Free Republic

When American bombs were raining down on what is left of Afghanistan, fellow Muslims in the neighbouring Islamic republic of Iran took out to the Streets. Contrary to our expectations in the West, they did not rally to denounce the 'Great Satan' - the name given to America by the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Instead, ordinary Iranians, in one of the most extraordinary shifts in the geopolitical landscape since September 11, challenged their own hard-line Islamic clerics who swept Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi from power in 1979. Tens of thousands of men and women also demonstrated, in several cities, after World...

PARIS, 3 June (IPS) Prince Reza Pahlavi joined his voice to other Iranian dissidents inside and outside Iran to urge Iranians not to participate in the coming presidential elections and do not give popular legitimacy a “discredited regime”. “With more than 20 million votes, (outgoing President) Mohammad Khatami was not able to implement his reform program, what can a Hashemi Rafsanjani do, a man who is also very unpopular?”, the 45 years-old son of the late Iranian Monarch observed during a press conference held in Paris on 2 June on the invitation of the French-American Press Association, referring to reports...

We keep reading that there are "no good options" for diminishing the threat of Iran's nuclear program. And certainly preemptive military strikes are an imperfect solution at best, though the option has to be kept on the table. But that still doesn't explain why the Bush Administration has been so reluctant to support Iranians who want to overthrow the bomb-building mullahs. Opposition to the Islamic Republic remains alive and well in Iran, despite the best efforts of Supreme Leader Ali Khameini and his loyal ayatollahs to kill it. On Monday the ineffectual Mohammed Khatami, the outgoing "reformist" president, was heckled...

Amnesty International Outraged at Execution of a 16 Year Old Girl! Public Statement Amnesty International today expressed its outrage at the reported execution of a girl who is believed to be 16 years old, Ateqeh Rajabi, in Neka in the northern Iranian province of Mazandaran, on 15 August, for "acts incompatible with chastity" (amal-e manafe-ye 'ofat). Ateqeh Rajabi was reportedly publicly hanged on a street in the city centre of Neka. Amnesty International is alarmed that this execution was carried out despite reports that Ateqeh Rajabi was not believed to be mentally competent, and that she reportedly did not have...

Continuing his series of articles aimed at exposing Washington’s "foolhardy" policy regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran, American scholar and writer William O. Beeman says in its quest for regime change in Iran, the United Sates might have "already picked the new rulers of that country". "The form of government would be a Constitutional Monarchy, with the Head of State being Reza Pahlavi, son of the former Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was deposed in the 1978-79 Islamic revolution, and Sohrab Sobhani as his Prime Minister", Mr. Beeman wrote. "The Bush Administration apparently has a handpicked American "plumber" ready to...