Free Republic

BOSTON -The youngest son of the late shah of Iran has been found dead of an apparent suicide at his home in Boston. Reza Pahlavi, the shah's oldest son, announced the death on his website Tuesday. Pahlavi says his 44-year-old brother, former Iranian prince Alireza Pahlavi, had "struggled for years to overcome his sorrow." Police say they found a man dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound shortly after 2 a.m. Tuesday at a home in Boston's South End neighborhood.

Prisoner Abuse: Self-flagellation over alleged human rights violations is not a foreign policy, but a recipe for long-term disaster. Some who now complain about Guantanamo had a key hand in making it necessary. Newsweek's retraction of its story on the alleged flushing of pages from the Quran down a Guantanamo commode has not dissuaded critics convinced that Guantanamo is, as Amnesty International put it, a modern-day "gulag." One of those who believe the human rights of prisoners at Guantanamo are being violated is former President Carter. Speaking in September 2003, two short years after 9-11, he opined as to how...

The prospect of Washington-Tehran dialogue is moving up the political agenda. But the United States must consider the moral and strategic price of such engagement, says the former crown prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi. Public frustration with the stalemate in Iraq in the United States, reflected in the mid-term elections on 7 November, has now reshaped Congress, heralding a new era. The current strategy is being rethought and in anticipation, President Bush has commissioned two prominent Americans, James A Baker and Lee Hamilton, to lead the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to produce a fresh approach. As an outsider I can...

Few terrorists groups garner the bipartisan endorsement and support that Iran's Mujahedin al-Khalq Organization [MKO] has. On October 20, 2005, several congressmen and many aides attended a briefing in Congress. Maryam Rajavi, co-leader of the group and self-styled president-elect of Iran, addressed the gathering by video from France.[1] She received a warm reception. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) thanked "Sister Maryam."[2] A bipartisan group of U.S. Congressmen have signed petitions calling for the U.S. Department of State to lift its 1997 classification of the group as a terrorist organization.[3] In an April 8, 2003 interview, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairwoman...

Washington, D.C. -- During a live primetime televised interview with Fox News' Bret Baier, Reza Pahlavi of Iran condemned Mr. Ahmadinejad's repeated comments on the holocaust and ailing Ariel Sharon as "despicable," having set a "new standard on incivility and disgrace," and "rejected by the vast majority of the Iranian people." Observing that Jews and Persians had "for millennia lived peacefully together," the 45 year old opposition leader to the clerical regime reminded the audience that the first Shah of Iran, Cyrus the Great, is revered as a 'savior-saint' of the Jewish people. "Obviously Mr. Ahmadinejad is ignorant of our...

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...

Pity the United Nations and the European Union. The militant theocrats running Iran have ignored their pleas, protests, promises of aid and finger-wagging threats of economic sanction. Tehran's mullahs want nuclear weapons. Money, media appeals and political yammering have so far failed to curtail Iran's nuclear ambitions. As 2006 begins, it appears Iran's decade of atomic fan dancing with the international community is approaching a dangerous finale. One hopes the latest gesture doesn't prove to be another hollow jest. Moscow has offered to enrich Iranian uranium in Russian facilities. It's an interesting diplomatic gambit, one that means Iran's jig may...

The take of Iran’s conservative media on an article published last week in the German magazine Spiegel once again highlighted their disconnection with the real world, especially on issues relating to Palestine. Spiegel published a satirical article on Iranian president Ahmadinejad’s suggestion of moving Israel and the Jews to Europe, which in itself was received with chuckles and cynicism in Europe. But the conservative press in Iran and even the influential newspaper Resalat devoted its main headline (issue no 23) to the Spiegel’s article, referencing it as a “document attesting the righteousness of president Ahmadinejad’s suggestion.” In this article, I...

The Greater and Lesser Tunbs and Abu-Musa Islands are situated near the Straight of Hurmuz in the Persian Gulf, south of Iran. The Lesser Tunb is 22 miles from the mainland of Iran. The Lesser Tunb is 17 miles from the Iranian land. Both of them are not able to sustain living and they had never inhabitants. Abu- Musa is the home for a limited number of people (less than 50 households). The Greater and Lesser Tunbs and Abu-Musa Islands have been part of Iran since the times immemorial. In the Nineteenth Century, they were parts of the "Lengheh Territory"...

As if a light were switched off, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, portrayed for 20 years as a progressive modern ruler by Islamic standards, was suddenly, in 1977-1978, turned into this foaming at the mouth monster by the international left media. Soon after becoming President in 1977, Jimmy Carter launched a deliberate campaign to undermine the Shah. The Soviets and their left-wing apparatchiks would coordinate with Carter by smearing the Shah in a campaign of lies meant to topple his throne. The result would be the establishment of a Marxist/Islamic state in Iran headed by the tyrannical Ayatollah...

