Free Republic

The Egyptian daily Al-Yawm Al-Sab'a reported that for the first time in 30 years, Egyptian authorities prevented Farah Diba, the wife of the late ousted Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, from visiting his grave in Cairo on the anniversary of his death. The daily estimated that the reason for preventing her from attending is her association with the Mubarak regime. The Iranian website Asr-e Iran claimed that this move is a positive message from Cairo to Tehran. (Source: Al-Yawm Al-Sab'a (Egypt), Asr-e Iran (Iran), July 27, 2011.)

July 27 is the 30th anniversary of the death of Iran's last imperial ruler, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The shah left Iran in December 1978 after 37 years in power. After living in Morocco, the United States, Mexico, and Panama, he went to Egypt where he died in a Cairo hospital on July 27, 1981. His body was laid to rest in the Al-Refai Mosque in Cairo. His wife, Farah Pahlavi, spoke to Radio Farda's Jean Khakzad about the incidents of those times. RFE/RL: I would like to ask you whether it's true that the shah was unaware of the illness...

Half a century ago, then Miss Farah Diba married the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who crowned her Shahbanou, or empress, eight years later. This past June, 30 years since the Islamic revolution overthrew the Shah, the Empress watched as her homeland erupted in protest against a disputed presidential election. In a rare and intimate interview with New York gallery owner and longtome family friend Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller, the Shahbanou shares her sadness, her memories and her hopes for her compatriots. First, by way of introduction, Vanity Fair writer and Reagan biographer Bob Colacello, who visited Iran three years...

Watching Iran's fierce anti-government demonstrations on TV this week, Farah Pahlavi has marveled at how familiar it all seems, and yet how different. The young protesters are the same age as those who drove her husband Reza Pahlavi from power and chant some of the same slogans -- but there's one obvious difference. She hasn't seen a single demonstrator with a long beard, the trademark of the Islamic fundamentalists who seized power in Iran in 1979. ''Look at the faces of the young people in the streets, and compare them to the people who were demonstrating against us,'' says the...

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...

Dear Freepers - This is an excellent 1 hour interview that is a must watch for all freedom lovers in the United States and elsewhere.. Enjoy! Click to watch BOOKTV Interview!

Empress Farah Pahlavi with Barbara Walters tonight on 20/20 at 10pm ET (ABC Television) March 4 —This week on 20/20, a love story for the ages — the never-before-told details of the romance between a beautiful commoner and her king. It's no fairy tale; this is a story written in newsprint and blood. The former empress of Iran, Farah Pahlavi, shares with us the joys and tragedies of her marriage to the late shah, the man who swept her off her feet at the age of 20 to become his third wife. Together, they would produce an heir to the...

Your new memoirs, "An Enduring Love: My Life With the Shah," offer a reverential look at your late husband, Reza Pahlavi, who ruled Iran from 1941 until he was toppled in 1979. He was above all a patriot who wanted progress and modernity in our country. I tell my life as I lived it. In the 25 years since he was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution and you fled to the United States for safety, have you ever been back to Iran? No. The Islamic Republic put me on their death list. The people of Iran were promised a paradise...

The book came out for her 65th birthday, the 14th October 2003. Twenty-four years after the start of her exile, away from Iran where she was crowned empress, Farah has finally decided to speak, to open her heart and the gates of her memories. The manuscript of her memoirs, Farah had written many years ago. Hundreds of typed pages, read and reread, locked in her drawer. Her secret history, everything she had wanted to say during her twenty years of reign and twenty years in exile. How many times did her intimate circle, her publisher friends beg her to write...