Friday, 19 December 2014
We’re asking our countrymen to cast votes by putting their ballots in an envelope marked ‘free elections’
We’re asking our countrymen to cast votes by putting their ballots in an envelope marked ‘free elections’
Sunday, June 2nd, 2013 by Olivia Ward Foreign Affairs Reporter, Published on Sat Jun 01 2013
Viewed 6044 times
Source: The Star
© Randy Risling / Toronto Star
Reza Pahlavi’s life was split in two at the age of 17: he was a trainee fighter pilot at a U.S. air base in Texas when his father was swept from the throne of Iran on a wave of public anger.
Now 52, the elegantly-tailored heir to the Peacock Throne lives in suburban Washington with his family, travelling frequently to Europe and outwardly at ease with a cosmopolitan life style.
But inwardly, he is an exile who has never left Iran.
“Iran has been my daily life,” he says. “It’s all I have after 33 years. If I were to step off the plane right now in Tehran my chances of survival are next to zero. But the moment I could return I’d be on the first flight.”
While living under a constant death threat, Pahlavi has campaigned to do just that. Not as a shah-in-waiting, he says, but a “watchdog for the people,” helping to create a new country of respect for human rights, freedom and equality: the son of an autocrat whose credo is democracy.
In Toronto this weekend to meet with Iranian exiles and Canadian politicians, he is the spokesman for the new Iranian National Council— a loosely based umbrella group of regime opponents from Iran and the diaspora — created as the first step toward ending the Islamic regime that overthrew his father in the 1979 revolution that propelled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power.
Pahlavi is here in advance of a June 14 election that is already denounced as a sham, with candidates hand-picked by the regime and the opposition shut out or locked up.
His plan is to launch a process to delegitimize the regime and move toward democracy.
“We’re asking our countrymen to cast votes by putting their ballots in an envelope marked ‘free elections,’ and send them to all embassies of democratic countries in Iran and the office of the UN,” he said. “Those abroad can send them to all the relevant people there.”
It’s beyond a boycott, he insists: a wake-up call to the world that Iran’s rulers have lost the right to stay in power.
“At the end of the day, the regime is using this election to satisfy their purpose. They want to show the world that the people support them and their nuclear agenda. That is the head game they’re playing.”
Pahlavi argues that the threat from a possible Iranian nuclear bomb is serious, but an attack by Israel or the U.S. to halt the program, which Iran insists is for peaceful purposes, would be disastrous.
“It’s a mistake for the West to think that it can reason with Iran. This is a regime that wants to export its religious ideology and destroy its arch enemy, even if it needs a nuclear arsenal to do so.
“But we are telling the world an attack is not going to do any good. It would not stop the drive for nuclear weapons, but only delay it. And all our efforts for democracy would go down the drain and our potential allies in Iran would be put on the defensive.”
The West’s focus on Iran’s nuclear program alone misses the point, Pahlavi insists. It is only a symptom of a regime that is deeply opposed to democracy and human rights, and so will continue to be a danger.
The only solution, he says, is for other countries to forge ties with the opposition, and eventually to recognize the Iranian National Council as the legitimate voice of Iran. A step that at the moment appears distant, if not unlikely.
However Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird’s recent move to open a dialogue with opposition members in Iran and the diaspora, he says, makes Canada “a leader in this process, and a model for the world.”
During Pahlavi’s visit he was to meet with Ontario politicians and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.
The council has made headway in uniting the fractious opposition since the violent crackdown on the 2009 protests against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election victory.
As an “underground movement” operating through electronic communications and word of mouth, Pahlavi says, it has already drawn support from within the regime — “we have former diplomats, media people, branches of the military, including the Revolutionary Guard.”
Welcoming defectors from the regime is the best way to avoid a “Syrian scenario” and ensure that it will crumble from within, Pahlavi argues. Without partisan ties, the movement is broad enough to create a legitimate alternative united by a dedication to democracy.
