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Love the picture on the cover

Full of confidence and that was the feeling everybody had then (that’s why people felt they don’t need him any more)

What made his regime better than Islamic regime is under his watch FUTURE in Iran was something you could count on, Parents were welling to send their kids abroad because they knew they would be back after done with their education to help the country. These days parents sending them aboard hoping they could follow them soon after. 

I don’t need to read this book I leaved it. I red many books about him since 79. I may read this too.

Sucky biography

The book had a lot of really good information in it with lots of references and details from the political climate of the era. 

But as a biography, it sucked. No pictures to put things in context. Many of Shah's personal relationships were completely over looked. Not much about his domestic life or his relationship with his children (only quick summary of some affairs and general stuff about his family life). 

I bought it because Milani was on Jian Qomeishi's show and made it sound like his book was a biography. I returned it and got my 30$ back.

Mordeh Khor...

That's all I can say about this opportuistic so called historian!

The Shah was bigger than Himalayas... the further you move away from him the more majestic he appears.. even Khomeini pales in insignificance..

It was those deeply mistaken self-serving opportunistic quasi intellectuals like this A. Milani who ruined our country and sold us all out!

Shame on you mordeh khor-e bad tarkeeb!. 

Mash Ghasem Jaan dunno Who dissolved it in the first place ?

Without respecting the legal procedure ?


  HISTORY OF IDEAS: Constitutional Government In Locke's Second Treatise (Yale University)           

And dismissing his sovereign's Royal Prerogatives ( such as control of the Army -the King of Spain and the Queen of England are both Commander's in Chief of the Army) something which is inconceivable even in Fully Democratic Parliamentary Monarchies where the monarch however powerless is still considered as the head of State ...

Which is Surprising given that the old Man was a Lawyer yet failed to understand the basic rules of the regime he had accepted to work under and the constitution from which he derived his entire legitimacy:

             
  ROYAL FORUM: Explaining the Concept of a Constitutional Monarchy to a Staunch Republican   

Darius jan , you always win

what can I say?

Now, just between two of us, what was wrong with the pre-coup Majlis? It had representatives from every major constituency in the country and was working just fine. Why did all of that had to be destroyed and crushed? cheers

As for Milani's Conclusions on Modernity being incompatible ...

With the concept of Monarchy ... Well I guess we simply have to politely agree to disagree ...

MODERNITY & TRADITION: Shah of Iran meets Japan's Hirohito (1958) 

"When Iranians learn to behave like Swedes, I will behave like the King of Sweden." - Shah Mohamad Reza Pahlavi King of Iran (1941- 1979)

pictory: Political Pluralism and Freedom of Press in Pahlavi Iran (1961)

Related Blog:

ROYAL FORUM: Iran-born Hanif Bali elected to Swedish Parliament

Other Related Blogs:

Royalty: Shah of Iran and King of Sweden Stokholm (1960)

Persian Carpet Gift to Sweden's Crown Princess Victoria and Husband

Mash Ghasem your Scholarly Standards didn't seem to help you ;0)

Get the number of years of the Shah's rule right: 

It's 38 years not 35 ... From 1941 to 1979 ... 

The First 12 years of Which were Democratic :

THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY: How Would You Evaluate Iran's Democracy Index in 1953 ?

According to your own standards given all the Fuss you make about your so called "Fully Democratically Elected" Prime Minister ... 

YES, PRIME MINISTER: A Step By Step Guide To Mossadegh's Premiership and the Coup of '53 ...

As some statements and ideas might still hold true, there's

a thing called Modern Scholarly Standards, and untill and unless you're level of discourse  is on that level or close to it, you're all stuck forever in the Dark Ages, like the 35 years of brutal and corrupt dictatorship by shah, cheers

Learn of Shah from himself

Before his death in exile, Shah wrote/dictated "Answer to History". There is much to learn about from his own perspective, rather than theories and assumptions of a professor 32 years post mortem.

Most of Shah's statements and ideas still hold true.

Prior to Aug '53, Iranian Parliment/Majlis was the most diverse

Majlis in Iranian history (Natioanlists, Monarchists, Religious, Left...) Shah's ultimate betrayal was to crush our democracy and rule on behest of foriegners, and at the end his masters left him all alone. The one that Giveth, also Taketh.

......

