Iran's Long-exiled Prince Wants a Revolution in Age of Trump
April 10, 2017 09:37 PM
https://www.voanews.com/middle-east/irans-long-exiled-prince-wants-revolution-age-trump
Iran's long-exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi speaks during an interview at the Associated Press bureau in Washington, April 6, 2017.
Iran's long-exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi speaks during an interview at the Associated Press bureau in Washington, April 6, 2017.
Iran's exiled crown prince wants a revolution.
Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah to rule before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, has seen his profile rise in recent months following the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, who promises a harder line against the Shi'ite power.
Pahlavi's calls for replacing clerical rule with a parliamentary monarchy, enshrining human rights and modernizing its state-run economy could prove palatable to both the West and Iran's Sunni Gulf neighbors, who remain suspicious of Iran's intentions amid its involvement in the wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
But the Mideast is replete with cautionary tales about Western governments putting their faith in exiles long estranged from their homelands. Whether Pahlavi can galvanize nostalgia for the age of the Peacock Throne remains unseen.
"This regime is simply irreformable because the nature of it, its DNA, is such that it cannot," Pahlavi told The Associated Press. "People have given up with the idea of reform and they think there has to be fundamental change. Now, how this change can occur is the big question."
Pahlavi left Iran at age 17 for military flight school in the U.S., just before his cancer-stricken father Mohammad Reza Pahlavi abandoned the throne for exile. The revolution followed, with the creation of the Islamic Republic, the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the sweeping away of the last vestiges of the American-backed monarchy.
Yet the Pahlavis and the age of the monarchy have retained their mystique in Iran, even as the majority of its 80 million people weren't alive to experience it. Television period pieces have focused on their rule, including the recent state TV series The Enigma of the Shah, the most expensive series ever produced to air in the country. While incorporating romances or mobsters into the tales, all uniformly criticize the royal court.
AP Shah of Iran inaugural speech
AP Shah of Iran inaugural speech
FILE - The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, reads his inaugural speech at the initial session of his nation's first senate in Tehran, Iran, Feb. 16, 1950.
Alleged longing for past
But Pahlavi, 56, insists young Iranians increasingly look toward Iran's past. He pointed to recent demonstrations at the tomb of the pre-Islamic King Cyrus the Great, which have been claimed by a variety of anti-government forces as a sign of unrest. Under his father's secular and pro-Western rule, Iran experienced a rapid modernization program financed by oil revenues.
"If you look at the legacy that was left behind by both my father and my grandfather ... it contrasts with this archaic, sort of backward, religiously rooted radical system that has been extremely repressive," Pahlavi said.
Since the U.S. election, Pahlavi has given a growing number of media interviews, including with Breitbart, the website once run by Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon. Pahlavi also has sent letters to the Trump administration.
Gauging national sentiment toward restoring the monarchy in Iran is impossible, especially after the crackdown that followed the country's disputed 2009 election. Iranian state media routinely refer to the Pahlavi monarchy as "despotic," but there has been some reassessing of history in other quarters.
A book published last year, The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Last Days of Imperial Iran, offered a revisionist view of the shah. While acknowledging the abuses of his feared SAVAK intelligence service and the corruption surrounding his rule, the book portrays him as a fatalist in an era of disappearing Mideast monarchies.
"The regime has repressed discussion of the Pahlavis for so long that it has had the opposite effect of making young Iranians inside the country curious about what they don't know," said historian Andrew Scott Cooper, the book's author. "There's an interesting generational divide going on here to where young Iranians are saying to their parents and grandparents, the same people who marched against the shah and Pahlavis, 'Why did you get rid of that system and put this one in place?'"
He added: "The family name still retains a lot of magic, more than ever today among Iranians. How that translates practically into support for Reza as a credible alternative leader, I just don't know."
Iran Revolution Anniversary Rally US
Iran Revolution Anniversary Rally US
FILE - Iranians carry a banner showing a caricature of U.S. President Donald Trump during an annual rally commemorating the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution, which toppled the late pro-U.S. Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in Tehran, Iran, Feb. 10, 2017.
Key to revolution: No Western interference
Asked how his envisioned peaceful revolution could play out in Iran, Pahlavi said it would need to begin with labor unions starting a nationwide strike. He said members of the hard-line Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary organization established to protect the clerical system, would be assured they wouldn't be "all hung and shot."
Most importantly, he said Western governments need to keep their distance and not threaten military action.
That's an exceedingly optimistic vision, especially considering the amount of power the Guard and other hard-liners wield in Iran's economy. It also largely ignores the concerns many in Iran have about Western meddling. Pahlavi's father took power following a 1953 coup engineered by Britain and the U.S.