Its first test will be the upcoming election, whose outcome has added urgency as the nuclear issue reaches critical mass. Most of the candidates are hardliners, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows no sign of softening his policy.
Does Pahlavi see a future role for himself as a constitutional monarch?
Some Iranians would welcome him back as a stabilizing force. Others are still bitter toward the former shah they blame for a regime of widely resented corruption and repression. His son’s vision is of closing that dark and broken circle.
“In a democracy, it doesn’t matter if there’s a republic or a monarchy,” Pahlavi says. “If I can be part of a generation that, for the first time since Cyrus the Great, can say our future was decided by the free will of the people, that’s the greatest achievement I could hope for.”
Reza Pahlavi leads meeting of new Iranian National Council
July 11, 2014
MEETS — Reza Pahlavi, now 54, seen in Toronto for the gathering of the Iranian National Council.
Reza Pahlavi has led the first general meeting of his new opposition coalition, the Iranian National Council, a loosely based umbrella group of 36 opposition organizations that was created in Paris last year.
The general meeting was held in May in Toronto with the stated goal of nurturing pro-democracy forces inside Iran – doling out funds, technology and advice to opponents of the regime and fomenting dissent within the country.
The coalition says it represents “the broadest array of individuals and nascent political organizations” spanning the ideological spectrum, including not just the usual monarchists, but also republicans and religious and ethnic minorities.
Pahlavi, 54, no longer presents himself as Reza Shah II. His website simply refers to him as “Reza Pahlavi.”
“It remains unclear whether he can actually deliver what he’s promised,” Saeed Rahnema, a professor of political science at York University in Ontario, told the Globe and Mail of Canada.
“The opposition is still highly diversified. None of these groups are collaborating with each other. Mr. Pahlavi may hope that his council will become an alternative to the regime, but nobody in the opposition – including him – is in that position yet.”
At the first general meeting of his Iranian National Council, several hundred people of Iranian descent gathered in a Toronto hotel to hear his appeal for support.
Nazanin Afshin-Jam, an Iranian-Canadian human-rights activist and wife of Canadian Justice Minister Peter Mackay, sent a video greeting to the council’s meeting.
Pahlavi said, “The Iranian people have not been considered what they are: the ultimate weapon.”
Hamid Ghahremani, a 57-year-old Toronto businessman who left Iran in 1982, told the Globe and Mail, “He is our leader.” Standing on the sidelines of the event collecting envelopes of cash and checks, Ghahremani said that despite the smallish crowd at the Toronto meeting, many expats are eager to financially back Pahlavi’s cause.
Pahlavi said his council seeks money and “technology” from individuals and corporations for its work inside Iran. “Certain companies have been willing to do that,” he said, declining to name any.
Pahlavi said he believes Western governments should redirect their efforts away from negotiating with the Islamic Republic and toward linkups with the opposition.
The Canadian government appears to be pursuing just that strategy. It recently launched an effort to reach Iranians through the Internet and social media, and last year sponsored an online dialogue with dissidents and activists in Iran that bypassed Iranian Internet restrictions.
Pahlavi said the mass demonstrations after the 2009 presidential elections ultimately fizzled because the international community failed to support them. “How many times do you expect defenseless people under brutal regimes to rise and take their chances, only to be abandoned in midair?” he asked.
Pahlavi announced the formation of his Iranian National Council in May of last year. He said he had united 36 Iranian political groups and societies to lead the opposition to the Islamic Republic.
Most of the groups are little known and may be little more than letterhead organizations with limited membership. That was true of the many organizations the Mojahedin-e Khalq said it united years ago to form the National Council of Resistance that it portrays as leading the opposition to the regime.
Pahlavi promoted his new group by giving interviews to publicize the council.
He told the Bahraini daily Al-Bilad that the Islamic Republic clings to its right to acquire nuclear science not because it wants to strike at Israel but in order to impose a Shiite imamate.
Pahlavi told the AP his council was “calling for a major boycott” of Iran’s presidential elections. But that got little attention in Iran and no major boycott was seen once former Presidents Rafsanjani and Khatami jointly endorsed the candidacy of Hassan Rohani.
