THE TELEGRAPH: Crown Prince of Iran tells Simon Heffer he is ready to help bring change to his country but says the West needs to increase pressure on the Tehran regime.
Reza Pahlavi, Crown Prince of Iran, and to his most devoted followers His Imperial Majesty the Shah, has been following the turbulent events of his country closer than perhaps any exile in the past five or six months.
I met him this week in a hotel room in Washington DC, near where he lives. While we talked over mineral water and fish and chips he pulled out his BlackBerry to see the latest news of the street protests in Tehran.
The repression of his fellow Iranians by the Ahmadinejad regime, still in place after the rigged elections of the summer, angers him profoundly.
"When I think that today we Iranians have to be represented by these people, warmongering, terrorist-sponsoring, Holocaust denying – can I possibly sit here and say nothing? I don't want anything in return. I do it because it is my duty," he says.
In exile since his father was deposed in 1979, the Prince, 49, remains the figurehead for the three or four million strong Iranian diaspora. Since the elections he has stepped up calls for civil disobedience by Iranians, and for external support for that. His many conduits of information from Iran tell him the regime is fragmenting, and he eagerly awaits a tipping point.
"The end of the apartheid regime in South Africa, of military juntas in South America, of the former Soviet Union – all of it came at the hands of the people of those nations themselves," he says. "None of this could have happened without foreign support – but that is not the same as an occupying army that comes in and changes a regime – I don't see how that can ever be legitimate."
The unhappy experience of foreign intervention in Iraq has further convinced him of the importance of avoiding it in Iran.
"Change must come to Iran by civil disobedience and non-violence. I stress that. We can't have change at any cost. It is ultimately a question of the sovereignty of that nation, and what happens must be the will of the people. But how do we determine that? There is an absence of public debate. There is an absence of the ballot box." >>> Simon Heffer | Saturday, November 07, 2009
Critique du livre : Iran : l’heure du choix – Entretiens avec Michel Taubmann >>> Mark Alexander | Thursday, September 03, 2009
