Reza Pahlavi's Antidote

 

May 30, 2004

Reza Bayegan

 

 

I said goodbye to an Iranian relative who had come to visit me from Italy at

Paris's Bercy station before attending Reza Pahlavi's panel discussion at

Sciences-Po, one of France’s elite academic institutions. As he was

embarking his train he held my hand and said: "let me know what happens at

the meeting."

 

As the situation in Iran becomes more devastating each day, the campaign

trail of Reza Pahlavi who is fighting to bring an end to dictatorship in his

homeland is followed by Iranians with an increasing sense of urgency. On 25

May 2004, at this French center of learning and enlightenment, his message

consisted in highlighting the great potential of his nation for being a

beacon of modernity and stability in the troubled region of the Middle East.

 

Referring to the 'obscurantism' as the congenital and incurable disease of

the Islamic revolution he elucidated its pernicious effect on Iran's

material and spiritual resources:

 

"Turning into instruments of religious fascism, the Islamic Republic has

sapped all the moral and spiritual bases of an ancient country with several

millennia of civilization and history. The harmful effect of this type of

fascism is dualistic - it is both temporal and spiritual."

 

All those Iranians who are able to look at their homeland and recognize the

weakened body of their nation suffering a fresh blow everyday, undergoing

another new humiliation and pain by the hour, can identify with the message

of the king and fathom the depth of his anguish.

 

Keeping the country up to its neck in unceasing calamity, or as Reza Pahlavi

calls it a "permanent state of crisis" has from the beginning of the

revolution been the survival tactic of the dictators in Tehran. The prime

objective of such a style of governance is to create a state of moral

fatigue where the political esteem of the population is constantly assaulted

and its spirit of resistance debilitated.

 

The main thrust of Reza Pahlavi’s campaign for the past two decades can be

characterized as an antidote to this kind of moral and political infection.

By constantly encouraging Iranians that they should not settle for any

destiny except the best they deserve, he has kept alive a national dream: A

national dream of human excellence, dignity, liberty and democracy that is

bound to prove itself more powerful than any nightmare concocted by the

tyrants of the Islamic Republic.

 

There is no doubt that the force of international pressure can play a major

role in helping Iranians to fulfill their political aspirations. World

solidarity in the past has played a major role in overthrowing tyrannies

such as the Apartheid regime in South Africa. In Sciences-Po, the Iranian

king reiterated what he has been saying all along: The removal of the

Islamic Republic is a sine qua non to global security and a requisite step

for establishing a democratic government in Iran.

 

Reza Pahlavi attends meetings, conferences and interviews around the clock.

While owing to his stature, position and impressive character, all eyes are

turned upon him, his own gaze remains focused on the plight of his people

and their release from the claws of religious tyranny. He is a man moving

from standing ovation to standing ovation without being distracted from the

long term objectives he has devoted his life to accomplish. His real appeal

comes from his modesty, sincerity and above all lack of any ambition for

political power for himself.