Regime Change in Iran
March 16, 2004
The Boston Globe
Boston.com
Jeff Jacoby put it aptly when he wrote: "if we are going to win the war on terror, the liberation of Iran is not an option. It is a prerequisite" (op ed, March 11). As he pointed out, the olive branch policy, which the Europeans and bureaucrats at the State Department have pursued in dealing with the tyrants who have ruled Iran with an iron fist for 25 years, has utterly failed to steer that country toward a tolerant, moderate, and representative government.
Neither the arms for hostages deal in 1985, nor the blacklisting of Iran's only effective opposition movement, the Mujahedeen-e Khalq in 1997, quenched the mullahs' insatiable appetite to export fundamentalism abroad, particularly to Iraq, and pursue Iran's nuclear ambitions at home.
The vivid display of intolerance by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his extremist cohorts toward their allies of the past 25 years and Tehran's nearly two decades of deception and denial about its nuclear weapons program should serve as stark reminders that the West can ill afford to continue to promote conciliation with Tehran.
Ironically, Iran is the only country where, if given the opportunity, the citizens would vote the ruling fundamentalists out of office. The yearning for democracy has survived the clerical rulers' repression and brutality.
ALI M. SAFAVI
President
Near East Policy
Research Inc.
Alexandria, Va.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2004/03/16/us_should_help_liberate_iran/http://www.emedia.com.my/Current_News/NST/Tuesday/World/20040316074738/Article/indexb_html WASHINGTON: Memoirs of ex-Iranian Empress, a best seller
Farah Pahlavi’s story is as turbulent as the recent history of her native Iran.
She gained a throne and lost it, watched her husband die of cancer after being shunned by former allies and lived the past quarter century as a political refugee.
Her memoir, An Enduring Love: My Life With the Shah, became a bestseller upon its publication in France last month. The release of a US edition last week coincides with a renewed international focus on Iran.
Pahlavi, 65, was a young architectural student in Paris when she caught the Shah's eye and married him in 1959. She played an active role in the Shah's reign until the royal family fled Iran on Jan 16, 1979.
The Shah died in exile in Egypt in July 1980.
For the former Empress, the book is both a catharsis and an effort to share her side of Iran's recent history for the generation of Iranians born since the Islamic revolution.
"I consider it a duty to my husband, and all my children and grandchildren and all the Iranians that have been born since the revolution," Pahlavi said.
"It's not a question of remembering us. It's a question of those Iranians wanting freedom and finding a respectable place in the family of nations." Historians have said the Shah's downfall was sparked by his authoritarian rule, close relations with the United States and modernisation programmes which squandered the nation's vast oil wealth and angered conservative elements in Iranian society.
But in the book, Pahlavi defends her husband's attempts to modernise Iran, and says opponents exaggerated the extent of repression and corruption in his regime. — AFP