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Iran's Exiled Queen Speaks
As protesters flood Iran’s streets, Farah Pahlavi—the deposed empress—recalls the lessons of the 1979 uprising that led to her husband’s painful exile. A conversation with The Daily Beast.
Farah Diba Pahlavi, the former queen of Iran, remembers all too well the last time Iranian youths poured into the streets of Tehran, chanting, throwing rocks, and demanding change: It was the start of the revolution against her husband, the shah of Iran, which ultimately forced the royal couple into exile in 1979 and plunged her life into chaos.
Thirty years later, Pahlavi, who now lives in Paris, feels a new optimism as YouTube and Twitter bring news of the uprising in Tehran’s streets. She’s hopeful that she is watching the beginning of the end of Iran’s theocracy—and the three decades of repressive Islamic rule that followed her husband’s departure.
Click Image Below to View Our Gallery of the Queen
During her reign as Iran’s queen, Pahlavi was the Jackie O. of Iran—a graceful, glamorous figure known as an emphatic advocate for the arts. And even as her husband’s support waned as a result of his autocratic rule, his harsh treatment of political enemies, and close ties with the U.S., she was still admired for her glamour and warmth.
But a new HBO documentary has forced Pahlavi to come to terms with some of the grievances against her husband’s rule. The Queen and I, which airs on Wednesday, is the work of Nahid Persson Sarvestani, an Iranian revolutionary who wanted to reconcile her glamorous childhood image of Farah Diba with the monarch who caused so much pain and suffering for their people. She sought out Pahlavi, who agreed to participate.
In a Q&A with The Daily Beast's Tina Brown, excerpted below, Pahlavi talks about:
•The misplaced hope of the young Iranians who overthrew her husband: “They thought Khomeini would open the door to paradise for them, and we see that he opened the door to hell.”
•Memories of her daughter’s tragic death: “So many young people died because of this regime, even if it was outside the borders, like my daughter.”
•Her support for Obama’s approach on Iran: “He was very diplomatic, pragmatic, and right.”
•Why she bristles at comparisons between the repression under the shah’s rule and the current crackdown: “There is no comparison between what this regime has done in the last 30 years and the way the shah was.”
•Her husband’s regrets: “The hope of my husband was that his son would reign differently…but we cannot overnight become a democracy.”
•How the Iranian spirit has endured despite repression: “They have not been able to stop the creativity of the Iranian people. You can hear the sounds from the underground—rap singing in Persian. Or even the singing, painting, sculpture or theater.”
Tina Brown: There are people who are obviously going to watch these demonstrations on television and see the crackdown on people who are trying to speak up for freedom. And there will be people who will look at that and say, “Well, what is the difference, really, between the squelching of public discourse and public protest that happened during the regime of your own husband?”
Farah Pahlavi: Well, maybe, but there is no use of comparing, of thinking of that. The most important thing today is to support the Iranian people inside of Iran, and people know that there is no comparison between what this regime has done in the last 30 years and the way the shah was.
Do you have any regrets about the way that dissent was handled then? Do you look at this now and think, “There could have been a different way to handle it?”
It’s always the same story. For 30 years, we have been wondering, with all the ifs—you know, hindsight is always easier. There are so many ifs for all of us who were in a position of responsibility, and also many from those who participated in the revolution. There is no use in comparing or thinking of the past. Today we really have to think of today. Today there are many of those who have been against the regime and have the courage to come and say they regret what they have done.
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she's watching the beginning of nothing-- mousavi is just as big a putz as the extant guy with the long name- the clerics run things anyway (as the president of the US is subject to the big corporations)-- and her husband was a cia puppet whose secret police were as brutal as Saddam's
guiltybystander, what you say is doubtlessly true. But I have to think that there is still hope for all of us. Yes, our office holders are controlled by the monied interests who put them in power, and yes, this elegant and fine lady was married to a despot, but despite these issues, the youth of Iran do resemble the American youth of the 60s.
While our nation is still far from perfect, we have transitioned into a society that is similar, but different from that of Nixon's day. The changes will continue for both us and Iran, and part of the fun is that none of us knows where it will all lead.
Hopefully, it won't just be in a big historically drawn circle!
Levinson was a write-in candidate for president in 1980, and he devised a program to get the hostages back from Iran.
Had he been successful he would have upstaged R. Reagan and who can say whether or not the American people might have given Lev the nod. He was going to go to Muhammad Ali's training camp in Pennsylvania, to challenge Ali to go to Teheran with him, to meet the Ayatollah Khomeini and bring home the hostages.
I asked Lev, (with my tape recorder on) what was he going to say to the Ayatollah. Lev told me, as follows,
"I was in Capen Hall, on the North campus ( of the State University of New York At Buffalo) and it was very quiet. Around seven p.m. I saw this student sitting on a lounge chair, I walked over and sat down. I told him I wanted to go to Teheran and meet the Ayatollah. The student remarked that he was from Iran, and of course he spoke Farsi. It was so quiet. There wasn't anyone around but the two of us.
