Posted on 01/06/2006 1:33:31 PM PST by F14 Pilot
Thomas Friedman's article, "A shah with a turban" (Views, Dec. 24), poignantly illustrated the rift between Iran's clerical dictatorship and the country's population, especially the youth. However, an inappropriate headline and cartoon by Kal undermined what was informative and valuable in his article.
The implication that the shah's reign bears any resemblance to the present regime is inaccurate. Under the late Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iranians enjoyed incomparably better lives than what they have to endure today; moreover, the prospect for a stable Middle East appeared promising.
Jews and other religious minorities thrived and prospered under the shah, who promoted religious freedom and tolerance. During World War II, Iran assisted many Jews fleeing the Nazis by issuing them Iranian travel documents, a policy that was continued for Middle Eastern Jews expelled from their respective countries.
Farah Pahlavi, New York
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
Those are some of the beautiful pictures I have ever seen. thanks
Really - You might want to do a little research on SAVAK. I hate to be the one to tell you - but everything is not always black and white. Not everyone on the Right was Mr. Perfect. One of the Directors of SAVAK has written a book - you might want to take a look. SAVAK used horrible means of torture on the Shah's political enemies and killed literally thousands of Iranians.
If speaking the truth makes me a "socialist, Marxist or communist" in your eyes - so be it, but you couldn't be farther from the truth. I detest the Islamofascists and everything they stand for.
That does NOT make the Shah's Secret Police disappear from history.
Remember it is the LIBERALS who think that history began this morning. Conservatives should know better.
I suppose you think the Tsar's Secret Police or Gulag prisons in Siberia shouldn't be mentioned either - just because the communists spoke against it?
On Feb 20, 1979, the head of SAVAK in Esfahan was taken out of the police station and handed over to the crowd, that immediately knifed him to death on the street.
Gee - I wonder why they did that?
I'm not saying that the existence of SAVAK was the ONLY reason for the Iranian revolution - but it certainly didn't help matters.
There were a lot of reasons that were touted, corruption, torture by the SAVAK, education of women and of course the reduction of mullah powers.
You may enjoy the little anecdote Solzhenitsyn tells in the Gulag Archipeligo. Although banned in the Soviet Union, someone had smuggled into the camp a copy of Tolstoy's 'Resurrection' - in which is described in detail the conditions in the Tsar's jails. Just how many ounces of bread and meat and fat, and how many periods of excercise were allowed a prisoner by law.
Stalin's starving and frozen political prisoners in that particular camp passed those pages around and salivated. 'Oh, if only we were in a Tsarist prison' they said.
Like the people of the USSR, the Iranians are discovering the difference between a monarchy that propoganda taught them to hate, and the totalitarian system it replaced.
I have seen no record of teenage girls swinging from cranes by the neck nor women buried up to their armpits and stoned to death while the monarchy existed.
Sorry, but one book written by 'one of the Directors of SAVAK' won't convince me of anything. I have a good friend in Israel who made a telling comment recently. She said 'maybe if one is forced to live with animals for too long, one takes on some of their attributes' - therefor, just as Israel is fighting for its survival and right to exist, the monarchy was doing the same. What might be the alternative?
Give them your country? Well, we can see from Iran where that leads.
The bolsheviks assassinated the Romanov family, maybe the Shah and his family escaped a worse fate than exile.
Fred, there you go again... you shouldn't let your knowledge of historical similarities of revolutionary failures bleed into your “correctness” measure of decisions made by people struggling for a better life. It's tainted and easily reversible logic. Humanity HAS experienced revolutions against monarchy that have revealed great social progress. Armed with that knowledge, revolutionary leaders encourage their countrymen to take up arms to achieve a better life. Upon failure many will assert the entire effort to achieve a better life was ill conceived, but that’s wrong. It’s wrong because it arbitrarily associates the effort of “failing to achieve a better life” with the act of being “wrong”.
The essence of humanity is our struggle to achieve a better life regardless of our successes or failures. Those who are most “wrong” hold fast to social mechanisms that prevent individuals from achieving a better life. We can discuss those in depth if you like but that’s not the issue at the moment. Your assertion is that Iranians should’ve never sought to escape the frying pan because you know, in retrospect, only fire awaited them. To them, at that time, their effort was worth the risk of achieving liberty or death.
If you want to talk about historical mistakes, I say focus your attention on the vacillations of national leaders. The Shah was a notorious vacillator. Unfortunately we vacillated too. It was truly foolish of the U.S. Administration, in the lead up to the Iranian Revolution, to encourage the Shah to relieve pressure on dissent and then accept him in exile after the revolution. If the Carter Administration had not vacillated so wildly in its policies toward the Shah, U.S. relations with Iran would be entirely different today. Apparently the Shah was welcomed by Panamanian authorities after he was deposed; Carter should have sent him to Panama. I wish Iranian militants were yelling “DEATH TO PANAMA!” instead of “DEATH TO AMERICA!”
