Posted on 08/13/2009 5:54:28 AM PDT by SolidWood
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 in touch with reformers and protesters within Iran?
Pahlavi: Yes, I am. I spend most of my time communicating with people in Iran -- not just reformers and protestors, but also with ordinary Iranians who suffer quietly under injustice, social and economic decline. Their concerns are of utmost importance to me.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are you directly and personally involved in anything that's going on in Iran right now? After all, they're trying to overthrow a regime which toppled your father.
Pahlavi: The movement born on June 12 has generated an unprecedented and broadest support of Iranians of all walks of life. I have done my share to support this movement of the people and to help them voice their cry for freedom.
(Excerpt) Read more at rezapahlavi.com ...
hmm..I thought I aws on this list. If not please add me to it.
Thank you.
Sorry..I also thought I hit private reply on that post. %o)
Yes, you are on the list.
He looks a great deal different then the last time I saw him.
He was riding in the back of a limo in Tehran and stopped to talk with a bunch of us Americans hanging out at a hamburger shop. He seemed like a nice kid and I greatly admired his father and mother.
I am getting old! I remember when he was a young man!
A very good man.
Reza needs to lead the revolution.
Thanks. You beat me to it. :~ )
His father was an unelected tyrant though. Just because he was OUR puppet unelected tyrant doesn’t change that. The SAVAK was something you’d expect from an Islamic country. A dictator is a dictator, regardless of the fact he was preferable to the Mullahcracy.
Unelected, yes. He was King (Shah han Shahi: King of Kings), the last to sit the Peacock Throne.
Tyrant, hardly. He, as all monarchs, had political enemies. His tended to be a bit more ruthless and violent. From what I could see, he was introducing great reforms that brought his people out of the dark ages. Women held professional jobs (doctors, dentists, junior executives, etc.); they were even permitted to wear western attire and many abandoned the chadora.
I met the Shah at the Tehran Hilton shortly after we first arrived in Tehran. He was very kind, grandfatherly in fact. And spoke the most elequent english. Even as a kid I was impressed by him.
All tyrants boast of some achievements. Indeed, some of the most efficiently run states have been autocracies. Was the Shah on the same level as Hitler? Of course not. But he was far from a hero. If I were to compare him to a leader today, it would probably be Hugo Chavez.
He was the Constitutional King, per the Constitution of 1908 and 1925 with powers increased in 1950, 3 years before the 1953 coup that returned him to power.
Just because he was OUR puppet unelected tyrant doesn’t change that.
I haven't anyone ever claim that he was a democratically elected leader.
The SAVAK was something you’d expect from an Islamic country.
You mean like the Soviet KGB, German GeStaPo or Stasi or the Romanian Securitate? What has this to do with "Islamic Country"? All these non-islamic organizations were considerably worse than SAVAK. Iran was the champion of progressive secularism (short of Turkey) in the Middle East then. SAVAK was needed exactly to keep down the Communist and Islamists terrorists, which are plagueing the world. If anything they weren't hard enough on these groups, although their sniffing around among ordinary Iranians was certainly counterproductive.
But it would do SAVAK injustice to reduce it to the third Bureau (interior). The SAVAK had several bureaus, the foreign espionage was EXCELLENT and in close cooperation with Israel and Turkey. The SAVAK knew of Saddam's WMD program since 1976 and warned the West on a Soviet Invasion in Afghanistan long before any other service.
A dictator is a dictator, regardless of the fact he was preferable to the Mullahcracy.
He was a democratic minded, constitutional Monarch 1941-1953 and an authoritarian Monarch 1953-1975. In the years 1975-1977 argueably he had adopted dictatorial tendencies. He wasn't a tyrant or bloodthirsty madman though, although the liberal/leftists and islamist propaganda loved to caricature him that way. Compared to any other dictator/tyrant, especially in the region, he was a saint. A pro-Western, enlightened, patriotic, modernist strongman who continued his father's legacy of dragging his country out of medieval torpor, ignorance and apathy towards a modern society with unprecedented social and economic freedoms, fending off Soviet encroachment and Islamist terror, sure as heck beats a Soviet or Mullah Iran.