I asked him would he translate what I want to say to the ayatollah and the student said, "Sure. What is it?" I thought for a moment and then I said, in English, "All we ask is return of our own" He answered, and I wrote in phonetic English, "Mah Cha stori gheru gahn cha cha steem"
"I could be off a little it is almost forty years ago. Then I said the next line,"The Shah is with God" The Shah had just died of Cancer - I recollect, in Egypt. Then I said to the Iranian student that, upon that line, all the Iranian people would shout, "The Shah is in hell." The student translated, "The Shah boh cha dah ast,"
Then I had him to translate, and I am paraphrasing, if the Ayatollah will give me and Muhammad Ali the hostages to bring back to America, all the American people will vote for me to be the president and Muhammad Ali vice -president. If I am elected president, in 1980, world peace comes in 1982. After world peace comes, God (Big Al) (Allah to you) Allah is going to make the resurrection. After God makes the resurrection, all the children of the Iranian people who were murdered by Savak, the Shah's secret police, shall be returned to their families here on the earth . . and the Shah shall be returned to the Iranian people . . " So Khomeini could order that Shah Pahlavi be stoned to death!!!"
"The student told me that my sense of Allah, of God was different from everyone else's in the world. That God, for me, was not an intellectual construct, but was in my bones." Then the student said, i should make a tape of my speech to the Ayatollah and send it to the Algerian embassy to pass along to the Iranians.
Then when I fly over to Teheran there will be a million Iranians waiting to greet me at the airport, with flowers."
Heavy. I asked Lev why didn't he follow through and challenge Ali to put off boxing Larry Holmes and go to Teheran with him.
Lev said, the night before he was going to drive to Pennsylvania - to Ali's training camp, to challenge Ali, he went on the roof of his mother's (and his) apartment to smoke a cigarette. He saw an old pickup truck speeding down Delaware avenue and swerve on to Max Pedan's Mobile station, where his mother's Chevrolet Caprice convertible was parked.
He walked across the roof.
One guy was aleady under the back of their car, the other under the side. He shouted out, "What are you guys doing by that car."
They jumped up piled into their pickup truck and sped off. The next day Lev went down stairs and (time is short i have to leave out the details) discovered before he gassed up the car that the muffler, brand new, was on the pavement after one bump. He pulled the car on to Dave Duncan's Sunoco, across the street, where they had just put on the muffler.
They put the car on the lift and the brand new O ring had been cut almost all the way through, with a razor, and these two rough-necks showed up just as they were inspecting the muffler assembly.
Then the two rough-necks left, and Lev looked outside to see them get into an old beat up pick-up truck that resembled the truck from the night before. As he went to gas up the car, he changed his mind about going to Pennsylvania.
A couple weeks later he discovered a hole in the gas tank. When he went to it fixed he could see - not rust - but a hole punched in the tank along the seam.
Fill tank. Gas leaks and coats tank with gas. Muffler breaks loose because of razor cut O ring. Muffler drags on pavement. Even at five miles per hour sparks fly every where. KaBOOM.
Lev says that experience set him back years in his quest to make a speech on world wide television and change the course of human history on the good ship other urf, something he could get done, as president of united states, but not as a private citizen.
His words for the Ayatollah were repeated in his speech on New Hampshire Public Television, available at youtube.com/poetprophet, and, get this:
When he made his speech to the Ayatollah at the University, he recorded it on 3/4 inch tape and he is getting those original tapes of the live speech September 30, 1980 thaty he has had all these years put on to DVD and it will be on youtube and his web site.
A gentle man is inspired with words for all man kind and the only guarantee is your government will make another attempt at assassinating him before he gets that far. J. Edgarina, the cross dressing pervert of dirt lies buried but his personally chosen minions carry on. Hopefully i will survive to publish the tapes I have of his conversations. You, of course are prohibited from ever seeing this man speak live. he is black listed and black balled at NBC. MSNBC, and lots of other places, too.
Demented!
Incidentally, tell your buddy Lev, that if he ever gets another hole in his gas tank to get underneath the car, and simply jam a bar of soap up into the breach. Over and over and over, even though the gasoline runs down his arm, and eventually the soap forms a spudge with the gasoline that will plug the leak.
But, Demented you is!
Hockey Doggie,
That is what happened in 1980. He saw the two dudes messing with his Mother's car. One guy cut the O ring, the other punched a hole in the gas tank. You just cannot get it through your skull that there are people in the government in this country who are simply not going to allow this man ever to speak.
Go to the youtube.com/poetprophet and look only at the videos from Secretary of State William Gardner's office the day Lev was there to declare he would seek the nomination of both political parties. That would be October 15, 2007.
You will hear and see him suggest he wants to sing an old Hebrew melody and how that is part of his arsenal - the Hebrew melody that from his lips will raise the hair on the back of your neck - to establish peace in the Middle East. Suffice to say, in 1970 he carefully crafted his Television Scripture and included what could be characterized the settlement of peace in that Middle East neighborhood.
That is all we are talking about is words. But to you he is just a piece of human garbage.
Those particular pages in his book swell with description after description of various events that have all come to pass since he wrote them down, his patent, every line a delicate sensible rhyme.
So a newsperson holding a TV camera in Secretary Gardner's office said OK to his singing the Hebrew melody and he did only a couple bars. In the next room was this "publicity seeker" who had claimed he was "running for president" and wrote a bounce check for $1000 to be on the ballot and simply would not shut up. A few hours later he was arrested for disorderly conduct and Levinson tells me he had breakfast with Secretary Gardner in January, in Florida, and Gardner told him the guy was still in jail, because he kept getting into trouble while he was serving his sentence. Similar to, but far removed from Cool Hand Luke.
Well, Channel 9 ABC, the only network that has a station in the state, the others being in Massachusetts and broadcasting all over the state via cable which everyone has, gave the "publicity seeker" one full minute of television time, slowly retelling the publicity seeker's story.
