Iit would take Shakespeare to tell Reza Pahlavi. The overwhelming fate of a suitor in exile who sacrificed his life to the perpetuation of a dynasty with no future since he has no heir. A dramatic family, his youngest suicide, unless he was murdered, and his sister died of an overdose in a London hotel. An unassuming suitor whose only ambition is to serve but who has remained a useless servant. The prince with sad eyes, like his father, whom he resembles so much that we believe we are meeting him back in the 1970s. “Whoever did not live in the years surrounding 1789 does not know what the sweetness of life is” : 1789 is the anagram of 1978. Talleyrand could be Persian.
Since December 28, Iranians are in the streets. Driven by poverty because the overwhelming majority of them live below the poverty line. This is the fifth time that they have revolted but the first where all social classes, all generations, all provinces are concerned. Long story short, their hope is named Trump. He is capable of anything, including torpedoing the “Oil for Food” agreement, liquidating the leader of the Revolutionary Guards, bombing nuclear installations.
“The molarchy has always been bathed in blood, the monarchy has retreated from civil war”
As usual, the Basijs are firing on all cylinders. “All terrorists!” » said the Supreme Leader. Consequence: thousands of deaths and injuries. So many arrests and everyone who is arrested risks ending up on a rope. The mullahs are merciless: Allah will recognize his own. This is the big difference between the molarchy which has always been bathed in blood and the monarchy which backed away from civil war.
The president and the king
What has not changed is the disdain with which Reza Pahlavi is heaped. Donald Trump talks about him as a nice guy but is not “not sure if it is appropriate to meet him”. Reza has only lived less than an hour from Washington for forty-six years. America still struggles to admit that royalty rhymes with freedoms. Even if the socialist republics which replaced them in the East (Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Korea, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Afghanistan) like the popular republics in the West (Russia, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania) were all dictatorships. The only accepted counter-example is Spain, provided we forget that Juan Carlos was installed by Franco. This is not likely to happen to Reza Chah who would nevertheless like to be the man of the transition.
In France, the contempt for little Shah is worse. The French left blindly supported the Iranian revolution. Imagining Islamism as a new path towards socialism. Michel Foucault returned amazed from Neauphle-le-Château. The press made the political police, Savak, the incarnation of Evil. It is then difficult to admit that with the Islamic courts, the butcher’s shop has become a slaughterhouse. More than 150,000 Iranians have been executed over the years. The Islamic revolution knows no Thermidor.
Stubbornly, the media denigrate the hope that Reza Chah raises. The prince is described as an emigrant from Koblenz or as “the puppet of Tel Aviv”. By the same people who find all kinds of qualities in the former leader of Al Qaeda who became master of Syria !
