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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MEK was founded in the 1960s by a group of college-educated Iranian leftists opposed to the country's pro-Western ruler, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Although the group took part in the 1979 Islamic revolution that replaced the shah with a Shiite Islamist regime, MEK's ideology, a blend of Marxism and Islamism, put it at odds with the postrevolutionary government. In 1981, the group was driven from its bases on the Iran-Iraq border and resettled in Paris, where it began supporting Iraq in its eight-year war against Khomeini's Iran. In 1986, MEK moved its headquarters to Iraq where it received its primary support to attack the regime in Iran. During the 2003 Iraq war, U.S. forces cracked down on MEK's bases in Iraq, and in June 2003 French authorities raided an MEK compound outside Paris and arrested 160 people, including Maryam Rajavi.
Activities
According to Iran, out of the nearly 17,000 Iranians killed in terrorist assaults since the victory of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, about 12,000 had fallen victim to MKO’s terrorist attacks.
The group targeted Iranian government officials and government facilities in Iran and abroad; during the 1970s, it attacked Americans in Iran. MEK’s past acts of terrorism included its involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992. While the group says it does not intentionally target civilians, it has often risked civilian casualties. It routinely aims its attacks at government buildings in crowded cities. MEK terrorism has declined since late 2001. Incidents linked to the group include:
In the early 1970s, angered by US support for the pro-Western shah, MEK members killed several US soldiers and civilians working on defense projects in Iran. Some experts said the attack may have been the work of a Maoist splinter faction operating beyond the Rajavi leadership's control. MEK members also supported the 1979 takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran, in which 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days.
Strength
MEK was believed to have several thousand members, one-third to one-half of whom are fighters. MEK activities have dropped off in recent years as its membership has dwindled.
Location/Area of Operation
The group's armed unit operated from camps in Iraq near the Iran border since 1986. During the Iraq war, US troops disarmed MEK and posted guards at its bases. In addition to its Paris-based members, MEK has a network of sympathizers in Europe, the United States, and Canada. The group's political arm, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, maintains offices in several capitals, including Washington, DC.
External Aid
When Saddam Hussein was in power, MEK received the majority of its financial support from the Iraqi regime. It also used front organizations, such as the Muslim Iranian Student's Society, to collect money from expatriate Iranians and others, according to the State Department's counterterrorism office. Iraq was MEK's primary benefactor. Iraq provided MEK with bases, weapons, and protection, and MEK harassed Saddam's Iranian foes. MEK's attacks on Iran traditionally intensified when relations between Iran and Iraq grew strained. Iraq encouraged or restrained MEK, depending on Baghdad's interests.
Leadership
Maryam Rajavi is MEK's principal leader; her husband, Massoud Rajavi, head up the group's military forces. Maryam Rajavi, born in 1953 to an upper-middleclass Iranian family, joined MEK as a student in Tehran in the early 1970s. After relocating with the group to Paris in 1981, she was elected its joint leader and later became deputy commander-in-chief of its armed wing.
Massoud Rajavi was last known to be living in Iraq, but authorities aren't certain of his whereabouts or whether he is alive. The last time Rajavi was heard of was in 2003 when he issued a statement on Ashura Day. After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the coincident disappearance of Massoud Rajavi, many criticized him for leaving his members in danger and escaping to save his own life. In 2009 MEK members exchanged text messages with someone claiming to be MEK leader Massoud Rajavi, who had not been seen since the Coalition Forces (CF) invasion of Iraq in 2003. Some said he was detained in a cell adjacent to that of late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein while others said he is under house arrest in Iraq. There were also reports that he was at the U.S. Naval Forces 5th fleet in Bahrain and that he was seen at the U.S. Army headquarters in Qatar. He was also rumored several times to have been arrested by Jordanian security. Unconfirmed news from several sources in Tehran reported 26 August 2010 the death of Massoud Rajavi. The news of the death of Massoud Rajavi was first posted on the website of reformist leader Dr. Mehdi Khazali.
In an 07 October 2015 hearing before the US Senate committee on Armed Forces titled” Iranian Influence in Iraq and the case of Camp Liberty”, prominent MKO lobbyist, retired Colonel Wesley Martin pretended to be informed about the proper answer. He claimed that Rajavi was wounded in an attack and he was in France.
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