Find it under Channel 9, Manchester, New Hampshire, presidential candidates, October 15, 2007. I do not recollect their call letters, but they have a website. It might have been removed from their archive. Don't know. Find out for yourself. They followed the soon-to-be-jailed "publicity seeker" with 30 seconds devoted to Levinson, who drove 1500 miles to be there for the opening day to go on the ballot.
They chopped up what Lev said - they chopped up Secretary Gardner's remarks to make it appear he was saying something he didn't say. They chopped the Hebrew melody in such a way as to MOCK MICHAEL STEPHEN LEVINSON'S RELIGION.
When a television station, under the guise of "reporting the news" uses their tape cutting abilities to mock someone's religion, a political candidate's religion, well that makes the Sarah Palin flap to be nothing of consequence except Levinson that k ike isn't entitled to even complain.
The person in the TV station who mocked the man's religion has family in the pentagon. What you need to find out is who recommended that tape cutter to be in that tape altering editorial role. Then you will begin to understand that you have nothing because when one person is denied his constitutional right then all are denied.
But for you hockeydog that A TV station mocks someone's religion well that's OK after all he's only a J ew. MSNBC WAS IN THE ROOM AND RECORDED EVERYTHING.
So was Timmy Russert ordered to tell all the MSNBC program producers noooo Levinson, or did Timmy give the order on his own? Only the Shadow knows.
Levinson has just emailed me - he evidently saw your remark and he says that he would prefer I remove any mention of his name, or his spoken poem for all man kind and anything else related to him - that when the time is right he is simply going to slip away to live in another country. In the event his program plays world wide, when it is time, then in America maybe his words will be heard live, but more than likely only on tape delay, Freedom of Speech and all of that.
oliver, you misunderstood my barking. I most certainly do not consider your friend "just another piece of human garbage", and it is irrefutable that my skull is thick.
I simply appreciate the poet part of your buddy, and the fact that he is, maybe, wired up just a little differently from the average Joe. But, life is short, way too short to not carry joy in our hearts.
My experience has been that getting emotionally wrapped up in politics causes endless pain, and that tends to interfere with internal peace of mind, not to mention grace and good humor.
Years ago, when I lived in the S.F. Bay Area the F.B.I., or some Secret Service types, memory is poor here, planted a bomb in, or underneath a car belonging to a couple of nice people, who were part of an organization called Earth First.
The bomb was intended to hurt, mangle, these two people, and the gameplan was have the explosion look like it was part of these people's attempts to make homemade bombs.
Forgive me if I get some of these details wrong, but the gist of the deal, the grist of the mill, was that the lives of these two people were ruined. Physically they endured ceaseless pain, emotionally they endured unspeakable heartbreak, and financially were ruined by the inability to earn a living, as well as pay the legal fees required to finally establish that they had been framed.
So, please accept my apology for appearing cynical and insensitive to what are, quite possibly, issues of great personal concern to your friend and his nice Jewish mother. I like nice Jewish mothers, and would never disparage either them, or their religion.
Having said all of that, though, I will continue to find humor where it may be either intentionally, or inadvertantly found. Life is very short my friend, great art continues beyond the life of the artist. Encourage your buddy to keep his sense of humor, and not take things too seriously. I watched his take on the story of the Garden of Eden, and must admit, that I was laughing throughout, but not at the poet, my laughter was at the absurdity of humans and the sounds we make, and the importance we attach to those sounds.
Also, that tip about the gasoline and the soap truly does work, as I have had the direct experience in that regard. Finally, please do not take offense at any of my postings regarding Lev, or any other blogger. It is more therapeutic than anything else, and no harm is intended.
Do you know what you get when you cross a pit-bull with a hockey mom?
That's right either Sarah Palin, or a hockeydog. -words to live by if ever there were...,
Hockey Doggie,
So you saw the retelling of Adman and Even on the michaelslevinson dot commie web site. Does the man look like Gandhi, or what?
Years ago, when he realized FBI had moved in on all the "stew dent" governments at all the Universities, Lev developed the concept of government for course credit instead of money.
Basically every student government association would be an Undergraduate House of Representatives, with the requirement that every Member of the House function as a Secretary of the House and keep a log book of everything that happens at all the meetings and all the other stuff they get involved in.
This is a good way to practice expository writing. A student could apply for a job and use his or her undergraduate log book as part of their resume. The Undergraduate House would be empowered to investigate the whole university. It is actually an elective course in participatory democracy - not any isms like socialism or communism, blah blah.
Well the vote was jimmied and the referendum supposedly didn't pass. A couple years later this kid comes along - joins the newspaper -- a couple weeks later he has a column, then a month later the kid was Managing Editor. Just like that.
an adminis traitor had finessed (bribed) the editor-in-chief to let this transfer student join the paper as a columnist - upward bound, in exchange for more than a recommendation into the grad school of the editor's choice.
Lev told me, one day he was up there and he looked at the newspaper newbie and asked, "What are you majoring in?" The transfer student immediately a columnist answered, "architecture." Well, ladies and gents, Lev is as gullible as the Right Whale and he took the kid at his word.
FBI hired that kid while the kid was in High School. They told him he would be an architect - in charge of who is successful and who is shunted to the wayside. They hired that kid in high school!!!
A few months after the kid was managing Editor he did a huge multi-part story about the Government for Course credit issue that had taken place before he was even a student there. He had a photographer photograph the Lev, and it was a front page piece. he did not interview the Lev or ask him anything about the "Leverendum."
