 when an Islamic revolution in Iran ousted his father, the shah. In the years since, Pahlavi, who now lives in Maryland, has been involved with activists both inside Iran and abroad who seek to overthrow the mullahs from power. As the Iranian government continued to stonewall on the nuclear issue—with the United States calling for sanctions despite Iran's offer to...

10 Questions For Reza Pahlavi June 11, 2006 Time Magazine Vivienne Walt As the oldest son of the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi's youth in Tehran's sumptuous palace — and his prospects for the throne — ended at age 17, when the 1979 Islamic revolution drove his family into exile. Between meetings with French politicians last week, Pahlavi, now 45, sat down with Time's Vivienne Walt in his mother's Paris residence to describe the best way to oust the Tehran regime — and return him home. How can the opposition defeat the regime? A campaign of civil disobedience is the...

Reza Pahlavi Declares New Nuclear Offer a Lose-Lose Prospect for Islamic Republic Thursday June 8, 2006 PARIS, June 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Reza Pahlavi of Iran, having met earlier in the day with 39 French Parliamentarians, held a press conference at the Foreign Press Club (Le Cape), during which he declared "the latest offer made to Tehran a lose-lose proposition for the Islamic Republic." Indicating that the new offer, initiated by the US administration, had shown that the regime had put itself in an impossible position, he explained "if the regime accepts to concede and put seals back on its centrifuges,...

"The exiled son of Iran's late shah has sharply criticized diplomatic negotiations by the West to persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear program. Reza Pahlavi held a press conference Wednesday. The oldest son of late Iranian shah Mohammed Reza describes diplomatic dialogue with Iran as a lose-lose situation. Pahlavi, 45, says the United States and Europeans will get nowhere in their efforts to coax Iran to abandon its nuclear program through dialogue. He says these negotiations only strengthen the hand of hard-line conservatives in Iran. Instead, Pahlavi says the United States and the European Union should support popular opposition within...

...Mr. Pahlavi easily grasps what the rest of the international community refuses to understand... The threat of sanctions or the promise of aid won't budge the regime either, he says. "There is no economic incentive that you can throw at them... It's not the welfare of the people that matters to them... "You cannot even offer them a security guarantee, they don't care. For them, war is a gift from God... Peaceful revolutions from within have worked before, so why, he asks, isn't the West investing in the Iranian people -- "the same way they supported so many movements in...

Reza Pahlavi Royal Democrat 6/03/06 WSJ Nancy Dewolf Smith It's been an agonizing week for Iranian patriots. On Monday, Washington's ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, suggested that if Iran's ruling clerics abandon efforts to make nuclear weapons, they can remain in power. Thursday brought another jolt, when U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the U.S. would join direct negotiations with Tehran if Iran verifiably halt its weapons program. In one fell swoop, it seems, the U.S. not only committed itself to a course that is certain to fail. It blundered into the one strategy guaranteed to strengthen...

POTOMAC, Maryland (Reuters) - The exiled son of Iran's late shah on Monday called on the Bush administration to put action before rhetoric in ousting Tehran's Islamic regime, which he said has long been the source of global instability. Reza Pahlavi, 45, the eldest son of the late Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, said Iranians are ready to actively oppose the Islamic regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but need more than pro-democratic utterances from world leaders like U.S. President George W. Bush. "Fantastic, we love to hear that, motherhood and apple pie," Pahlavi said of Bush's statements that the United States...

Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran, told the editors of HUMAN EVENTS last week that in the next two to three months he hopes to finalize the organization of a movement aimed at overthrowing the Islamic regime in Tehran and replacing it with a democratic government. He believes the cause is urgent because of the prospect that Iran may soon develop a nuclear weapon or the U.S. may use military force to preempt that. He hopes to offer a way out of this dilemma: a revolution sparked by massive civil disobedience in which the masses in the...

Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran, told the editors of HUMAN EVENTS last week that in the next two to three months he hopes to finalize the organization of a movement aimed at overthrowing the Islamic regime in Tehran and replacing it with a democratic government. He believes the cause is urgent because of the prospect that Iran may soon develop a nuclear weapon or the U.S. may use military force to preempt that. He hopes to offer a way out of this dilemma: a revolution sparked by massive civil disobedience in which the masses in the...

Reza Pahlavi’s Message On the Occasion of Persian New Year 2006 (Nowrooz 1385) March 20th, 2006 All nations’ festive occasions are a reminder of past glories and happy times. For us, the people of Iran, Nowrooz is that and more: It is a reminder of our national and historical identity; it connects our ancient heritage to today and the future, having endured through foreign attacks and domination of anti-Iranian orders; it is thus the mark of the continuity of our national history. This year, Nowrooz comes under conditions where the anti-Iranian policies of the Islamic regime have brought our homeland...

