Persia's Little Prince
Foreign Policy / KARIM SADJADPOUR
07-Jan-2011 (11 comments)

Iranians, it was once said, are afflicted by a unique strain of melancholy: Those who live in Iran dream of leaving, while those who were exiled dream of going back.

When 44-year-old Alireza Pahlavi, the youngest son of the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, took his life on Tuesday, it was undeniably attributable in part to a demoralizing malady, chronic depression, which he may have inherited from his father. But it was also an undeniable aftershock of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, whose reverberations are still being felt today.

 

A country like Iran that has repeatedly been subjected to public heartbreak over the last few decades -- most notably the loss of over 200,000 native sons in the ruinous eight-year war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq -- naturally confronts the self-inflicted death of a child of privilege with mixed feelings.

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CyrusT

Great Piece

by CyrusT on

Finally, an article that doesn't indulge the cruel nonsense appearing in the so-called "free media" we have here.


G. Rahmanian

Tudeh Traitors!

by G. Rahmanian on

یا رب سبب خیانت توده زچیست؟•••این خا‌ئن بی وطن چرا، بهر چه زیست؟•••چون می شود او از این غم ما خوشحال،•••در شادیمان برای او جایی نیست!•••


AryamehrNYC

Comrade

by AryamehrNYC on

In case you have not read the memo, communism/marxism was tossed into the trash bin of history back in 1991.  You should feel proud of yourself, and your comrades in arms, for helping to ruin a country once brimming with so much promise.  

Great job buddy.  Keep blaming others for all of the gaffes you have made in your pathetic life.  Great job! 


comrade

دار التحرفه سلطنتی

comrade


 

 

 

یا ربّ سبب مرگ سگ‌ سلطان چیست؟

سگ‌ داند و پینه دوز که در انبان چیست.

بگذارید یولاندا جون سرش گرم باشه...

Never increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.

 


benross

I don't understand

by benross on

I don't understand Finglish.....

He just said that he was a sore loser... but you knew that already! 


Darius Kadivar

By Far Sadjadpour wrote the Best Article on Ali Reza's demise

by Darius Kadivar on

Excellent Piece !


SOS-FREE-IRAN

Media bias in depicting Pahlavi Kings vs. Syrian President

by SOS-FREE-IRAN on

Thank you.  Sadjadpour's Foreign Policy article on death of Prince Ali Reza Pahlavi highlights an important British-American-Islamic Republic media/scholar bias when refering to the Pahlavi Monarchy and its legacy.

Sadjadpour writes:

As a student of history, Alireza was perhaps puzzled by the discipline's relationship to his father. While Hafez al-Assad, the ruthless Syrian dictator who massacred some 20,000 civilians in the city of Hama in 1982, is most commonly remembered as a
"shrewd tactician," it has become impossible to maintain intellectual credibility while writing about the Pahlavi era without referring to the Shah as a "blood-soaked," "imperialist puppet."


It is one of the brutal realities of power and
statecraft that today Assad's son Bashar, president of Syria, is feted
by visiting U.S. politicians and analysts extolling his shrewdness and
moderation, while Alireza's obituary writers render him the forgotten son of a two-bit dictator.   

 

This is well put. Essentially in a polite way Sadjadpour is stating that the only people who are allowed to get their PhD and position in these Ivy League schools are the ones who agree to publish and perpetuate the false facts and rumours about the Pahlavi Kings. As such because Prince Ali Reza Pahlavi was not a member of this group, he was barred at Harvard.  A sad reality of censorship in higher education. 

I wonder how these people, who are primarily of British-American descent describe the House of Windsor? Blood soaked? When will these scholars and journalists demand the overthrow of British Monarchy for its blood soaked history? But are Prince Charles and QE II somehow not reproachable? The Guardian's shameless piece on Prince Ali Reza's death is truly gut wrenching. Has the British Crown offered any condolences to our Queen?


SOS-FREE-IRAN

Mr. Mohsen Makhmalbaf's credibility is questionable

by SOS-FREE-IRAN on

Mr. Makhmalbaf is among many during the Islamic revolution who falsely have claimed to have been harmed during the Pahlavi Monarchy.  In fact, what is ironic is that Mr. Makhmalbaf hired the hitman who murdered Dr. Tabatabai to act in one of his films. Mr. Makhmalbaf brought this African-American murderer to Iran and gave him a job, a house, and money as a reward for killing Dr. Tabatabai. 

Here is the excerpt:

The man who fired the semi-automatic Browning was David Theodore Belfield alias Dawud Salahuddin, a 29-year-old African American Muslim who had been paid $5,000 for the job. After shooting his victim, the assassin had escaped the crime scene with the help of a friend who was waiting with the rental car, and they made their way to Montreal.

From there Salahuddin booked a flight to Paris with a connection to Geneva where he took refuge in the Iranian Consulate for seven days before getting a visa to go on to Iran where he lives today with his Iranian wife in a comfortable garden apartment in a Tehran suburb despite various attempts over the years to bring him to justice. Astonishingly, in 2001 Salahuddin, gained world fame as an actor in Mohsen Makhmalbaf's film, Kandahar.

//iranian.com/CyrusKadivar/2003/January/M...

When will we wake up to see through these conartists whose sole goal is to vilify the Pahlavi Kings and other patriotic Iranians? Why don't we stop promoting their false stories?


yolanda

......

by yolanda on

Hi! Comrade,

  I am sorry....I don't understand Finglish.....

take care!


comrade

Yolanda joon

by comrade on

 

Kootaah biaa aziz. Tamoom shod, raft. Prans(prince) chi chieh. 30 saal pish Pahlavi tamoom shod raft pay kaaresh... 

 

 

Never increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.

 


yolanda

........

by yolanda on

..........Perhaps his death represents nostalgia for a time in which Iran's name wasn't synonymous with terrorism and religious intolerance, a time in which Iranians could get visas to visit foreign countries and would not be fingerprinted upon entering them, a time when Iranian scholars were peppered with questions about Omar Khayyam and Ferdowsi, rather than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and enriched uranium.  

.........They have no aspirations to be gilded monarchists or imperialist lackeys or agents of the CIA. They are merely expressing their natural longing to reconnect once again with the ancient culture of the land in which they were born.

With his suicide, Alireza Pahlavi offered a sobering reminder that those hopes are, for the moment, a distant dream.  His final wish was that his ashes be scattered in the Caspian Sea.