At the very opening he painted the undergraduate student association president as such an important political figure on his way to becoming the next New York state governor. You could google that stew dent government leader's name and come up with zero. The student government president saw that if he could get out the vote in the athletic department he could win the election and get a $2000 stipend plus a recommendation for some job as long as he played ball with the adminis traitors.
The Managing Editor referred to the Lev as "anathematic." Lev told me he didn't even know the word and looked it up. It meant, "to be cast out" by the architects of people's thoughts - the priests. Later in the article, which as total distortion of the issue and what was going on, he called Lev, and mind you we are talking about a poet that most people felt was the poet laureate of that University. He taught a course in an experimental college that was written up as the most exciting undergraduate course on the campus. He had hundreds of students.
The managing editor referred to him as "The madman Lev." When the managing editor became editor-in-chief he viciously used the whole paper to destroy people's lives. The transfer student columnist Managing editor editor-in-chief had an empty transcript and went to work for the local downtown newspaper upon graduation and he was fired for lying.
(It's a whole other story that can be documented). The grad student who had given the editor 60-70 hours of independent study was exposed as an FBI plant, and they immediately got him out of there.
So how does a student without a transcript, after having been fired as a reporter, for LYING, get into a grad school in Journalism, like . . um . . NYU? Not without participation by FBI. Big time strings were pulled.
The viscous piss pot went on to develop an impeccable resume and became Chairman of the NYU Journalism department, but is only an empty shell. You cannot make any sense out of his writing. His blog is not typed. He talks into a computer and uses a program to turn his talk into written words. For at least a couple years that is what his blog was.
OK Empty transcript. Bankrupt imagination. Feared by a lot of people. But were you to examine the people all those people he has promoted into newsrooms and television newsrooms for the last 25 years you will find the overwhelming majority have close relatives in domestic intelligence, or some Pentagon cover job - or some agency.
The professor who is and has been his whole life an FBI shill is Professor Jay Rosen. He is very tight with Arianna Huffington, but he is who Lev says he is, an FBI shill. Is that chilling, or what? The proof is out there!
So Lev is a little over sensitive when you toss around words like "demented."
Lev says that upon election he is going to send the Rosen File to every noose paper editor and publisher in the country, and that he is going to protect all the people the fascist wanna be writer/editor promoted into these papers by giving the FBI connected editors an opportunity to join "The President's False Witness Protection Program" and go to work as 'eyes and ears' in foreign countries.
Lev is a poet author of creative works. On the web site the first video from 1997 has a description of the first Gulf War that was / is in The Book ov Lev It A Kiss.
So you were there when FBI tried to blow up the Earth First car. I remember. So does Lev. Hoover and his descendants were / are fascists of the highest order!
Lev evidently read your post and appreciated your comment. He wrote to me and said tell that Hockey Doggie, "Peace."
"the extant guy with the long name"?! Clearly you are an expert on Iran. Not to mention thoughtful. Not.
...And price of oil of course will be effected again.
The risk models/consumers will be fooled again related to the real value of derivative / oil futures, and economic recovery {well what does that mean anyway?}, on the global scale, could be set back again.
Sooo, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the idealists, many of them, will die in the streets.
Nice coat :).
Tina, I really appreciated your question about Iran's rural population.
I'm left wondering what sort of person an ex-Queen has been associating with for these last few decades. European royalty? Is there a deposed monarch's club? Could they be enticed into having me as a dinner guest? Can we have lamb with peaches and mint and drink from goblets?
I hear the voice of the rulers in the answers, here.
I see that if the current protests become a revolution, and that revolution succeeds, Mousavi will be the leader, and he was the foremost proponent of theocracy, after Khomeini himself, back in 1979.
Disgusting. The wife of an absolute monarch that murdered , robbed and crushed his own people should not be given any public forum. She is just as guilty as the Shah.
Who is Ms. Brown going to interview next for their opinions on democracy sand free speech, Pol Pot?
I don't know, from a historical standpoint I like to hear voices, opinions and stories of everyone that was involved. I don't know how much you can learn from her, given that she answered all the questions like a seasoned politician -- by not answering the question, but it was still interesting. Bring on Pol Pot please.
jaguar, I know where you are coming from, have felt it too. But, while this lady lives in luxury- which, no doubt was built on the backs of those ruled by the Shah, she needn't be begrudged of her good fortune in life.
Perhaps with a little more of the public spotlight shining on her, she will be inclined/induced to put her wealth to altruistic purposes. One can always hope, anyway.
I agree. The Shah is only liked by Republicans because he was OUR ruthless dictator. Two generations have passed since the revolution and they (and everyone else) need to get over it and move on. The Shah is not coming back, neither is his wife, stylish as she may be. No one under 40 even remembers him or cares. Iran is likely to be a revolutionary Islamic republic for a while --- remember how long it took Mexico's PRI to be overthrown. Look at Palestine Arafat was one of the revolutionaries and he just died and look at the mess that country is in.. So hang in there, wait about 70 years, and then Iran may have a trackrecord you can calculate on. It's still way too early.
Warning: This is the gushing of a fan of Ms Brown. This is what I expect when I use the Daily Beast. Ms Brown's by line assured me that I would be reading a good interview with Iran's former Queen. I got what I expected of the DB & Ms Brown.
I surrender the comment segment to those bent upon criticizing the late, former, Shah, his Queen & the current situation. There is plenty to criticize.