But that’s just as dumb a wish as wishing to trade life in the Gulag for life in “Tsarist prison”. Why would any sane person wish for one hell over another?
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Exactly. Or why so many faced death from her family's gestapo (SAVAK) to protest in the streets for years before Khomeini returned.
The shah was a dictator (ours but that didn't matter to the iranians who were under his boot) and a coward. The CIA put him in power (there was no royal dynasty and the 'majesty' label is pure bull) and their own declassified documents describe him as being "pathologically afraid". He had to be shamed by his own sister into acting and then fled the country for Italy when the coup that we ran didn't succeed the first day.
These are the facts...the internet is a wonderful tool for finding them (ie the CIA AAR on Operation Ajax). The shahistas here will stomp their feet and whine their insults but they can't change the truth.
Hey Freddie, if there was no criminally repressive SAVAK then why did the pathologically afraid shah imprison Nassiri, SAVAK's head as a last ditch attempt to forestall the revolution?
I wish Iranian militants were yelling “DEATH TO PANAMA!” instead of “DEATH TO AMERICA!”
And you think all that enmity is the result of the US allowing the Shah and his family to enter the US to seek medical treatment?
It has nothing to do with islam needing a bogey man?
Give it up man, I have nothing against royalty, never have had, never will. I consider 'the first family' as a part of the natural human condition. Every tribe has its chief. The French didn't gain much through their butchery - mob rule isn't liberty.
The Shah was a dictator (ours but that didn't matter to the Iranians who were under his boot) and a coward. The CIA put him in power...
So you are telling me that the United States of America is responsible for this entire mess in Iran? That the US put a puppet monarch in place to suit its own ends and when the shite hit the fan, the US abandoned him? The US was too weak, too afraid of upsetting the mullah's to offer the Shah and his family a home?
That's actually a pretty accurate summation...
I'm an Aussie, I don't have the same fish to fry. All I hear is; 'It's all Carter's fault'.
The world doesn't ask; 'Who was President when this happened, was he a Republican or Democrat?'
All we see is the result.
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Let's see, the coward was installed by the CIA under Ike (indisputable) and was abandoned by Carter (indisputable) so you got that right. As for trhe rest of your mini-rant, it's nonsense and frankly childish of you to presume to know what I think.
The FR is full of folks who do so and attribute their suppositions to others regardless of what was said or not said. It is a dishonest practice and I never understood what those of you who follow it expect to get from it.
"Let's see, the coward was installed by the CIA under Ike (indisputable) and was abandoned by Carter (indisputable) so you got that right..."
You make it sound as if Iran had no history until the US gave it one. Arrogance on a scale that's breathtaking.
REZA SHAH THE GREAT:
The new era in Iran's history opened in the 1920s with the coming to power of Reza Khan, a towering figure whose unique personality and unique career left a deep imprint upon the life of his nation. Reza Khan's rapid ascent from common soldier to King could be compared with the rise of Napoleon in France or Bernadotte in Sweden; however, it was more striking in terms of the social distance covered. Napoleon had the advantage of going to a military academy before embarking on a regular army career. Bernadotte was indeed a soldier who carried "the marshal's baton" in his knapsack and ended as king, but a king in a foreign country, to some extent imposed by external influence. Not so Reza Shah, who grew up in a purely Iranian environment, assumed the imperial rank among his own people, and thus created a real saga of a self-made man against the background of Iran's monarchical tradition.
In his national policies two main features stood out: nationalism and modernization. In this respect he could be compared to Peter the Great, who launched Russia from her medieval slumber upon a path of modernity. Among his contemporaries Reza Shah was frequently compared to his neighbor, Kemal Ataturk seen left greeting Reza Shah, of whose attitudes and reforms he was fully aware. The two leaders had certainly a good deal in common: their burning nationalism, their determination to modernize their countries, and their critical attitude towards the intrusion of religion into the public life of their respective nations. But the two also differed considerably from each other. While Ataturk was willing to burn the bridges with the past, Reza Shah not only maintained the institution of monarchy but also promoted a revived consciousness of ancient Achaemenian glory, particularly through architectural symbolism. In this sense, of course, he was more fortunate because his nation had had a long record of civilized life when the Turks were still leading a nomadic existence in the steppes of central Asia.
