Crown Prince of Iran speaks

[bucknaway]

I don't think the USA news media will show this in its entirety so I am posting it here.

[Travelingguy]

His family did such a woinuderful job in the past!  SNARK

[bucknaway]

Now hold the presses, they are about to announce a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. Dang things are moving fast under Trump.

[bucknaway]

[bucknaway]

[PeterRS]

For Reza Pahlavi to count his father as among the world's "great leaders" is truly a ghastly joke.

Some may regard him as the Crown Prince, but not many. The fact is that Persia/Iran has had so many Dynasties it is difficult to know if there is in fact any one person who can be regarded as its legitimate ruler once the current mullahs have disappeared. The Pahlavi Dynasty goes back only as far as 1925 when Reza Pahlavi's grandfather mounted a coup against the ruling Qajar Dynasty. Reza Khan was an admirer of Hitler. He was also by all accounts a tyrant loathed by his son whom most of us know as the Shah. In fact the Shah was so dominated by his father that he grew up a deeply scared and insecure boy who lacked self-confidence. He only became Shah in 1941 after a coup against his father succeeded.

After WWII, the west wanted Iran's oil but were only prepared to pay a pittance for it. When the country's legitimately elected Prime Minister Mosaddegh announced the nationalisation of the oil fields in 1953, the USA along with the British deposed him. They backed the Shah whom they believed would remain beholden to the west in return for the massive amounts of cash and armaments they fed him. But the Shah rapidly became a vain, narcissistic megalomaniac, even turning on those who financed him by working with OPEC to increase oil prices. His secret police, the hated Savak, quickly got rid of all dissidents against his rule and he angered the Muslim right by exiling the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Soon his own people despised him and turned against him. He had no choice but to flee the country, never to return. Once again the west had backed the wrong horse and in Khomeini they discovered a ruler who was to be a great deal worse. From my two weeks in the country in 2018, it was obvious the present leadership is loathed almost as much as the Shah, but its grip on power is a great deal more tight. I did not discern any sympathy for the Shah's son's return as a possible future leader. The fact is that he is popular mostly with the Iranian diaspora that lives outside the country. These same people admired his father, a man still disliked by most in Iran. He seems very much a figure in the mould of the American-backed President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, who ended up as a corrupt ruler who promoted opium and heroin. 

When we look back at the history of the last century, it becomes obvious that when the west has sought regime change, too often it has backed the wrong horse - or having placed its bets, have failed to monitor the investments before they turned quickly sour. What will happen to Iran in the next year or so? I wish I knew, but I fear for its beautiful and cultured peoples.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/06/24/reza-pahlavi-iran-regime-change-00417941

[Pete1111]

 The fall of the Shah is a good example how regime change can lead to something much, much worse.

Persian students at universities in the States warned the Shah was guilty of crimes.  I wonder if they realized what Islamic extremists would bring.

 

[PeterRS]

1 hour ago, Pete1111 said:

Persian students at universities in the States warned the Shah was guilty of crimes.  I wonder if they realized what Islamic extremists would bring.

I think very few realised what might happen after the fall of the Shah, results which reverberated around the world and for a time dangerously affected world politics. Did anyone in Iraq imagine what would happen after the US and its very loose coalition got rid of Saddam Hussein, another former US ally? Did anyone foresee the rise of ISIS? Or the result of deposing and murdering President Diệm of South Vietnam, a man whom President Johnson had earlier called the "Winston Churchill of Asia?"

What I find most surprising is that the west sems to consider regime change as an end in itself without remotely considering what might happen thereafter. I do not know enough about Iran but I have seen it suggested that the west could have acted much more quickly in curbing the Shah's regime of terror. I fully accept the Cold War was at its height and the last thing the west wanted, I assume, was greater Soviet influence in that part of the world. But to see Iran slowly collapse under the Shah and do virtually nothing about it?