Reza Pahlavi: Playing His Ace Card Against Iranian Revolution – OpEd

It’s been 44 years since the 1979 social revolution that toppled the Shah’s dictatorship in Iran. At that time, an 18-year-old Reza Pahlavi, studying in the United States, and his family fled Iran with billions of dollars.

The religious clerics led by Khomeini hijacked the social revolution, using their network of mosques, which had been supported by the Shah’s SAVAK for years, to undermine the movement. Their actions, reminiscent of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, aimed to undermine the social revolution. They faced opposition from progressive Muslims, Marxists, secular groups, Kurds, and other minority populations.

Khomeini’s rise to power was marked by violence. Judge Sadegh Khalkhali executed people in Kurdistan and Turkmen Sahra. Hezbollah attacked bookstores, political gatherings, and activity centers. Universities were targeted and closed. In 1981, Khomeini called for political groups to follow him, but all except two rejected, leading to widespread arrests and deaths.

The Iraqi army invaded Iran in response to Khomeini’s provocations and attempts to export the Islamic Revolution with the newly formed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). This invasion provided Khomeini with a convenient pretext to further suppress and eliminate political opponents. In a television interview, Javad Mansouri, the first commander of the Revolutionary Guards, acknowledged that without the war, there would have been no Islamic Revolution. The war enabled the regime to consolidate control and suppress dissent from opposition groups at home. 

In the summer of 1988, Khomeini ordered the massacre of thousands of prisoners who had completed their sentences, with Ebrahim Raisi, the current president of the regime, being one of the judges involved in this atrocity. They were buried in mass graves during nighttime.

After being exiled, Reza Pahlavi lived a lavish lifestyle funded by his family’s wealth. He avoided political activity until later, when he attempted to establish connections with government reformists and reach out to Mullah Mohammad Khatami.

There were no genuine moderate reformists within the regime. Their presence was a deliberate attempt to deceive both society and the West, leading them to pursue an illusion of meaningful change. In reality, this approach only served to strengthen the policy of appeasing the dictatorship of Velayat-e Faqih (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist), enabling the enrichment of the mullahs and the IRGC while facilitating pursuits such as developing atomic weapons, interfering in regional countries, and destabilizing the Middle East.

This lack of genuine reform was evident in the numerous large-scale social protests that occurred in Iran, including notable student protests on July 9, 1999. Additionally, a social uprising in 2009 played a role in weakening Khamenei’s position of power.

Reza Pahlavi made no attempt to intervene during the January 2017 general uprising, which was a response to the high cost of goods and public necessities. This uprising spread across 142 Iranian cities, and Iranian society witnessed a prolonged political maneuvering between factions labeled as “reformist” and “fundamentalist” within the government. The regime saw the necessity of resorting to the monarchy as a strategic move to maintain control and suppress the protests.

The unveiling of Reza Shah’s body and the deployment of agents from Basij groups among the protesters, who chanted the slogan of Reza Shah Rohat Shad inside the country, along with the sending of Major General Mohammad Reza Madhi, a commander of the IRGC, to Paris, were part of a deceptive initiative by the Iranian regime. The objective of these actions was to create an illusion of a replacement and deceive the democratic opposition as a means of confronting them.

After that, Reza Pahlavi frequently proposed projects and slogans, but none of them were taken seriously, not even by his close friends. They saw him as a mere tool manipulated by the IRGC and so-called reformists within the government. The final project undertaken by Reza Pahlavi, known as the Georgetown Project, received support from certain foreign government-backed Persian media outlets and influential journalists. This project, which lasted for 42 days, aimed to suppress the Iranian people’s uprising and overthrow of Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran.

Reza Pahlavi has been discouraging people from taking to the streets to protest, saying that they will be shot in the eyes or killed. He remained silent when Qassem Soleimani was killed, but condemned any attack on the IRGC by Iranian protesters, labeling it as terrorism.

During the 2022 social uprising in Iran, which lasted for seven months, Pahlavi’s supporters were sent to Iranian protests abroad to disperse them and cause clashes and confiscations. This discouraged participation in the protests.

Pahlavi has called on Western governments to transfer the blocked funds of the Iranian regime to him. However, he has expressed support for the Revolutionary Guards and claims to be in contact with them. He considers the IRGC and law enforcement as the appropriate forces to maintain order and security in the country. Consequently, Khamenei and the IRGC view Reza Pahlavi as a useful tool to suppress and silence social protests in Iran, enabling them to confiscate and divert the energy of such movements.

However, Iran’s current circumstances differ significantly from those of 1979, and the radicalism of society does not tolerate Reza Pahlavi’s presence as a disruptive figure. With the resounding slogan of “Death to the Tyrant, whether the Shah or the leader,” the people aim to sideline him and envision a future where he will be held accountable in a democratic Iran.

Fara Mahmoudi is an Iranian Kurdish political and human right activist