Tuesday
May 16, 2000
Loyalty to God, King, and Country
In response to Sahar
Nahrvar's letter to Empress Farah, I respect her right to ask a question
and it was done in a "democratic" fashion but with some ambiguous
remarks.
The modern Imperial Iranian Armed Forces was a creation of the Pahlavi
state which ruled our country for half a century. The 1906 Constitution
made the Shah the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. All military
personnel swore an oath of loyalty to the King and one would expect that
insulting the Shah within that framework would be a grave offence for
it would question the loyalty and dedication of an officer to his God,
King and Country. Even in the democratic republics a four star general
who insults the President runs a risk of a court hearing and in the UK
any officer insulting HM Queen Elizabeth would also run into serious trouble.
I find it hard to understand why Sahar
Nahrvar's father went into the army in the first place. His political
agenda or views notwithstanding, he received a better treatment than a
relative of mine who was a senior imperial general and who was executed
by the revolutionary authorities for having served the Shah as ADC after
his daughter was raped.
As for the newspapers under the monarchy there is no doubt that until
1976 it was tightly monitored by the state. However, after the Shah's
so-called liberalisation policy there was a significant change in their
orientation. Despite a brief period when the papers were on strike during
the 1978 upheavals the Shah's regime was criticised violently in both
Ettelaat and Keyhan short of calling the monarch names.
Under Dr Bakhtiar press censorship was officially lifted but within six
months of Khomeini's triumph the liberal and leftist press came under
attack.
The Shah's rule was as imperfect as the Iranian nation but to be fair
one wonders what Iran would have been like had the opposition leaders
thought of our country before their own personal interests. Empress Farah
suffered along her husband and so did millions of others: nobody has a
monopoly on martyrs and tears. I welcome hearing the Empress's
view in the near future. We must in fact encourage debate for there
is always two sides to a coin no matter who is holding it."
Cyrus Kadivar
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