Well, for someone who has been "living in exile" IN PARIS for 30 some years, she looks like she is doing VERY well as compared with the people still living in Iran. I don't have any sympathy for the woman at all.
You seem to have plenty of jealousy, booklady. A lot of these people have friends who take care of them, or family money from her side as often as his side... Or are just jealous that she decided to live in Paris instead of where ever you are? Jealousy just means personal unhappiness, so spare us. You could live in Paris if you wanted- buy a plane ticket and go.
And you don't know what her life is like anyway. She may be living a very frugal middle class life. What's important is that she has the wisdom to have moved past the past as an Empress rolling in jewels and couture to wanting democracy and freedoms of a sort never envisioned by Iran of the 1960's and '70's. And she may take her life in her hands by commenting at all. She paid a heavy price, the life of her daughter. That's a hell of a mean thing to be bitchy about, booklady.
I read regret for how things were done under the Shah; but what many of you la-la landers don't understand is that ancient and barbaric societies don't easily change just because they get a few modern comforts. You don't open your mouths about the Bush administration grabbing American Citizens off the streets of American cities to black plane them- Citizens with no hint of terrorist ideas or sympathies, just a Lebanese Christian name and a CIA too stupid to spell. I'm pretty sure the Shah got the right kill-him-before-he-kills-me guy.
Maybe the Iranian people would still have a middle class if the Shah were still there. Or the revolution had been more peaceful and democratic instead of bloodier than the Royal Family could ever conjure up. They all left. And the countries economy nosedived under a much bloodier and stark crazy bunch of despots cut off from the world. Iran didn't get any better under that crazy SOB Ayatollah, with no doctors or business men or proffessionals of any stripe who were slaughtered if they didn't escape the country. Same old things as Soviet tanks arriving in bordering countries- kill off the educated.
BTW- whatever idiot it was carrying on about dinner parties with "goblets", you might be interested to learn that many, many Americans wear their dinner clothes to dinner parties- I think y'all barbarians call it a "tux". And the hostess serves on good china instead of paper plates and uses the silver. That often includes water goblets. Mine are the standard sterling 1930's design with a gold wash inside and have Granny's monogram on them. Very nice of her to give them to me. And I'm one among millions; selling good cutlery and water goblets and serving pieces is a huge business in this country. And it's less than the price of a huge stupid pick up truck you don't need but think makes you a man (snorts derisively) to buy bell and whistles service for twelve. Way, way less. Than half.
So quit running down civilization- which the Queen in Exile seems to represent to you petty haters.
So don't be bitchy about your neighbors unless you're in a really bad meth lab dotted trailer park. I'm sure they pawned the silver a long time ago...
What you said.
I have a couple of Iranian exile acquaintances. They have family still in Iran and have gone back 3 or more times to visit just in this decade.
I know there are still educated people and people who can afford to get away from the cities to vacation homes. The air quality in Tehran is terrible. They do not have air quality standards there, or emission standards for automobiles. The automobile makers love that. Japanese and French construction conglomerates have been contracted to build a very modern transportation system there. The people drive like maniacs. My acquaintance refuses to drive there.
Tina,
I don't understand why no reporter has had any interviews with the members and/or leaders of "National Council of Resistance of Iran" or (NCRI) which seems to be the most organized Iranian oppostion group. Is everybody putting their heads in the sand? their website http://ncr-iran.org/ seems to have a lot of up-to-date information. Why don't you interview them?
Because she's not a hard news type of editor.
Tina's schtick/forte is to laser beam on the rich and powerful who are part of the news, to woo them into revealing themselves or getting reporters to find the dirty seams and allowing the rest of us to see the strengths and hubris of the person behind the name. A darker and more personality driven Barbara Walters.
She also lovingly spends time of the details of their excesses where we can be both fascinated and repulsed.
I'd say her work since the 80s created a major pillar for today's American tabloid explosion.
Iranian Revolution was engineered by the Carter administration which was hopelessly addicted to wishful thinking about the essential goodness of mankind. Carter turned up a media and political campaign against the Shah autocratic ways thinking folks like the Hassidic rabbi lookalike Khomeini would be sweetness and light to Iran.
The way things are unfolding in Iran a bloody civil war might be in the offing.
Oh bull.
You come up with spectacularly insane stuff, dr. wishes he was. Carter turned out to be absolutely correct on everything he DID talk about- but fomenting bloody revolution to get him embarrassed by the hostage situation wasn't one of them. Not in his Foriegn policy playbook.
Actually you need to read up more, for instance the writings of his ambassador to Iran at the time. Carter was concerned about human right violations but not nearly enough to rock that particular boat. You may not remember it but American's were in line to get gas at the time he was running for President, and could only buy on alternate days.
Jimmy Carter embarrassed himself by publicly toasting and praising the Shah -- he was immediately criticized in the American press.
And the Iranian Revolution killed his political career.
It was an interesting read. One wonders if it can be taken at face value. She was the consort of a somewhat terrible despot, but that was about 30 years ago.
Sometimes when people get older they become more reflective on what was good or bad about their lives, in addition to whether or not it was all worth it.
I read the wikipedia bio on her. She doesn't seem like a terrible person herself, just one who had a rather interesting life being married to one, chiefly affected by the same type of mullahs that are evidently interfering with the march of democracy in Iran today.
Funny that the Shah and the pro-democracy moderates in Iran have more or less the same enemy.
I'm curious about the rap songs in Persian. Are there rappers who speak the ancient language or is Pahlavi calling Farsi "Persian." Iranians in America consistently refer to themselves as "Persian." Are they now calling their language "Persian"?
