Free Republic

Mideast: In his first-ever condemnation of another Arab state, Saudi King Abdullah has taken Syria to task for the atrocities it has committed on its own citizens. And where was the U.S.? Leading from behind, of course. The Saudi king startled the world over the weekend by blasting dictator Bashar al-Assad and recalling his ambassador after Syria's massacre of democracy protestors during the holy month of Ramadan. "Stop the killing machine," Abdullah demanded in a statement read Sunday on Al-Arabiya satellite television. "What's happening in Syria is not acceptable to Saudi Arabia." Within hours, Bahrain and Kuwait followed, and the...

The Egyptian daily Al-Yawm Al-Sab'a reported that for the first time in 30 years, Egyptian authorities prevented Farah Diba, the wife of the late ousted Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, from visiting his grave in Cairo on the anniversary of his death. The daily estimated that the reason for preventing her from attending is her association with the Mubarak regime. The Iranian website Asr-e Iran claimed that this move is a positive message from Cairo to Tehran. (Source: Al-Yawm Al-Sab'a (Egypt), Asr-e Iran (Iran), July 27, 2011.)

Does anyone know anything about the Iranian Royal Family? Members, extended family, that sort of thing?

The turmoil in Egypt is markedly similar to the revolution that gripped Iran 33 years ago. Egypt may be to Mr. Obama what Iran was to Mr. Carter. President Carter’s emphasis on human rights in foreign policy set the stage for the 1979 revolt in Iran. Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Carter adopted a tone of moral superiority to the policies that had preceded him. When small-scale demonstrations began to break out in Iran in the fall of 1977, the State Department simply chastised the Shah’s government, which had been a firm U.S. ally, to get ahead of reform or get...

It would make sense to support the protesters in Egypt if a free and open democracy were in the works. It’s not. None of the potential outcomes are good, some are just more horrible than others. A negotiated resolution will create a government too weak to stand up to Islamic terrorists. We’ll end up with a scenario in which the Muslim Brotherhood emerges as a legitimate political faction. A complete collapse of Mubarak and his regime creates a power vacuum that history tells us will be immediately filled by those most dedicated to seizing power by force and with the...

Prince Alireza Pahlavi, the younger son of the late Shah of Iran, will be cremated and his remains released into the Caspian Sea, his brother said on Wednesday. Pahlavi, 44, shot himself to death in Boston on Tuesday after what was described as a long struggle with depression. Prince Reza Pahlavi, the Shah's older son, said there was a worldwide outpouring of support for his family's loss.

The son of the deposed Shah of Iran and an heir to the ancient throne of Persia committed suicide early yesterday in his South End brownstone — despondent over the misfortunes his country and his family have suffered, a statement from his family said. A gracious and unassuming man, Prince Ali Reza Pahlavi, 44, lived on West Newton Street for at least four years, where neighbors whispered about his royal lineage and expensive cars and clothes. Pahlavi’s family released a statement mourning his death and calling it a suicide. The district attorney’s office said Pahlavi died of a self-inflicted gunshot...

BOSTON -The youngest son of the late shah of Iran has been found dead of an apparent suicide at his home in Boston. Reza Pahlavi, the shah's oldest son, announced the death on his website Tuesday. Pahlavi says his 44-year-old brother, former Iranian prince Alireza Pahlavi, had "struggled for years to overcome his sorrow." Police say they found a man dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound shortly after 2 a.m. Tuesday at a home in Boston's South End neighborhood.

It is with immense grief that we would like to inform our compatriots of the passing away of Prince Alireza Pahlavi. Like millions of young Iranians, he too was deeply disturbed by all the ills fallen upon his beloved homeland, as well as carrying the burden of losing a father and a sister in his young life. Although he struggled for years to overcome his sorrow, he finally succumbed, and during the night of the 4th of January 2011, in his Boston residence, took his own life, plunging his family and friends into great sorrow. Once again, we are joined...

A nationwide alert has been issued for 17 members of the Afghan military who have gone AWOL from a Texas Air Force base where foreign military officers who are training to become pilots are taught English, FoxNews.com has learned. The Afghan officers and enlisted men have security badges that give them access to secure U.S. defense installations, according to the lookout bulletin, "Afghan Military Deserters in CONUS [Continental U.S.]," issued by Naval Criminal Investigative Service in Dallas, and obtained by FoxNews.com. The Afghans were attending the Defense Language Institute at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. The DLI program teaches...