Shows how little you know about either the Shah or Chavez. Probably both.
How does a little fat anti-American Communist rabble-rousing loudmouth who wrecks his countries economy compare to a pro-Western, Monarchist, region-stabilizing statesman who was on the way to make Iran one of the wealthiest and advanced countries in the world?
The only leader (somewhat) comparable to the Shah, was Pinochet, and the Shah didn't even come close to Augusto's record on human rights violations.
He just prevented the Soviets from annexing Iran (risking his own life) and turned one of the most impoverished, backward countries to one of the most prospering in the world giving women civil rights and fighting illiteracy.
Yeah... what a mean villain!/sarc
_______________________________________
Get real. He was the second Shah in the lineage. His father, a general who seized power and then called himself Shah was the only other one. The indisputable historic fact is that there never was a great lineage leading to the Shah of Beverly Hills.
Read the CIA AAR on Operation Ajax. It is very clear and downright insulting in its description of the Shah's cowardice. It calls him 'pathologically afraid' and describes how they used his sister to shame him into action. The report was written by Genral Schwarzkopf's father, one of the coup's authors.
You may have fond childhood memories of having seen him but I think I'll take the CIA's report (which was never meant to be seen by the public) over your emotional assessment of his character.
The CIA was a just born organisation and Ajax was the first big operation. The CIA, to gain a good profile had to inflate it's role and influence to impress upon Eisenhower.
Kermit Roosevelt, the head of the CIA operation, was notoriously exaggerating his involvement in the coup in his account of the events. Some of that stuff is downright ridiculous and factually wrong (like Roosevelt supposedly riding on the tank conquering Mosaddeq's house...). The CIA report is choke full of self-serving revisionism and possibly partly plagiarized of an Persian article based on an interview with Ardeshir Zahedi, the son of Prime Minister General Zahedi and later Ambassador to the US, both central parts of the coup to reinstall the Shah.
Eisenhower himself voiced his disbelief over the reliability of the CIA account of events. In the word's of Ike the CIA account read more like a "dime novel" than fact (writes so in his diary).
The young CIA had to prove it's worth and mettle to the US government. Exaggerating it's role in Iran, and deminishing the role of Iranians and the Shah, was transparently part of that effort.
He was constitutionally made Shah by the Parliament. He wasn't after the Crown, but intended to make Iran a Republic (like Turkey under Kemal Ataturk). However the clergy and influential landlords feared a Republic and made the prospect of a system change impossible. Therefore merely the dynasty was changed, instead of the whole system.
Ironically enough it was the Mullahs and Mossadeq who wanted to cling on the Qajar Dynasty and opposed a republic. Several decades later these two forces would seek to replace the Pahlavis with their versions of a republic.
Funny... 1946, when North Iran was occupied by Communist forces (Soviet troops, Azeri Soviet militias and a Soviet-equipped separatist Army armed to the teeth), the Iranian Prime Minister Qavam was trying to find a "political solution" by making risky compromises with the Soviets and their communist proxies in Iran. Iran was about to lose all of it's North to Stalin, and the British, fearful of losing also the South of Iran to the Soviets, tried to instigate separatism among the Southern nomadic tribes in Iran.
The "oh so cowardly" Shah was the one pressing for a military solution and ordered his Army (armed with pre-war Czech and some US lend-lease stuff) to liberate occupied Azerbaijan and Kurdistan.
Within a week he crushed the Communists. It was the only time after 1945 that Stalin lost territory.
As further evidence for his "shameful cowardice" the Shah was personally flying alone on reconnaissance missions over enemy territory, at the risk of being shot down, and was observing the Battle of Mianeh (10 December 1946) from air.
Please name me another contemporary Head of State risking his own rear on the front line.
BTW the CIA report draft was written by Donald Wilber, not Schwarzkopf.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.