TEHRAN - The Jewish women in the back rows of the synagogue wear long garments in the traditional Iranian style, but instead of chadors, their heads are covered with cheerful, flowered scarves. The boys in their skullcaps, with Hebrew prayer books tucked under their arms, scamper down the aisles to grab the best spots near the lush, turquoise Persian carpet of the altar. This is Friday night, Shabbat - Iranian style, and the synagogue in an affluent neighborhood of North Tehran is filled to capacity with more than 400 worshipers. It is one of the many paradoxes of the Islamic...

Don't get us mixed up Ahmadinejad is not, REPEAT not, the epitome of Iranian people's aspiration and their logic December 16, 2005 iranian.com There are countries of the world about which the world cannot afford to be ignorant. Iran is one such country and though the International community is slow in realising, it will have to be as informed and uncluttered in the their judgement about Iran as they are about France say. They would have to because Iran matters a lot and I am not saying that as an Iranian patriot but as an informed observer. It is precisely...

"Iranian people's feelings toward Israelis are not as bad as you think," Saeed Kharazi Zadeh, a greying Iranian IT engineer told me after I introduced myself as a reporter for The Jerusalem Post. Zadeh was part of the Iranian delegation which had a booth at the UN Summit on Information Society held in Tunis November 15-17. I reminded the 48-year-old government employee that in October his president declared that "Israel should be wiped off the map." I told him that many Israelis fear that Iran would indeed try to attack Israel. Zadeh laughed incredulously. "There have been many terrorist actions...

CAIRO, Egypt -- In the aftermath of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ascendancy to the presidency of Iran, the country's opposition is beginning to show signs of unifying as the clerical regime wages a war against internal dissent. Yesterday, the regime closed all schools in Tehran, citing poor air quality, after word leaked of the first major demonstrations since the summer. Nonetheless, a rally at Tehran University attracted 300 demonstrators amid a heavy police presence on campus. Of note is that before the rally against the new president, a coalition of Kurdish students also signed on to the call. In Brussels on Monday,...

<p>When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called last month for Israel to be wiped off the map of the world, he displayed a disregard for the international community that proved he is a genuine disciple of the late Ayatollah Khomeini. But his proposal also showed that he hasn't learned any lessons from recent Iranian history. In a country where public opinion takes shape in direct opposition to the regime, the objects of hostile statements like Ahmadinejad's almost always win friends among young Iranians.</p>

Iranian parlamentarian Kurosh Niknam, a member of Iran's Zoroastrian religious minority has been summoned to appear before the country's Revolutionary Tribunal after being accused of spreading false news and showing lack of respect for the authorities. The charges stem from comments Niknam made to protest against derogatory remarks against non-Muslims uttered by a close aide to Iran's Supreme Leader, Seyyed Ali Khamenei. Non-Muslims "cannot be called human beings but are animals who roam the earth and engage in corruption." said Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati last week at a ceremony in north-eastern Iran to commemorate the 'martyrs' of the Revolutionary Guards and...

The mullahs of Iran, quite properly included in the Axis of Evil, are vastly unpopular in their brutal regime of Iran. America has never recognized the legitimacy of that realm, which in violation of international law occupied our embassy and held our diplomatic staff as hostages in 1980. Few, if anyone, in the democracies doubts the incredible danger which will be posed to world peace if Iran obtains atomic or thermonuclear weapons. Much of our work to democratize Afghanistan and Iraq will be in vain. The delicate balancing act the India and Pakistan are pursuing as two relatively new members...

The acrid smell of burning rubber and smoking fire bombs mingled with odors from our sumptuous dinner table, but we were determined to celebrate Thanksgiving Day with our friends, regardless of the turmoil in our city streets. It was November 1978, post-Shah, Iran. Three weeks earlier, in the capital city of Tehran, establishments that Americans visited for recreation were being fire-bombed by radicals; any place that served liquor and provided dancing were targeted as "… against the holy book." Living in Esfahan, only 300 miles from Tehran, we feared for our lives. My husband's job had brought us to Iran...

Once one of the seediest parts of Paris, the 10th arrondisement (district) has acquired an Islamic flavour over the past few years. Here, Arab, Berber, Turkish, Bosnian, Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan and black African shops and cafes are bustling with customers while a daily market that extends the full length of a street reminds visitors of Casablanca or Algiers. There are numerous mosques, often consisting of nothing but small shops or converted ground floor flats. What is remarkable is the rich diversity of the various brands of Islam that exist side by side in freedom and security. These include sects...

The only thing more painful than listening to Jimmy Carter lecture President Bush on how to conduct a successful presidency was living through his disastrous attempt to turn his advice into reality. As I noted earlier this week, Carter has channeled his hatred of non-leftists, secular and religious, into a glut of slanders in his new bestseller, Our Endangered Values. He charges his opponents with, among other things, countenancing female circumcision, defending the murder of federal judges, torturing innocent Islamofascists, and forcing North Korea to manufacture nuclear weapons. Jimmy once again offers himself as the nation’s savior-by-acclamation, leading his errant...