Pahlavi, who still resides in the U.S., said he hasn't had any "side occupation" since 1979, and has received financial support from his family and "many Iranians who have supported the cause."
"My focus right now is on liberating Iran, and I will find any means that I can, without compromising the national interests and independence, with anyone who is willing to give us a hand, whether it is the U.S. or the Saudis or the Israelis or whomever it is," he said.
Pahlavi said he had yet to meet with the Trump administration despite his letters. Another Iranian exile group, the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, previously paid a member of Trump's Cabinet $50,000 for giving a speech. However, the MEK's siding with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and its killing of Americans before the revolution, which the group now denies, makes it an unsuitable partner, Pahlavi said.
"It's pretty much a cult-type structure," he said.
For now, Pahlavi said he looks forward to meeting with Trump and his administration. But he pins his hopes on Iran's sense of history, something Cooper also acknowledged.
"For many Iranians, the revolution is unfinished business," the author said.
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It was reported on 21 September 2012, that the US State Department was preparing to remove the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization from the list of organizations recognized as terrorist groups by the United States. On 28 September 2012, the US State Department formally announced that it had delisted the organization as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Executive Order 13224. The decision took into account the MEK's public renunciation of violence, the absence of confirmed acts of terrorism by the MEK for more than a decade, and their cooperation in the peaceful closure of Camp Ashraf, their historic paramilitary base. On September 28, 2012 the Secretary of State decided, consistent with the law, to revoke the designation of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) and its aliases as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under the Immigration and Nationality Act and to delist the MEK as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Executive Order 13224. Property and interests in property in the United States or within the possession or control of U.S. persons will no longer be blocked, and U.S. entities may engage in transactions with the MEK without obtaining a license.
The United States consistently maintained a humanitarian interest in seeking the safe, secure, and humane resolution of the situation at Camp Ashraf, as well as in supporting the United Nations-led efforts to relocate eligible former Ashraf residents outside of Iraq.
By the end of 2013 the UN reported a population of 1,957 persons in Camp Hurriya. Authorities relocated 1,119 residents of Camp Hurriya to foreign countries, either independently (63 individuals) or through the UNHCR relocation program (1,056 individuals). The majority of relocations were to Albania.
According to AI, a Shia militia, the al-Mukhtar Army, claimed responsibility for an 29 October 2013 rocket attack on Camp Hurriya that killed at least 24 residents. Government authorities responded to the attack by providing emergency services and doctors to the camp. On September 21, a militia group also attacked residents of the camp and killed three Iraqi security personnel. There continued to be no information on the whereabouts of seven Mujahedin-e-Khalq members abducted from Camp Ashraf in 2013.
Many members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq were still interned at Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty in Iraq as they awaited countries to take them as refugees. By 2014 the UN had appointed a special representative to seek relocation opportunities for this group.
The residents have come under attack several times since their relocation to Camp Liberty/Hurriya. Iraqi forces who bear responsibility for guarding the camp have failed to protect its residents from repeated attacks. The number of dead passed 20 as a result of the extensive missile attack on Camp Liberty in Iraq on 29 October 2015 against the Iranian dissidents where 2,400 members of the MEK resided. Some of the missiles used were Falaq missiles produced by the Iranian regime. As many as 80 missiles were fired at Camp Liberty and holes as deep as 7 feet and as wide as 12 feet are created. Over 140 residents have died as a result of the attacks, 7 have been abducted, and more than 1,300 wounded by early 2016.
Groups affiliated with the Iranian regime's Revolutionary Guard Qods Force have claimed responsibility for attacks and warned that more would follow if the residents did not leave Iraq. Iraqi security forces are permanently stationed around Camp Liberty/Hurriya, despite their past violence against the unarmed residents. The security of Camp Liberty/Hurriya is clearly inadequate to protect the residents from armed assault and rocket attack.
By 2016 approximately 2,000 unarmed members of the Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) resided in Camp Liberty/Hurriya awaiting resettlement by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which has recognized them as "persons of concern" and "in need of international protection".
Some officials from the Trump administration have received money from the anti-Iran Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) to deliver speeches in support of the group. Trump’s transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, received $50,000 in 2015 for a five-minute speech to the political wing of the MKO. In March 2016, Chao received another $17,500 for a speech that she gave to the Iranian-American Cultural Association of Missouri, which reportedly has ties with the MKO terrorist group. Chao is the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Former mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani, who is also likely to get a post in the Trump administration, has also acknowledged that he has been paid by the MKO for his appearances at the terrorist group’s events.
Description
Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) is the largest and most militant group opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Also known as the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, MEK is led by husband and wife Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. MEK was added to the U.S. State Department's list of foreign terrorist groups in 1997.
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