In the subsequent chapters a group of specialists will review in greater detail the achievements of both Reza Shah and his son and successor, Mohammad Reza. In these introductory remarks we will limit ourselves to the main points in the work and struggles of these two rulers. Reza Shah's achievements could be summed up under three headings: building up the infrastructure of a modern state, asserting independence from foreign domination, and launching sociocultural reforms. With regard to the first, Reza Shah did indeed lay down the foundations without which a modern state could not function. These included assertion of government authority and national unification in the face of various centrifugal and anarchistic forces; the creation of a reliable army under national command; establishment of a modern fiscal system based on rational organization; and development of the minimum of communications and transportation facilities compatible with the requirements of a modern state.
Assertion of independence from foreign occupation and control was the second major achievement of Reza Shah. At the very outset of his rule he had to face the threat of militant Communism imported into Iran with the advancing Red Army which, despite the repudiation by the Bolsheviks of czarist Russia's imperialistic practices, fell into the old pattern of occupying the northern provinces of Iran and threatening the integrity of the entire state. This struggle for emancipation from foreign control was marked by two crises. The first was the Soviet attempt to set up a separatist Communist government in the province of Gilan. This required both military and diplomatic countermeasures, the outcome being the conclusion of the Soviet-Iranian Treaty of February 1921 and the subsequent withdrawal of Soviet troops from Iranian territory. The treaty, however, was negotiated by Iranian representatives in Moscow while Reza Khan, not yet fully in power, was personally commanding military operations against the northern rebels and their Soviet allies. This perhaps explains why the treaty was burdened with an onerous clause in the form of article 6 authorizing entry of Soviet troops into Iranian territory, should the latter become a base for anti-Soviet aggression. Although the attached memoranda made it clear that the provision in question comprised only the toleration by the Iranian government of the anti- Soviet activities of White Russian elements against the Soviet territory, in subsequent years Moscow tended to give a more comprehensive interpretation to this clause by including in it Iran's formal ties with Western powers during the period following World War II, which clearly was not encompassed by the terms of the original clause. Regardless, however, of the text of the treaty in question, Reza Shah succeeded in removing the Soviet presence in Iran and in effectively curbing the activities of Soviet agents and their Communist allies inside the country.
The second crisis that the Shah faced was the one with Great Britain. It revolved around oil, the concession for which was held by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the latter in turn controlled by the British Admiralty. Relations between Great Britain and Iran profoundly differed from those between Iran and Russia. (Left, Reza Shah inspects newly acquire ships from Italy. In the background is the Iranian gunboat "Babr," Leopard sunk by the British during World WarII) While Britain exercised imperial control in India, the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East, she was essentially a status quo power not bent on territorial aggrandizement and not guided by a militant or aggressive ideology. Iler interest in Iran focused largely on the preservation of such economic advantages as she or her citizens had achieved in that country. Therefore, from the point of view of Iran's independence, Britain was not only a country in a different category from the Soviet Union, but even could be counted upon as providing a counterbalance to the Soviets' actual or potential aggressive designs. This, however, did not diminish Britain's economic self-interest, which was based on somewhat outmoded notions regarding the relationship between the metropolis and the colonies or semicolonies. Although the showdown between Reza Shah and the British over oil in the early 1930s abounded in moments of tension and recrimination, it ended by a compromise in which rationality and restraint were displayed by both parties.
In his pursuit of policies aiming at the safeguarding of national independence and security, Reza Shah was ready to cooperate with the neighboring states which, like Iran, were anxious to safeguard their integrity against possible Soviet expansion and subversion. To this end he entered, in 1937, into a regional alliance known as the Saadabad Pact, the other signatories being Turkey, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Furthermore, not unlike his Constitutionalist predecessors of the period preceding World War I, Reza Shah was inclined to look for a friendly third force that would help Iran free herself from Soviet menace and British influence. Thus he repeated the experiment of 1911 when an American expert, Morgan Shuster, had been brought to Iran to reorganize Persian finances by inviting in the early 1920s another American, Dr. Arthur Chester Millspaugh, to assist in the reorganization of the Iranian treasury. After some years a German, Dr. Kurt Lindenblatt, was appointed governor of the national bank, while numerous German technicians were invited to advise Iran in developing her industry and communications. Although these contacts with the United States and Germany respectively did not represent a movement toward political or military alliance, nevertheless they were conceived by the Shah and his ministers as a material factor in reducing Iran's dependence upon her two powerful imperial neighbors.