Pahlavi insisted the council is not a vehicle to promote a particular political system after the demise of the Islamic Republic. “We’re not here to debate a form of regime. That’s not our job,” he said, adding that his organization transcends party politics and stands for a secular regime.
“We demand our right to have free elections in Iran, and so this council has the responsibility to help orchestrate this campaign, with the help of our activists at home and the support of the diaspora abroad,” he told the AP.
Pahlavi said world powers today are mainly focusing on suspicions that Tehran is secretly working on atomic arms. For Pahlavi, the world is seeking a “change of behavior” by Iran, while he and other regime opponents are seeking regime change.
The list of 36 political parties and other organizations forming his council includes a few groups with a long history such as the Pan-Iranist Party and the Constitutional Party of Iran. But it includes many other names that are not exactly household words, such as the Movement of the Children of Rostam in Sistan va Baluchestan Province, the Kouroush Movement, the Center for Iranian Elites, and the United Front of the Green Movement, which is not the opposition Green Movement within Iran of former Prime Minister Mir-Hossain Musavi.
Interview with AP as spokesman for nascent democracy group
Thursday, May 2nd, 2013 by Associated Press
Viewed 7808 times
Source: Associated Press
© Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
PARIS — The son of Iran’s toppled shah has a new job as spokesman for a nascent movement that is challenging the clerical regime to hold free and fair elections — or risk a civil disobedience campaign.
Reza Pahlavi said Thursday that his Paris-based collective, the Iranian National Council, brings together tens of thousands of pro-democracy proponents from both inside and outside Iran.
He said the council “is calling for a major boycott” of Iran’s June 14 elections but that “is not enough.”
“The regime once again is going to put on another show, another circus,” Pahlavi said in an interview. “This is an opportunity ... to challenge a system that, if they were to refuse such a request, leaves us no choice but to organize a campaign of civil disobedience to ultimately force this regime to collapse.”
Iran’s 2009 presidential vote, which gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term, was criticized for widespread fraud and led to major protests that were brutally repressed. The protests were the worst since the 1979 Islamic revolution that brought down Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, whose family has since lived in exile, along with millions of other Iranians. The toppled shah died of cancer in Egypt a year after fleeing.
The main contenders in the upcoming vote appear to be former Foreign Minister Ali Velayati and former nuclear negotiator Hasan Rowhani as well as Tehran Mayor Mohammad Qalibaf and, possibly, former reformist President Mohammad Khatami.
Pahlavi, 52, and the council want to hold Iran to international standards of fair elections.
The Iranian National Council elected Pahlavi as its spokesman at its first congress last weekend. The group’s political bureau appears to represent a variety of Iran’s exiled opposition, and Pahlavi insisted it is not a vehicle to promote a particular political cause.
“We’re not here to debate a form of regime. That’s not our job,” he said, adding that his organization transcends party politics and stands for a secular regime.
“We demand our right to have free elections in Iran, and so this council has the responsibility to help orchestrate this campaign, with the help of our activists at home and the support of the diaspora abroad,” he said.
It is impossible to measure the impact of regime opponents, especially those living in exile. Pahlavi, who moves between the Washington area and Paris, claims the council grew out of the contacts inside Iran of various members like himself. The group says half of the 20,000-plus people who signed its charter via the Internet are inside Iran.
Pahlavi called on the international community to add its voice to the campaign for free elections, which he said should include international observers.
External pressure can change the dynamics of a nation, he said, decrying what he said was a lack of dialogue with representatives of Iran’s exile community.
He said world powers today are mainly focusing on suspicions that Tehran secretly worked on atomic arms — a charge Iran denies. For Pahlavi, the world is seeking a “change of behavior” by Iran, while he and other regime opponents are seeking a new, democratic Iran.
“If you don’t engage this time with democratic forces, how can you expect them, with no defenses ... to stand up to this Goliath?” he asked.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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