A Muslim protester who daubed a war memorial with graffiti glorifying Osama Bin Laden and proclaiming 'Islam will dominate the world' walked free from court after prosecutors ruled his actions were not motivated by religion. Tohseef Shah, 21, could have faced a tougher sentence if the court had accepted that the insults - which included a threat to kill the Prime Minister - were inspired by religious hatred. But - citing a loophole in the law - the Crown Prosecution Service chose not to charge him with that offence and he escaped with only a two-year conditional discharge and an...

Scene from 2001 movie 'Snatch,' in which robbers disguised themselves in Hasidic garb.'Robber' was caught on surveillance camera Jewelry heist was as phony as the robbers' beards. Two Diamond District jewelers were busted for hiring gunmen to dress as Hasidic Jews, don fake beards and fake a store robbery so the owners could collect insurance money, cops said Tuesday. Atul Shah, 48, and Mahaveer Kankariya, 43, were charged with directing the heist of their W. 46 St. store - ripping off a scene from Guy Ritchie's film "Snatch" in the process. Just like in the 2001 flick, the two gunmen...

Britain despatched an undercover diplomat on a covert mission to the Bahamas to convince the deposed Shah of Iran not to seek to settle in the UK. The revelation comes in official archive documents made public 30 years after they were written. The 1979 papers reveal that the British government was very concerned that Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, then in exile, would seek to live in England. But Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was upset she could not help the Shah. Mrs Thatcher told her foreign minister she was "deeply unhappy" not to be able to offer refuge to the Shah...

DAWN.com: Rawalpindi - "SEVEN INDICTED FOR PLANNING, AIDING MUMBAI ATTACK" SNIPPET: "Anti-terrorism court judge Malik Mohammad Akram Awan charged Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Abdul Wajid alias Zarar Shah, Mazhar Iqbal alias Abu Al-Qama, Hammad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Younas Anjum with planning, arranging weapons and providing training to the attackers." SNIPPET: "The court decided to take up the case of Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving 'terrorist' being tried in India, separately under section 540-A of the criminal procedure code..."

As Mahmoud Ahmadinejad entered the Caracas airport in Venezuela, they received him by playing the Pahlavi-era "Sorood e Shahanshahi" instead of the Islamic Republic's anthem! (See video at link above)

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- The showdown between Iran's clerical leaders and a resilient protest movement sharpened Saturday, as opposition leaders accused the government of becoming more brutal than the shah's regime and authorities announced a new Internet crackdown. Two of Iran's top pro-reform figures said in a Web statement that police used excessive force against anti-government protesters who took to the streets last week on the sidelines of state-sanctioned rallies to mark the 30th anniversary of the U.S. Embassy takeover.

BALTIMORE -- Federal prosecutors on Thursday charged a Maryland man with conspiracy to provide information to terrorists. The U.S. Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York said Thursday afternoon that Mahmud Faruq Brent, also known as Mahmud Al Mutazzim, is in federal custody in New York. He was arrested Thursday in Newark, N.J. Brent, of Baltimore, faces charges of conspiring to provide resources to Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has been linked to bombings in India, from 2001 through the current year. Federal authorities, along with the Baltimore Joint Terrorism Task Force, searched Brent's northwest Baltimore residence following the arrest. Federal...

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."

Iran activist sentenced to death for election protests Regime's opponents say forced confession was used to convict Mohammad-Reza Ali-Zamani An Iranian man has been sentenced to death on charges of organising mass protests against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election as president, according to reformist websites. Mohammad-Reza Ali-Zamani, 37, is the first person understood to be facing execution over the unrest. Ali-Zamani had confessed to plotting against Iran's Islamic system and belonging to the previously little-known Iran Monarchy Committee (IMC), which the regime regards as a terrorist group. Supporters say he was forced into his confession, which was made at a public trial...

Half a century ago, then Miss Farah Diba married the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who crowned her Shahbanou, or empress, eight years later. This past June, 30 years since the Islamic revolution overthrew the Shah, the Empress watched as her homeland erupted in protest against a disputed presidential election. In a rare and intimate interview with New York gallery owner and longtome family friend Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller, the Shahbanou shares her sadness, her memories and her hopes for her compatriots. First, by way of introduction, Vanity Fair writer and Reagan biographer Bob Colacello, who visited Iran three years...

SNIP If Carter hadn't let the Shah be overthrown in 1979, "there wouldn't be this problem in Afghanistan, nor would there have been the Iran-Iraq war," Pahlavi tells Avenue magazine. "Iraq would never have dared to even send a plane over our country. The Gulf War wouldn't have happened, nor would any of the problems of the past 30 years, including the exporting of religious fanaticism." SNIP

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...