It means the same thing Farsi is Persian just as much as Espanol is Spanish. The language has historical been called Persian in English.
And from what I understand saying you're Persian/Iranian seems to be more of a matter of preference, though I have noticed those who immigrated to flee the current regime in '79 tend to call themselves Persian and those that immigrated after tend to call themselves Iranian, but that might just be me lol.
Stop going on about how dictatorial the Shah was. (And I mean you in particular, Jaguar, you ranting, raving loony). The Shah was no Pol Pot.
He was a dictator, yes. His secret police had a terrible reputation, yes. His rule was repressive, yes. But compared to the clerical monstrosity that followed (and indeed compared to what was going on in other countries in the region like Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria et. al) his was an enlightened and progressive reign.
The one thing, above all, that always makes me regret the revolution is that the Iranian people threw out a modern and secular government only to replace it with a vastly more repressive, far more brutal and utterly reactionary and extremist theocracy, that has sent Iran back to the Middle Ages and has dragged the whole region and indeed the world to religious wars from a different era of human history.
Jimmy Carter, may you rot in hell.
Mehran,
Most people probably don't understand why you are cursing Jimmy Carter. So, to shed some light:
In the late 1970s , and peak of the cold war. Islamic fundamentalism was used as an effective force to counter soviet advances. Although this primarily had to do with the situation in Afghanistan, Iran was part of the game. So, the western influential forces, not getting full cooperation from the shah, and afraid of Iran moving to the left, allowed and helped the religous theocracy come to power, hence shifting the Iranian political establishment much further to the right. There were numerous benefits for the west but a total disaster for the Iranian people. The country was stolen from them by a bunch of bandit mullahs. And yes, this plan was devised when Jimmy Carter was president. zbigniew brzezinski was one of the architects of this grand plan. As you probably know, the following administrations kept the beasts in power and didn't do anything about it. For the last 30 years, there has been so much disinformation and misinformation about Iran that the whole world has been mislead into believing that the Iranian people got what they wanted and that everybody in Iran loves this regime. They don't know that this is the most hated regime in the Iranian history. Iranians hate these guys. These days, maybe the world will understand the situation a little better. Back to Jimmy Carter though, he goes around the world talking about human rights but he has never said anything about the most flagrant violations of human rights by bandit Mullahs. It is shameful. I saw a video of him yesterday when he was in Gaza and critisizing the destruction there. I would tell him, Mr. Carter, SHAME ON YOU !!! what you saw yesterday was the result of an actual war fought by two enemies. WHY DON"T YOU CRITISIZE THE MULLAHS IN IRAN FOR COMMITTING SO MANY CRIMES AGAINST THEIR OWN PEOPLE. ONE OF THEM BEING STEALING THE IRANIAN PEOPLE'S MONEY AND FUNNELING IT TO THE TERRORISTS. SHAME ON YOU MR. CARTER. AS YOU ARE ALSO A SHAME TO THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, I HOPE THEY KICK OUT AND SEND YOU TO TEHRAN ! SHAME, SHAME, SHAME !!!!!!!!!!!!!
You are correct. The Shah was no Pol Pot or Hitler or Stalin or Mao. He was more like Tito or Franco.
Correction:
Your slideshow marked Leila Pahlavi's death date as 1991 .... but it was 2001.
Ah, Jimmy Carter. Mr. Good Intentions.
The rightwingnuts on this site are creating comments of stupidity heretofore not seen here.
The GOP is in the tank for good reason. Their rule has left this country in a terrible mess. We are all onto the old boys network of worn out selfish twits without a creative or manageable idea in their party. The few strands of reason in their party have been shredded by ignorance, bigotry, greed, and venality. Their judgement is antedeluvian. The Rush/Gingrich yelling is pathetic.
Iran is beginning to develop young people who want change and they will have to fight for it. Obama's position is careful, politically savvy, and sensible. Theocracy's die hard and Iran
will be in turmoil for a long time.
For those who think we're going Socialist.......
Think again. It's the usual GOP talking points.
I doubt very seriously that morris1030 understands what socialism is. The president has or is about to take over 46% of the corporate concerns in America, Europe is only at 40%. When Obama is done we wont be socialist, we will be a kingdom. All hail Obama will be the cry, neel and submit will be the order. It's is happening as we speak. If any previous administration would have dared to be so autocratic and dictatorial as this one the press and every woman and child in this, used to be, great nation, would have risen up and removed him. Period. Don't allow this to happen to you, open your eyes to the truth, don't just believe the hype. Look for yourself, don't just read the local liberal rag. Don't just be a knee jerk conservative either. This is more than just party. This is for the future of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FOR GOD SAKE. There is a letter written by a woman that is circulating around the internet right now called 'the letter' I dare you to read it with an open mind and not come away changed. Oh, and by the way, she was a lifetime democrat.
This is a letter written by a true American. I dare you to read with an open mind
I'm a home grown American citizen, 53, registered Democrat all my life. Before the last presidential election I registered as a Republican because I no longer felt the Democratic Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. Now I no longer feel the Republican Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. The fact is I no longer feel any political party or representative in Washington represents my views or works to pursue the issues important to me. There must be someone. Please tell me who you are. Please stand up and tell me that you are there and that you're willing to fight for our Constitution as it was written. Please stand up now. You might ask yourself what my views and issues are that I would horribly feel so disenfranchised by both major political parties. What kind of nut job am I? Will you please tell me?
