Iran: Son of former Shah urges West to back dissidents

The Eurasia Review website has published an article sharing the views of the son of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who snipes at the current political system in Iran and urges support from the West to dissidents. Caliber.Az reprints the article.

The IRGC, Pahlavi said, “is an armed paramilitary mafia that controls every aspect of the country, but only the top echelons of the IRGC benefit from this. 

“The lower ranks have to decide if they want to be used as an instrument of repression or to consider this regime is on its last legs and they should take the exit strategy being offered to them, through truth and reconciliation, and return to the bosom of the nation. 

“In my vision of regime change, the lower paramilitary ranks peel away from the regime, but that requires maximum pressure by the West.”

He added: “Political expediency often has a problem with freedom-loving movements. The fact some governments are suggesting the protests are tapering off is perhaps because they want to justify some re-engagement and negotiations. It’s a bit like South Africa at the end of apartheid. Governments tried to ignore the issue until it was impossible to do so.

“It is curious to me that the Biden administration is so hell-bent on rejuvenating a JCPOA when first time round the West did not benefit economically. As long as this regime is in power there will be a complete block on cooperating with the West. That is the mindset.”

Pahlavi, who has been in exile from Iran since he was 17, said he was drawing up a charter with activists based on democratic principles for a future Iranian political system.

“It originates from inside Iran, and that is why it has legitimacy,” he said. “This is not something we concocted to export to Iran. Quite the opposite. We are the voice of those inside Iran that cannot openly advocate for obvious reasons. It is a diverse group: left, right, centre, republicans and monarchists.”

He added: “I am not here to be president or the next monarch. I am here to use my political capital and the trust that people have in me to be instrumental in helping the transition process. 

“My only mission in life is to see the day the Iranians go to the polls and decide their own fate,” he said. “If afterwards, I can contribute by helping to institutionalize checks on the concentration of power, or corruption, or abuse of power or a new political culture … that is where I think I can be most effective.”

He distanced himself from association with his father’s rule, which came to an end with the Iranian Revolution in 1979. “People do not look at me as going back to the past. They look at me and see someone moving towards a future,” he said. 

“Had it not been for this revolution, we should at least have been South Korea. Instead, we are North Korea.”