Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi: The Current Regime Is Weaker Than Ever
Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi discussed the current weakening of the Islamic Republic regime in his interview with CBN network.
Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, in an interview with CBN network, the largest news network of Western Christians, while warning about the deception of Masoud Pezeshkian’s election as president, made remarks about the current situation of Iran’s regime. The translation of Crown Prince Pahlavi’s interview with CBN network and his statements regarding Iran’s situation is as follows:
“Iran is at the heart of Middle Eastern conflicts, and while its leaders support proxy wars against Israel in the West, its people desire change. This is the belief of the late Shah of Iran’s eldest son. The 63-year-old heir to the throne told George Thomas of CBN that the current regime is weaker than ever and the country is ready for revolution. The struggle for freedom and rights never ends until it succeeds. Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi warns the United States and Western powers not to be deceived by the election of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian. We call these elections in Iran an election circus. The 63-year-old Pahlavi is the most prominent and loudest critic of the regime. He calls Pezeshkian a handpicked servant of a hardline Islamic system that intends to keep Iranians in a perpetual state of oppression and fear. All these years, it really didn’t matter who was presented because ultimately all decisions are made by the Supreme Leader. In an extensive interview, the eldest son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, told CBN News that Iranians desire political change more than ever. The regime’s own statistics show that at least 73 percent of the population desires a different form of government, and I believe this number is much higher because if a free poll were conducted, it would likely reach even 90 percent. In 1979, as heir to the throne, Pahlavi was in America training as a fighter pilot when hardline Muslim leaders forced his father to abdicate and sent the entire family into exile. Pahlavi says that afterward, an Islamic regime came to power that devastated his ancestral homeland, where today 60 percent of people live below the poverty line. 45 years of clerical rule in the name of religion and the element of immediate oppression have set our country back from the path of progress. Because Iran should now be the South Korea of the Middle East, while instead it is the North Korea of the region. Under the rule of the mullahs, Iran has become a major sponsor of state terrorism and the root of instability in the Middle East and beyond. Iran finances Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis and its proxy wars, and of course networks of its activists who implement the regime’s actions in the outside world, even in Western capitals. 45 years after the hardline clerics took over the country, His Majesty says that the mullahs of Tehran are weaker than ever and have lost their legitimacy in the eyes of most Iranians. When you lose your legitimacy, whether it is religious or political, you maintain power only through pure oppression. When a regime has completely lost its legitimacy and people no longer believe in this system, even if they did before and want to leave it, these systems become vulnerable. A striking example was the nationwide protests of 2022 that occurred after the killing of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the religious police for not observing mandatory hijab. Iran’s security forces killed more than 500 protesters and imprisoned around 20,000 people. Pahlavi says this clearly shows that Iranians are ready to sacrifice for revolution. No one said freedom is free. Sometimes the price is very high, but are you saying that just because it’s expensive, you won’t buy it and settle for what is otherwise destruction? We have no choice. We must do this. We must do it for survival, for rationality, for humanity, for our own interests, whatever it takes.
Despite Iran’s proxy attacks on American forces in the Middle East, the acceleration of nuclear uranium enrichment, and financing Hezbollah and other terrorist groups, Pahlavi cannot understand why the Biden administration continues to inject billions of dollars into the terrorist regime. He says it is time for Western governments to stop appeasing the mullahs of Tehran. What I have suggested to foreign governments for years, especially Western democracies, is that your expectation for a change in behavior was fundamentally wrong from the start because you simply did not understand the nature of this regime that must do all its actions to survive. This regime has no interest in the welfare of the Iranian people, but only seeks to export an ideology to dominate the world. Pahlavi, who admires Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi for pursuing non-violent campaigns for political change, manages the National Council of Iran, whose mission is to replace the current Islamic regime with a secular democracy. He wants the world to focus on supporting the Iranian people rather than helping the regime’s riffraff. Even those who thought maybe we could gradually make reforms from within have gradually abandoned that idea. Look, we cannot have a religious dictatorship in the 21st century. We must move toward a secular democracy. That is why most Iranians see themselves in the same vision and perspective. Given the history you have with your dear nation, have you ever said this struggle is too difficult, many innocent lives are being taken, and 45 years have passed? Have you ever despaired? There were moments when I wondered if South Africans or people from Eastern Bloc countries or even dissidents in the Soviet Union had surrendered. I have not heard a dissident anywhere in the world say I surrender. You cannot surrender; that is not an option. And I think that is why Iranians have not surrendered, that is why they take to the streets, that is why they accept the risk of being shot in the eye or continued killing by the regime, because they know that the only way out for us is success. And if they must sacrifice themselves so future generations have a better life, then so be it. I believe in secular democracies. I believe freedom is the oxygen of humanity, and when you have it, you will witness tremendous flourishing, and we have seen this throughout the world. Have we abandoned those ideals? That is my question. When we look at Afghanistan and Iraq, we had many opportunities to introduce that secular democracy but we did not. What we did was impose a constitution based on Sharia law, and Sharia was incorporated into their constitution, which essentially transforms them into theocracies. History should teach everyone that forced religion is not religion at all. If you have a religious dictatorship, you have no freedom, and you don’t even have religion. This is a culture, this is a state that enforces religious law. Therefore, beating a woman to death because she did not wear her scarf properly is fine. If you protest to the state, you are labeled as an infidel and publicly hanged in the town square.” This is what is happening today. Unlike Martin Luther King Jr. and unlike Mahatma Gandhi, these were fundamentally Christian cultures that believed in freedom, in freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and all these wonderful freedoms. In an Islamic theocracy, you have none of these. You have no right to assembly, no right to express opinion, no freedom of conscience. There is no foundation for change. I do not know what will change Iran, but when there is such oppression and the army is completely behind it, the police force is completely behind it, where a sniper can kill a 16-year-old girl in a crowd, it means he must have targeted her exactly and pulled the trigger. If you can do that, you can suppress any civil disobedience and any protest, and people cannot reach freedom. But we can have faith in God and pray and ask God to change them and change their hearts. May they come to their senses and realize that you can have a very prosperous Iran, you can see the full flourishing of that amazing civilization, if you only let it breathe freely. Without that, we will never witness change, and we will continue to see the export of terror throughout the Middle East and then throughout the world.