Iran's clerical regime is more Likely to hurt itself if it were to follow through on oil boycott. As a net importer of refined fuel, any such threat will hurt, an already ailing economy, something it can ill-afford. Click here to watch the interview. After clicking scroll down.

Ladies and gentlemen, It saddens me to reappear before you here today at a time when under the yoke of the clerical regime, my homeland is labeled as the greatest threat to international peace and security, and more importantly, from my vantage point, this threat comes at the cost of great pain and suffering for my fellow compatriots in Iran. Fear of the first state-sponsor of terrorism acquiring nuclear weapons, with all of its implications for nuclear blackmail and terror, even unconventional delivery of a nuclear device to Europe or to these shores, has been widely discussed. But let me...

Son of last shah of Iran urges support for Iranian opposition Wed Mar 1, 2006 The son of the last shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, urged support for Iran's internal opposition, insisting neither diplomacy nor military might would resolve the current crisis. Pahlavi, 45, told reporters that "Euro-three diplomatic efforts bought Iran's theocrats three extra years. Another series of cat and mouse games with the Russians may buy the clerical regime the time it needs to make the bomb. "That is the Islamic Republic's plan and hope," said Pahlavi, who fled his country during the 1979 revolution. "The problem with...

Call-In U.S.-Iran Relations C-SPAN, Washington Journal Jerome R. Corsi Michael Shedlock , GlobalEconomicAnalysis.blogspot.com 09:00 AM EST 0:30 (est.) LIVE Call-In U.S.-Iran Relations C-SPAN, Washington Journal Reza Pahlavi II

Thomas Friedman's article, "A shah with a turban" (Views, Dec. 24), poignantly illustrated the rift between Iran's clerical dictatorship and the country's population, especially the youth. However, an inappropriate headline and cartoon by Kal undermined what was informative and valuable in his article. The implication that the shah's reign bears any resemblance to the present regime is inaccurate. Under the late Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iranians enjoyed incomparably better lives than what they have to endure today; moreover, the prospect for a stable Middle East appeared promising. Jews and other religious minorities thrived and prospered under the shah, who promoted religious...

Iran’s president has shot to the forefront of Holocaust denial in recent days, but it may seem more like self-denial: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad need only look to his country’s Hitler-era past to discover that Iran and Iranians were connected to the Holocaust and the Nazi regime, as was the larger Arab and Islamic world under the leadership of the mufti of Jerusalem. Iran’s links to the Third Reich began during the pre-World War II years when it welcomed Gestapo agents and other operatives to Tehran, allowing them to use it as a Middle East base for agitation against the British and...

The Bible is full of praise for Persia (today's much-maligned Iran) and for its rulers. In the Book of Ezra, God speaks through the proclamations of Cyrus, the king of Persia, who declares, "The Lord God of Heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem." Cyrus acceded to this divine command, and thus was the Second Temple in Jerusalem built. In other parts of the Old Testament, there is ringing praise of Cyrus as God's "anointed" and the "chosen" ruler, who freed Jews from their Babylonian...

The finest collection of 20th-century western art outside Europe and America has been gathering dust in storage. Why? Because it's owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran. But now, Christopher de Bellaigue reports, these spectacular works are finally being displayed in Tehran An Iranian woman stands in front of a huge Picasso, Painter and his Model, on show at Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art. Standing in his studio, illuminated by subdued pools of coloured light, the artist is depicted as an extension of the inanimate objects around him. He has been reduced to a series of mostly straight lines; his...

An outlawed Iranian opposition group, which obtained a permit from the New York Police Department to hold a demonstration in front of the United Nations today, attracted an estimated 2,500 supporters to protest the presence of Iran’s president at the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly. But many of the crowd, coming from Denmark, Germany, Canada, Eritrea and Sudan, acknowledged that they had been recruited by the organization to attend the rally for money, and that all their expenses – including international air fare, hotels, and a daily stipend - had been paid by the organization. “Basically, what you...

Let me first preface my remarks by stating for the record that I didn't attend this demonstration in order to voice support for a particular faction in the Iranian democracy movement, and was-quite honestly-surprised by the extent to which the MEK/NCRI had monopolized the crowd that had gathered in the shadow of the United Nations General Assembly in order to protest the visit to this country by a man who is the president of what is-bar none-the leading state sponsor of international terrorism. The minute you entered the rally you began to spot the nearly beatific images of Maryam Rajavi...

His Excellency Mr. Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations The United Nations, New York, NY August 5, 2005 Your Excellency: Topic: Human Rights conditions and deterioration of the situation of political prisoners and Human Rights activists in Iran. My compatriots and I are greatly concerned about the ever-increasing violation of human rights conditions in Iran. Various Iranian ethnic groups and women have stood out as targets of the Islamic Republic. The recent brutal murder of the Kurdish activist, Mr. Shwaneh Ghaderi and the imprisonment of Dr. Roya Toloee, a leader of Iranian women’s movement, are vivid examples of such...