Particularly Pahlavi’s. His family had lived a life of great extravagance until Ayatollah Khomenei deposed the shah in 1979, a year after Jimmy Carter hailed the monarch as “an island of stability.” Even yesterday, the former crown prince was defensive about those days. “They had orders not to hit — fire on people,” he said of his father’s troops, who, whatever their orders, managed to kill thousands.
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“I’m not demanding people to support me today because of me. I’m demanding people to support me so that I can best serve them achieve what their goal is, which is achieve freedom.”