The son of the past due shah hailed Iran’s mass protests as a landmark revolution via way of means of ladies and entreated the sector to feature to the stress at the clerical leadership.
Reza Pahlavi, whose father turned into toppled withinside the Islamic Revolution of 1979, referred to as for extra instruction for a destiny Iranian machine this is secular and democratic.
“It is without a doubt in present day times, in my opinion, the primary revolution for the ladies, via way of means of the ladies — with the aid of the Iranian men, sons, brothers and fathers,” Pahlavi, who lives in exile withinside the Washington area, informed AFP.
“It has come to the point, because the Spaniards might say, basta — we have got had enough.”
Demonstrations have swarmed fundamental cities, with dozens killed, considering that 22-year-vintage Mahsa Amini died on September sixteen withinside the custody of Iran’s infamous morality police, allegedly for breaching the stern necessities that ladies put on headscarves in public.
While additionally condemning discrimination towards minorities and the LGBTQ community, Pahlavi stated, “The symbolism of latest repression is represented via way of means of ladies.”
“I assume maximum Iranian ladies, once they examine the freedoms that ladies withinside the unfastened international revel in and exercise, are requesting the very equal rights for themselves,” he stated.
His grandfather, Reza Shah, banned all Islamic veils in 1936 as a part of a Westernization pressure stimulated via way of means of neighboring Turkey.
The remaining shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, permit the veil be a choice — which ended while the Islamic republic imposed necessities for ladies’s “modesty” in public.
Pahlavi, the daddy of 3 daughters, stated that Iranian society has come an extended manner from the times of “male chauvinism” and that ladies’s alternatives have to be respected.
“Women may also determine to put on or now no longer put on the veil. But it need to be a choice, a unfastened choice, now no longer imposed for ideological or spiritual reasons,” he stated.
Separation among church and state
Pahlavi, at the same time as playing admire in a great deal of the exile community, says he isn’t in search of to repair the monarchy, an concept that has constrained aid inner Iran.
Working with the distant places opposition, Pahlavi favors a constituent meeting that could write a brand new constitution.
“There’s no manner you may truely have a real democratic order with out a clean definition and separation of church from state,” Pahlavi stated.
The Islamic republic has survived greater than 4 many years in spite of dissent and antipathy from the West, mainly america.
But Pahlavi insisted that the machine ought to quit at any time — and that the sector had to be ready.
“We want to keep in mind the excessive opportunity that this regime will now no longer exist for long,” he stated.
“I’ve been pronouncing for a few time — it may manifest in some weeks or some months, and we want to think about the alternative.”
Pahlavi stated that there have to be a “managed implosion” with a smooth, non violent transition.
He praised a great deal of the robust global remarks at the protests, which include from Germany and Canada.
But he referred to as for greater movement which include the expulsion of diplomats and freezing of assets.
“It’s vital for greater than simply giving ethical aid. These are the types of measures which can be impactful,” he stated.
He renewed his name for a strike fund to compensate workers, hoping that the national demonstrations ought to remodel right into a trendy strike.
Pahlavi, at the same time as helping diplomacy, voiced misgivings over a capacity go back via way of means of america to the 2015 nuclear deal below which Iran might once more be permit to promote oil overtly on international markets.
Western powers regularly trust they can “create an incentive for the regime to alternate its behavior, so we are able to drag them again to be right boys and behave,” Pahlavi stated.
But the Islamic republic, he stated, is rooted in exporting an ideology.
“With this regime, you can not you can not have a coexistence.”