Left, Reza Shah inaugurates the Trans-Iranian. The task of rebuilding, unifying, and strengthening the state consumed so much time and energy that to an outside observer it is little short of amazing that Reza Shah found enough strength to enact a number ofsocial and cultural reforms, some of which had to be imposed against fierce opposition from various entrenched interests. The main thrust of these reforms was to transform the hitherto lethargic masses into a new and enlightened citizenry that would actively participate in the development of the country. Reza Shah was thus a pioneer in introducing what we may call a meritocracy in Iran's national life. Under his reign it was not inherited wealth or connections that counted but actual competence and performance. He was impatient with slothful and lazy officials and prone to dismiss or punish those who failed in their tasks or betrayed his trust. Having a dim view of the role played in the society by reactionary and often semiliterate mollas, (clerics) he took away from the religious establishment its judicial and educational responsibilities while developing under the state auspices a modern school system with the University of Tehran, opened in the 1930s, at its apex.* He was also the first ruler in Iran to call for the emancipation and education of women. Aware of the shortage of the skilled manpower in his country, Reza Shah was willing to employ foreign experts. However, to avoid encouraging the foreign political influence that such experts might represent, he made it a point to hire them on an individual basis and to place them under Iranian control. Such experts, for instance, were employed in constructing the Shah's cherished project, the Trans-Iranian Railway. However, he took care not to rely on technicians of any single nationality and, furthermore, deliberately avoided dependence on foreign governments by providing exclusively Iranian financing of the project. Above all, he instilled in his people a sense of pride and self-reliance.
http://www.sedona.net/pahlavi/rezashah.html
I went over my comment and tried to find what it was that you found so offensive. I added one word - let me know if I fixed things.
"So you are telling me that the United States of America is responsible for this entire mess in Iran? That the US put a puppet monarch in place to suit its own ends and when the shite hit the fan, the US abandoned him?
(Was) The US was too weak, too afraid of upsetting the mullah's to offer the Shah and his family a home?"
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No, I responded specifically to what you said, remember? I'm so glad I leave you breathless.
And the coward reza was installed, almost against his own wishes, by us. If you have proof otherwise then present it. Your love note to his father is totally meaningless in this discussion.
I remember when I was in 4th grade, 1976-77 it was. Every once in a while the class watched a program on PBS called "Big Blue Marble" where it shows the lives of children and teens in other countries around the world. Well, I remember one episode of an Iranian girl, 13 or 14, as she goes about her day to day life. She goes to school, I think 6 daysa week, IIRC. On her day off, "Big Blue Marble" shows her getting into jeans and a sweater (like many girls here then and even now) to get ready and hit the mall with her girlfriends. She seemed to have a house much like we do here in America, they lived pretty much like we do and so on. Shame how things changed. B-(
"And the coward reza was installed, almost against his own wishes, by us..."
If true, that only makes me like him even better. As for his secret police, just wait until the marxists and the muslims start behaving like the 'palestinians' in US cities. Whatcha gunna do? Wave your Constitution at them?
Oh, I forgot, so many are 'locked and loaded' you can shoot them yourself...
A little background on the man I wrote 'the love note' to:
BIOGRAPHY
1878: Born in northern Mazandaran province in Iran as the son of a military officer.
— Joins the army as a youth.
— Becomes commander of the Cossack Brigade.
1921 February 21: As the shah was young and incompetent, and the government corrupt, there was much dissatisfaction in Iran with the authorities. With the support of the British Reza Khan leads his 1,200 troops to overthrow the government, and forces king Ahmad Shah Qajar to appoint Sayyid Zia Uddin Tabataba'i as prime minister. Reza Khan becomes war minister.
1925 October: Has the parliament depose Ahmad Shah Qajar (who was in Europe for medical treatment) from his throne, and is himself appointed regent.
— December: Gets himself proclaimed shah-en-shah (king of kings).
1926 April: Is coronated and takes the title Reza Shah Pahlavi.
— Uses his army to break the power of the unruly tribes, disarming them and sometimes even resettle them.
1927: Starts the construction of the Trans-Iranian Railway.
1932: Pressures the Anglo-Persian Oil Company to increase the royalities, as well as reduced its concessionaire area to one fifth.
1933: With the accession of Adolf Hitler as state leader of Germany, Reza Shah starts building close economical and political ties to the country. This aimed at reducing the British dominance in Iran. Germany would become the most imporant trade partner of Iran.
1934: Opens the first regular university.
1935: Requires the Iranian women to discard their veils.
1938: The Trans-Iranian Railway opens.
1939 September: With the start of World War 2, Iran declares itself neutral.
1941 August: British trops invade Iran from 5 sides, in order to hinder German dominance in the area, and allow for supplies to the Soviet Union which now was in war with Germany.
— September 16: As part of a policy aiming at avoiding the attack from Soviet troops, Reza Shah Pahlavi resigns from his position, and makes his son, Muhhamad Reza become shah.
— Reza Shah moves to Mauritius.
1942: Reza Shah moves to South Africa.
1944: Dies.
So, what I want to know is, did the CIA push the old man or did he go willingly?
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