Well, these are briefly my views and issues for which I seek representation:
One, illegal immigration. I want you to stop coddling illegal immigrants and secure our borders. Close the underground tunnels. Stop the violence and the trafficking in drugs and people. No amnesty, not again. Been there, done that, no resolution. P.S., I'm not a racist. This isn't to be confused with legal immigration.
Two, the TARP bill, I want it repealed and I want no further funding supplied to it. We told you no, but you did it anyway. I want the remaining unfunded 95% repealed. Freeze, repeal.
Three: Czars, I want the circumvention of our checks and balances stopped immediately. Fire the czars. No more czars. Government officials answer to the process, not to the president. Stop trampling on our Constitution and honor it.
Four, cap and trade. The debate on global warming is not over. There is more to say.
Five, universal healthcare. I will not be rushed into another expensive decision. Don't you dare try to pass this in the middle of the night and then go on break. Slow down!
Six, growing government control. I want states rights and sovereignty fully restored. I want less government in my life, not more. Shrink it down. Mind your own business. You have enough to take care of with your real obligations. Why don't you start there.
Seven, ACORN. I do not want ACORN and its affiliates in charge of our 2010 census. I want them investigated. I also do not want mandatory escrow fees contributed to them every time on every real estate deal that closes. Stop the funding to ACORN and its affiliates pending impartial audits and investigations. I do not trust them with taking the census over with our taxpayer money. I don't trust them with our taxpayer money. Face up to the allegations against them and get it resolved before taxpayers get any more involved with them. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, hello. Stop protecting your political buddies. You work for us, the people. Investigate.
Eight, redistribution of wealth. No, no, no. I work for my money. It is mine. I have always worked for people with more money than I have because they gave me jobs. That is the only redistribution of wealth that I will support. I never got a job from a poor person. Why do you want me to hate my employers? Why what do you have against shareholders making a profit?
Nine, charitable contributions. Although I never got a job from a poor person, I have helped many in need. Charity belongs in our local communities, where we know our needs best and can use our local talent and our local resources. Butt out, please. We want to do it ourselves.
Ten, corporate bailouts. Knock it off. Sink or swim like the rest of us. If there are hard times ahead, we'll be better off just getting into it and letting the strong survive. Quick and painful. Have you ever ripped off a Band Aid? We will pull together. Great things happen in America under great hardship. Give us the chance to innovate. We cannot disappoint you more than you have disappointed us.
Eleven, transparency and accountability. How about it? No, really, how about it? Let's have it. Let's say we give the buzzwords a rest and have some straight honest talk. Please try please stop manipulating and trying to appease me with clever wording. I am not the idiot you obviously take me for. Stop sneaking around and meeting in back rooms making deals with your friends. It will only be a prelude to your criminal investigation. Stop hiding things from me.
Twelve, unprecedented quick spending. Stop it now.
Take a breath. Listen to the people. Let's just slow down and get some input from some nonpoliticians on the subject. Stop making everything an emergency. Stop speed reading our bills into law. I am not an activist. I am not a community organizer. Nor am I a terrorist, a militant or a violent person. I am a parent and a grandparent. I work. I'm busy. I'm busy. I am busy, and I am tired. I thought we elected competent people to take care of the business of government so that we could work, raise our families, pay our bills, have a little recreation, complain about taxes, endure our hardships, pursue our personal goals, cut our lawn, wash our cars on the weekends and be responsible contributing members of society and teach our children to be the same all while living in the home of the free and land of the brave.
I entrusted you with upholding the Constitution. I believed in the checks and balances to keep from getting far off course. What happened? You are very far off course. Do you really think I find humor in the hiring of a speed reader to unintelligently ramble all through a bill that you signed into law without knowing what it contained? I do not. It is a mockery of the responsibility I have entrusted to you. It is a slap in the face. I am not laughing at your arrogance. Why is it that I feel as if you would not trust me to make a single decision about my own life and how I would live it but you should expect that I should trust you with the debt that you have laid on all of us and our children. We did not want the TARP bill. We said no. We would repeal it if we could. I am sure that we still cannot. There is such urgency and recklessness in all of the recent spending.
From my perspective, it seems that all of you have gone insane. I also know that I am far from alone in these feelings. Do you honestly feel that your current pursuits have merit to patriotic Americans? We want it to stop. We want to put the brakes on everything that is being rushed by us and forced upon us. We want our voice back. You have forced us to put our lives on hold to straighten out the mess that you are making. We will have to give up our vacations, our time spent with our children, any relaxation time we may have had and money we cannot afford to spend on you to bring our concerns to Washington. Our president often knows all the right buzzword is unsustainable. Well, no kidding. How many tens of thousands of dollars did the focus group cost to come up with that word? We don't want your overpriced words. Stop treating us like we're morons.
We want all of you to stop focusing on your reelection and do the job we want done, not the job you want done or the job your party wants done. You work for us and at this rate I guarantee you not for long because we are coming. We will be heard and we will be represented. You think we're so busy with our lives that we will never come for you? We are the formerly silent majority, all of us who quietly work , pay taxes, obey the law, vote, save money, keep our noses to the grindstone and we are now looking up at you. You have awakened us, the patriotic spirit so strong and so powerful that it had been sleeping too long. You have pushed us too far. Our numbers are great. They may surprise you. For every one of us who will be there, there will be hundreds more that could not come. Unlike you, we have their trust. We will represent them honestly, rest assured. They will be at the polls on voting day to usher you out of office. We have cancelled vacations. We will use our last few dollars saved. We will find the representation among us and a grassroots campaign will flourish. We didn't ask for this fight. But the gloves are coming off. We do not come in violence, but we are angry. You will represent us or you will be replaced with someone who will. There are candidates among us when hewill rise like a Phoenix from the ashes that you have made of our constitution.
Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian. Understand this. We don't care. Political parties are meaningless to us. Patriotic Americans are willing to do right by us and our Constitution and that is all that matters to us now. We are going to fire all of you who abuse power and seek more. It is not your power. It is ours and we want it back. We entrusted you with it and you abused it. You are dishonorable. You are dishonest. As Americans we are ashamed of you. You have brought shame to us. If you are not representing the wants and needs of your constituency loudly and consistently, in spite of the objections of your party, you will be fired. Did you hear? We no longer care about your political parties. You need to be loyal to us, not to them. Because we will get you fired and they will not save you. If you do or can represent me, my issues, my views, please stand up. Make your identity known. You need to make some noise about it. Speak up. I need to know who you are. If you do not speak up, you will be herded out with the rest of the sheep and we will replace the whole damn congress if need be one by one. We are coming. Are we coming for you? Who do you represent? What do you represent? Listen. Because we are coming. We the people are coming.
I work with many Iranians and have had long conversations about their reasons for leaving the country (the revolution) and their experience of Iran on visits back home. This is what I've heard:
The Shah deserved to be kicked out. Even those whose whose upper middle class wealth was disrupted by the revolution conceded this. The repression of the clerics is horrible, but Iranians lived in extreme fear of the Shah's police, Savak, too. Mother's used threats of Savak to try to frighten their kids into behaving. The clerics unfortunately simply added extreme religious repression to the mix.
What the clerics did that the Shah did not was use the oil money to educate the poor and build infrastructure outside of Tehran.
Tehran's infrastructure was modern under the Shah, yes. But here is a telling symbol: freeways were built right to the border of the capital where they then just simply ended.
Many of my Iranian co-workers commented how Western the educated Iranian youth was today...and how hard if not impossible it would be to keep them under a religious cloak. Very ironic.
What utter rubbish. Maybe you should get out more and speak to a wider range of Iranians than simply the religious and/or lefties you seem to be associating with. My own father and uncle spent long years in the Shah's prisons because of their political activism, but today they concede that the Shah was a far, far better ruler than the religious nut-jobs that followed him.
Many Iranians, myself included, who clamoured for the Shah to go are today bitterly regretting it. It would have been far more sensible if we'd insisted that the Shah simply abdicated in favour of the Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, and for Iran to have a contitutional monarchy.
But for heaven's sake stop going on about the Shah as if he were evil incarnate, and stop going on about the 1953 coup. See the crimes that are being committed now in front of your very eyes by these blood-thirsty so-called 'holy men' in Iran. If you have integrity and real principles help Iranians stand up to these monsters. Kicking a man who's been dead for nearly 30 years doesn't show courage on your part...just invites contempt.
@Mehran, If you read what I wrote again you'll see we agree that the clerics were worse. My point is that the Shah's regime was kicked out for solid reasons that were supported by many in the middle class who of course didn't deserve the worse government that evolved. It also doesn't take away what the cleric's accomplished. Nothing is all good or bad.
A third type of government is needed and hopefully it will get better for Iranians, not a revisit to the past.
SAVAK - the Irani secret police under the Shah. Before we let Her Highness speak soft words about "grievances" and how we should not look to the past, do some homework on the above organization. Was it Gore Vidal who said that we're the United States of Amnesia? Let's not be. Let's pay attention to history before we let Her HIghness becomes the spokesperson for a new Irani democracy.
This is deja vu. We help create and then prop up the Taliban for years to help defeat the Soviet Union and sadly, we know the rest of that story. We have a bad addiction to this type of power by helping in countless dictatorships around the world and supporting nutty leaders (ie. Pinochet, Noriega, Videla, Suharto, Banzer, Savimbi, Batista, Kamirov, Trujillo, Mobutu, and the list goes on) who have killed thousands and we wonder, years later, how this happened while we were instrumental in their creations. So once again, the media reports on the Queen without mentioning that the Shah and Queen were never really loved figures in Iran and the Revolution did not grow out of purely maniacal religious fanatacism as this writer would have us believe. In fact, after the US and the UK held was was called "Operation Ajax" which ousted then democratically elected Iranian presiden, Mossadeq, in 1953, the US was more than happy to install the Shah which repressed political dissent.
In the end, it is quite dishonest to post such a badly researched and written article that ostensibly sets up this false consciousness of history. In short, the Queen is partly responsible for the situation today.
The shaw and Queen werent perfect but the country was growing.I think now Iran would have faired much better in the long run if the monarchy would have stayed in power.
The great people of Iran should not be mixed in with the rest of the backword fanatic's in the middle east. The people of Iran are far more intelectual and enheraitly modern with there ideas. "The revolution was very well orginized and the monarchy was not." The youth had the right ideas but the leader's used the ideales of freedom to push the movement. In that the leader's saw the power in the new lebertys within that the great threat. I think that the new regiem has the control they think they need to mantain there ideology (theocracy) They will never ease up on the freedom of exspression.They must be taken over by force. They need a Monarchy or to over throw a Dictatorship?Abousoult power can be easyer replaced by absoult power.Iran should use the monarchy and a parlimentary system.
Thank you.
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