Thanks for posting the video after listenning to to writer carefully , i am  sure i will not spend my money to buy this book ! no doubt left!

The writer "shakhsiat" sounds cheap to me, his pseudo analyse is weak, his brain is froze in 70's ....Nothing to learn from him! (Hooshang nahavandi 's book is much more articulated with a stronger geopolitics analyse and far from 'heresay") !

 and when at the begining he said " any impartial book was wrote before... so he wrote the first one ! modesty che khabar ?!! this roshanfekr arrogance maro koshte... 10 conference , 20 voa interview miran fekr mikonan dige tamoome How can he reward himself to be the very impartial man ? looool....like if we never met deep intellectuel, historian in our lives to have a point of comparation !

i totally agree with "jeesh daram" , a book about the people on power for more then 30 years will be very usefull to us and next generation cause we don't know nothing about them ...absolutly nothing !

Yoda is it really you? Or are you pretending to be a master

And sharing opinions, without having facts to back them up?

To sharpen your thoughts read the link below and discover why the USA loves Islam for Iran
and sold khomeini as a man of peace to us all, when they knew full well
he had ordered many assasinations against iranian offcials and even
cinema rex, or why the usa portrayed the shah as a despot/dictator
keeping the man of love and decency khomeini in exile.

//www.persiansphinx.info

it is packed with facts and common sense.

this is a great link, feel free to share it with other iranians

Don't get so excited people...

When it comes to politics (especially) the truth always lies in the middle...

Regarding the shah he had many good ambitions, but the way they were implemented was totally wrong... He should not have taken into his own burden all the tasks for modernization. This task will surely fail because people in general were too "dumb" >30 years ago to understand what his intentions was...

What he should have done on the expense of fast modernization was simple to create a free parlament were all parties could come and speak for themselves... The wonderful thing about this is that it would practically eliminate all those who were against him...

When communists, fundamentalists and so on come together with democrats and liberals to actually solve practical problems, then they will see that ruling for a better nation is quite a hard task... This is the actual real disappointment/"betrayal" of  the shah and this was why the west (along with raised oil prices) didn't support him any more at the end...

Ruling a country by your own will never work, because there are a lot of people that will disappoint you or implement your ideas in different ways, becoming corrupt on the task. That is why you always have to have people with different opinions from different political parties trying to agree on how to solve practical issues. If the voters get mad, they can only blame the politicians, the shah would just be a symbolic guardian of the nation, like e.g. the king of Sweden... Unfortunately the shah wouldn't do this (or thought of it too late when he realized people were too angry) which resulted in >30 years of shit...

The irony is that Reza shah would ultimately be right about his son, and that is that he wouldn't have the strength to solve the tough problems as formers kings would normally do, and that is to brutally crack down on the opponents when it would come to that...The shah was rather a person with features from a king and a prime minister which didn't go so well in the 70's Iran...

This book is a contribution to Iranian history

the problem is not that he has written a book on Shah, it's rather our hesitation from any modern, in-depth historical analysis and critiques. Looking forward to a thorough critique of this very good book, especially the part on Tudeh, and how it became the playground  of savak.

afshinzad read //amiran.com/Iran/index.htm review of book

Get real insight into milani's motives and tons of purposeful errors.

Book should not be called fall of Iran, but how and why Iranians have become failures.  A short story of blaming the Shah for America's calculated betrayal and iranians ignorance.

What Milani could not say... Is not even permitted to think...

I took this from the end of //amiran.com/Iran/index.htm

The average Iranian was one of
the wealthiest in the 3rd world. We even imported doctors from Pakistan,
drivers from Korea, labourers from Turkey and Afghanistan, had one of
the best trained and best equipped military forces in the world and at
the very same time the country had one of the largest capital reserves
in the whole world. The future of our young was bright.

From
1963 to 1977 our GNP went from 340bn rials to 5682bn rials, a 16 fold
increase in 15 years. In this period we had a 13.8% compound growth rate
in savings (from 45bn to 1509bn). And by 1974 we were listed by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) as the 13th wealthiest country in the world.

This makes him a dictator
and despot to those who’s political motives objected to a patriarchic
society with a strong economy and military. For ordinary Iranians he was
benevolent and with high wishes for his country. He should be praised
for this. The observation of world-wise tourist in our country was also
that the Shah of Iran was a good man completely dedicated to the welfare
of his people and the Iranian masses loved and supported him.

