Washington: The son of the past due shah hailed Iran’s mass protests as a landmark revolution with the aid of using ladies and advised the arena to feature to the stress at the clerical leadership.
Reza Pahlavi, whose father become toppled withinside the Islamic Revolution of 1979, referred to as for more training for a destiny Iranian machine this is secular and democratic.
“It is absolutely in current times, in my opinion, the primary revolution for the ladies, with the aid of using the ladies — with the aid of the Iranian men, sons, brothers and fathers,” Pahlavi, who lives in exile withinside the Washington area, advised AFP.
“It has come to the point, because the Spaniards could say, basta — we have got had enough.”
Demonstrations have swarmed fundamental cities, with dozens killed, on the grounds that 22-year-antique Mahsa Amini died on September sixteen withinside the custody of Iran’s infamous morality police, allegedly for breaching the stern necessities that ladies put on headscarves in public.
While additionally condemning discrimination towards minorities and the LGBTQ community, Pahlavi stated, “The symbolism of modern-day repression is represented with the aid of using ladies.”
“I assume maximum Iranian ladies, once they study the freedoms that ladies withinside the unfastened global enjoy and exercise, are inquiring for the very identical rights for themselves,” he stated.
His grandfather, Reza Shah, banned all Islamic veils in 1936 as a part of a Westernization force stimulated with the aid of using neighboring Turkey.
The remaining shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, allow the veil be a choice — which ended while the Islamic republic imposed necessities for ladies’s “modesty” in public.
Pahlavi, the daddy of 3 daughters, stated that Iranian society has come a protracted manner from the times of “male chauvinism” and that ladies’s alternatives must be respected.
“Women can also additionally determine to put on or now no longer put on the veil. But it need to be a choice, a unfastened choice, now no longer imposed for ideological or non secular reasons,” he stated.
Separation among church and state
Pahlavi, at the same time as taking part in admire in a good deal of the exile community, says he isn’t always searching for to repair the monarchy, an concept that has restrained aid interior Iran.
Working with the remote places opposition, Pahlavi favors a constituent meeting that might write a brand new constitution.
“There’s no manner you may surely have a real democratic order with out a clean definition and separation of church from state,” Pahlavi stated.
The Islamic republic has survived greater than 4 many years no matter dissent and antipathy from the West, mainly the US.
But Pahlavi insisted that the machine ought to stop at any time — and that the arena had to be ready.
“We want to bear in mind the excessive opportunity that this regime will now no longer exist for long,” he stated.
“I’ve been pronouncing for a few time — it may appear in some weeks or some months, and we want to think about the alternative.”
Pahlavi stated that there must be a “managed implosion” with a smooth, non violent transition.
He praised a good deal of the sturdy worldwide remarks at the protests, such as from Germany and Canada.
But he referred to as for greater movement such as the expulsion of diplomats and freezing of assets.
“It’s critical for greater than simply giving ethical aid. These are the forms of measures which can be impactful,” he stated.
He renewed his name for a strike fund to compensate workers, hoping that the national demonstrations ought to rework right into a widespread strike.
Pahlavi, at the same time as helping diplomacy, voiced misgivings over a ability go back with the aid of using the US to the 2015 nuclear deal below which Iran could once more be permit to promote oil brazenly on worldwide markets.
Western powers frequently accept as true with they can “create an incentive for the regime to extrade its behavior, so we are able to drag them lower back to be exact boys and behave,” Pahlavi stated.
But the Islamic republic, he stated, is rooted in exporting an ideology.
“With this regime, you can not you can not have a coexistence.”