TEHRAN/BAGHDAD - On Tuesday, Iraqi soldiers and riot police stormed Camp Ashraf, where Mojahedin Khalq Organization members had been based, triggering violent clashes that left at least 260 people injured. Iraqi officials say clashes broke out as they were trying to establish a police post in the camp. “After the failure of negotiations with the Mojahedin (Khalq) to enter peacefully, the Iraqi army entered Camp Ashraf with force and it now controls the interior and all entrances to the camp,” an Iraqi military source said. An Iraqi army spokesman in Diyala said two battalions of 400 soldiers each plus 200...

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...

http://www.wmtw.com/video/19822260/index.html

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...

SNIPPET: "Qais Azimy and Hamedullah Shah, who work for the station's English and Arabic services, have been held by Afghan authorities since Sunday, the station said in a statement."

The son of Iran's late shah said Monday he saw echoes of the 1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew his father as massive crowds took to the streets against the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

NEWARK, N.J.—An Indictment was unsealed today against three individuals who allegedly hacked into the telephone systems of large corporations and entities in the United States and abroad and sold information about the compromised telephone systems to Pakistani nationals residing in Italy, Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph J. Marra, Jr. announced. In conjunction with the unsealing of the Indictment, Italian law enforcement conducted searches of approximately 10 locations in four regions of Italy and arrested the financiers of the hacking activity. Those financiers allegedly used the information to transmit over 12 million minutes of telephone calls valued at more than $55 million...

Saturday, June 13th, 2009 Today the world is witnessing the demonstrated anger of millions of Iranians against a regime that denies their most basic rights, including the right to choose leaders who could improve their abysmal condition. There is no exit from this condition, so long as one man appropriates onto himself the “power of god” and controls the judiciary, the media, the security forces and, through direct and indirect appointees dictates the only candidates claiming to represent an impoverished and disenfranchised people. Today I stand united with my fellow Iranians and call for the end of the Islamic Republic,...

Note: The following text is a quote: YOU ARE HERE: Home > Reports > Consular Affairs Bulletins > Report Warden Message: India Urgent Security Concerns CONSULAR AFFAIRS BULLETINS South / Central Asia - India 2 Jun 2009 U.S. Embassy New Delhi released the following warden Message on June 2: The United States Mission in India wishes to urgently remind all U.S. citizens resident in or traveling to India that there is a high threat from terrorism throughout India. As terror attacks are a serious and growing threat, U.S. citizens are urged to always practice good security, including maintaining a heightened...

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...

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...

Note: The following text is a quote: Two Missouri Brothers Among Those Indicted in $4 Million Nationwide Spamming Conspiracy Millions of E-Mail Addresses Illegally Harvested from Computers at 2,000 Schools KANSAS CITY, MO—Two Missouri men and their company are among those indicted by a federal grand jury in a nationwide e-mail spamming case that victimized more than 2,000 colleges and universities in a scheme that sold more than $4 million worth of products to students, announced Matt J. Whitworth, Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. Amir Ahmad Shah, 28, of St. Louis., his brother, Osmaan Ahmad...

"In November 1978, President Carter named the Bilderberg group's George Ball, another member of the Trilateral Commission, to head a special White House Iran task force under the National Security Council's Brzezinski. Ball recommended that Washington drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the fundamentalistic Islamic opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. Robert Bowie from the CIA was one of the lead 'case officers' in the new CIA-led coup against the man their covert actions had placed into power 25 years earlier. Their scheme was based on a detailed study of the phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism, as presented by British...

A former FBI special agent told law enforcement and Homeland Security personnel that a network of Islamic organizations are working to incrementally implement Islamic law in the United States. During a presentation at the Bedford County Emergency Management Agency, former FBI agent John Guandolo briefed members about groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which he claims is working with other Islamic groups to slowly implement Shariah, also known as Islamic law, which encompasses all areas of life. Guandolo worked in the FBI since 1996, including nine years as a member of its SWAT team. After 9/11, he worked in the...

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...

Soon there will be the 30th anniversary of the (communist)-islamic Revolution in Iran. Time to remember history, as it threatens to repeat itself. Since 1943, when Iran joined the Allies in World War II, the land between the Caspian and the Persian Gulf has been one of America's central pillars in the Middle East , especially after 1945 in the struggle against Soviet Communism. For almost 3 decades the US relied on the two pillars of the Middle East: Israel and Iran. Both facing hostile Soviet-influenced Arab Socialist regimes. Carter's withdrawal of crucial military and political support to the Shah,...