What I propose to you the reader to assume
is that manipulation by foreigners will continue. Disloyal people to their
countries, having PhD degrees, will still be found. Expenses of the books
that serve foreign interests (I am not suggesting that this book is one),
and conferences that publicize it will be secured through universities
and societies that have been given friendly names. And we will continue
to hear what theoretically, based on unreal assumptions, seem right.

When looking to blame someone else for our failures
23 years ago, we must not forget that collectively, all of us can be regarded
as being "guilty". Guilty of gutlessness and indifference by
our very own national standards. We have surrendered completely and passively
to the violation of our identity, culture and civilization by the Islamic
invasion, initiated over 1500 years ago by the Bedouin Arab invader, and
then a second time with the help of blatantly biased views, such as this
one presented in the Persian Sphinx book, by a person who wants to become
a storyteller for a society that accepts gossip instead of facts for scholarly
work.

خسته نشدید آنقدر در مورد شاه نوشتید؟

Shah was a Great Iranian Patriot, despite the betrayals he faced

Milani's work is not entirely factual nor is it scholarly, I read the book he wrote regarding hoveyda and found it quite reviling.  It was obviously disingenuos and non factual.

The most accurate, precise and balanced review of his book I found on this site //amiran.com/Iran/index.htm  and look forward to seeing a review created for this book, the Shah, which i will not waste my time reading at least in the next year... unless I have nothing better to do.

Facts still matter, the Truth is about the only thing worth writing, the rest is a waste of time... kudos to the person that wrote this review... //amiran.com/Iran/index.htm

He was from savadkoohi

He was from savadkoohi from Mazandaran not Gilan; vast difference.

 Savad kooh

//www.itto.org/city/?cityid=216&name=Savad+Kooh

This is my problem with Milani (encore)

His audience.

First a lesson for yourself in basic Iranian history & geography

Shah was not from Rasht, not even Gilan. His father was from province of mazandaran, in fact he was almost a hamshahri of your  very own Larijani brothers! 

"Personal business must yield to collective interest."

Important Lesson ---

Make sure a Rashti never again becomes the leader of Iran!

If he had first figured out where his interest lies then he could have then served the interests of his nation!

Title of book should be fall of Iran

Title of book should be fall of Iran, because with fall of Shah not only our nation and country got destroyed and 57 year of hard work of modernization went down the tube.

 Terrorism was born and inhumanity and wilderness took over the modernity.

The shah was the shield for the country and we lost that shield and at the same time we lost everything we loved in life and the country and what we were proud of.

Shah was a patriot and the person who was  tired of western hypocrisy as we witness today and he was so frustrated with his own people which doesn’t evolve fast enough and I belief he was more frustrated with his own people that  why they can’t built or invent like western people. And he was frustrated why our engineers are not smart is American or others and why we have to rely on westerners.

Shah loved his country and his people and the reason he left, not because of his illness not because he was weak, left because he didn’t want to shed his own people and he was too good for his people.

For those who hate shah, yes he was not perfect and yes we were not able elect corrupt politician and yes we didn’t have a media and news papers to bash any one they wanted it. But really after 33 year do you people think we were evolved enough or did us understood the political science and even did we know what the true meaning of the freedom was. Today our people getting killed to have the only social freedom that we had, today women are getting raped and imprisoned because they don’t want to cover themselves with hejab. Today young people are getting arrested because of having friends in their house or for the house party.

What is the freedom that we enjoy or we have in North America or other western countries. whatever we are doing today, we used to have it in our own country 33 years ago, only we didn’t know what is like living in west.

I hope in future we will have a country and the nation that will evolve enough to understand the fiction and reality and same time will understand what is like to have a nation to be proud of their history and culture. And I hope they will learn from the history.

A very apt quote and

 I would have stretched it to the psychotic need to gather as many Cassius' as possible for the murder and mutilations of more Desdemonas and excepting that the 'handkerchief' was millions below the poverty line.

some discrepencies

This is a phenomenal book and my kudos to Dr. Milani for undertaking this important endeavor. History needs rich referrences like this book to learn from. There are some date discrepencies which I intend to bring to Dr. Milani's attention, redarging the Masonic activities and Abdullah Entezam.  Nothing against the book, but like most prints these types of errors do creep up and it is up to us who know the truth. 

..............

very moving at the end thanks for the clip

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