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...

Formal statistics are impossible to come by as killing of officers and non-commissioned members of the late-Shah's military and security forces were not centrally ordered. We have tried to gather numbers that are as reliable as possible but they are, at best, estimates. Usually very accurate estimates but we believe we have understated actual numbers. Here are some figures in no particular order, other than as they came in. 144 Air Force Pilots including the Nojeh attempted counter-revolution by the Air Force. (Nojeh is still a not fully told story we will write up as time permits. We have have...

Report: U.S. Missteps Led To Shah's Overthrow All Things Considered, October 18, 2008 · Scholars who study the Iranian Revolution of 1979 have paid a lot of attention to the internal factors that precipitated revolt. Now, a new study argues that the United States secretly helped create the conditions that led to the overthrow of its ally, the Shah. Andrew Scott Cooper, who wrote the report using previously classified information, talks about the mistakes that led to the demise of the Shah.

BEIRUT -- A new report based on previously classified documents suggests that the Nixon and Ford administrations created conditions that helped destabilize Iran in the late 1970s and contributed to the country's Islamic Revolution. A trove of transcripts, memos and other correspondence show sharp differences over rising oil prices developing between the Republican administrations and Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi in the mid-1970s, says a report to be published today in the fall issue of Middle East Journal, an academic journal published by the Washington-based Middle East Institute, a think tank.

Jimmy Carter, Unwitting Crusader for Islamofascism   written by Ken on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 #fullpost{display:inline;}Not since Neville Chamberlain has the world seen as wreckless an appeaser as Jimmy Carter. During the Jimmy Carter nightmare in the 70's, Iran took 52 American's hostage for 444 days and had the most powerful nation on Earth on its knees. Not until a real President, Ronald Reagan, came to office did Iran take the US serious enough to release all American Hostages. Since then we have had to live with Iran as a rogue Islamic state thanks to the peanut farmer, turn...

TEHRAN, Feb 17, 2008 (AFP) — An Iranian ayatollah died suddenly of a heart attack during an impassioned speech lashing out at insults against the family of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the run-up to elections, the press reported on Sunday. Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Tavassoli, a former head of Khomeini's office, died while delivering the speech to Iran's main arbitration body, the Expediency Council, of which he was a member, the Kargozaran daily reported. He had been responding to unprecedented ultra-conservative attacks against Hassan Khomeini, Ayatollah Khomeini's respected grandson, who had criticised mass disqualifications in the March election and...

JIMMY CARTER THE CRIMINAL   Jimmy Carter - infamous worst ex US president that is largely at fault for the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran (by putting extra pressure on the Shah), ultimately resulting in 1) Islamic Republic of Iran's oppression of millions of Persians, and 2) the planet in peril at the hands of that nation's mullahs' nukes.   Jimmy Carter has his hands blooded in every single violent action being perpetrated by that Islamic republic on a daily basis since 1979, including the crimes against humanity like the massacres in the 1980's, the terrible persecution on minorities such as:...

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...

The Bush administration has failed to capture or kill Osama bin Laden or to win the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, the administration has also missed the chance to maintain a stable nuclear-armed Pakistan. Like the U.S. policy toward the Shah’s Iran in the 1960s and 1970s, the Bush administration, despite a rhetorical commitment to spread democracy around the world, has put all of its eggs in the basket of an autocrat unlikely to survive—in this case, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Although Musharraf has used the U.S. war on terror to play the United States like a fiddle, the...

NEW YORK --A Florida doctor was convicted Monday of providing material support to terrorists by agreeing to treat injured al-Qaida fighters so they could return to Iraq to battle Americans. Dr. Rafiq Abdus Sabir, 52, was convicted in federal court in Manhattan after a three-week trial that featured testimony by him and Ali Soufan, an FBI agent who posed as an al-Qaida recruiter in a sting operation that led to four arrests. When the verdict was read, Sabir looked straight ahead. Later, as he was escorted from the courtroom, he waved to supporters, who said, "Stay strong." His lawyer, Ed...

When making a radical change, good sense requires that you consider the alternative. In 1978, the coalition that overthrew the Shah of Iran consisted of the bazaar merchants who disliked the Shah's move to modernize the economy, including the merchandising sector; representatives of the Palestinian Liberation Organization who objected to Iran's recognition of Israel; the Tudeh, Iranian communist party; the Mujadin, composed of students following their fashionable new-left ideology and the misled intelligentsia; all these under the leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers, fundamentalist Muslims who hated the Shah's regime for its tilt toward secularism, modernism, Westernization and...