Iran’s exiled crown prince is scheduled to come to Israel this week on a visit that reflects the warm ties his father once had with Israel and the current state of hostility between Israel and the Islamic Republic.
Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah to rule Iran before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, said Sunday that he will be delivering “a message of friendship from the Iranian people.”
He is set to participate in Israel’s annual Holocaust memorial ceremony on Monday night, said Israeli Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel, who will host him. He is also set to visit a desalination plant, see the Western Wall and meet representatives of the local Bahai community and Israeli Jews of Iranian descent, she said.
Gamliel praised the “brave decision” by Pahlavi to make what she said would be his first visit to Israel. “The crown prince symbolizes a leadership different from that of the ayatollah regime, and leads values of peace and tolerance, in contrast to the extremists who rule Iran,” she said.
Pahlavi left Iran at age 17 for military flight school in the U.S., just before his cancer-stricken father Mohammad Reza Pahlavi abandoned the throne for exile. The revolution followed, with the creation of the Islamic Republic, the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the sweeping away of the last vestiges of the American-backed monarchy.
Pahlavi, who still resides in the U.S., has called for a peaceful revolution that would replace clerical rule with a parliamentary monarchy, enshrine human rights and modernize its state-run economy.
Whether he can galvanize support for a return to power is unknown. His father ruled lavishly and repressively and benefitted from a CIA-supported coup in 1953. The late shah also had close diplomatic and military ties with Israel.
That ended in 1979, when the Iranian revolution’s leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, declared Israel an “enemy of Islam” and cut all ties. Today, the countries are arch-enemies. Israel considers Iran to be its greatest threat, citing the country’s calls for Israel’s destruction, its support of hostile militant groups on Israel’s borders and its nuclear program. Iran denies accusations by Israel and its western allies that it is pursuing a nuclear bomb.
“I want the people of Israel to know that the Islamic Republic does not represent the Iranian people. The ancient bond between our people can be rekindled for the benefit of both nations,” Pahlavi said on Twitter.
(AP)
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6 Responses
shame hosting an enemy…..
If Mr. Pahlavi wants to meet Persian Jews, why doesn’t he come to Great Neck?
@Sara Rifka-he is not an enemy. He and his family are good people and friends of the Jewish community then and now.
Iran was friends with Israel before the Shah was exiled with help from Satan’s seed Jimmy Carter.
Life for the Jews in Iran during the reign of the Shah was good.
I am quite proud that he is coming to visit us.
@huju-has he been invited?????? See if Mayor Bral would invite him
The “light of Aryans”…
Is this what you call friendly to Jews? A bond between a predominantly Muslim nation and Hitler’s Third Reich may seem surprising, but Reza Shah’s determination made it possible. “Reza Shah proudly howled whenever he got the chance that his people were not lowly Semites like their Jewish or Arab neighbors, but pure-blooded Aryans – same as the Germans. He made sure the world got this message, too. In 1935 he issued a proclamation to the League of Nations that “henceforth” the country of Persia would be called Iran – the name reaching back in time to the country’s ancient roots and the Sanskrit phrase “Airyanem Vaejah,” or “Home of the Aryans.”
In quick response, Germany bestowed their seal of racial purity on the kingdom: the pernicious Nuremberg Laws that had made anti-Semitism the law of the land, were amended. Iranians, the Nazi’s racial nit-pickers formally adjudicated in 1936, were to be considered as Aryan as any full-blooded German.
This happy kinship received further cultural staying power from the fact that the swastika was emblazoned all over Germany, from the flag to the uniforms of its goose-stepping battalions. It was the iconic emblem of the Third Reich. Yet millennial before the crisscrossed geometric design had been designated as the calling card of the Nazi Party, it had been a commonplace good luck symbol in Eurasia; the word, “swastika,” can be traced back to sacred Sanskrit texts. The swastika had decorated Persian art since the time of Zoroaster, carved into ancient stone columns, etched into tribal pottery. Now, however, this historical accident was deliberately seen as something more – further proof of the deep-seated Aryan ties between the people of the Reza Shah and, as the German chancellor was called with deference in Iran, Hitler Shah.
But Reza Shah’s affection for the Nazis had other deep roots, too. An emperor setting out to do nothing less than establish a dynasty, he was by necessity a practical statesman. He wanted, needed, to be on the side that was winning. In the opening years of the war, the Nazis had not only blitzkrieged across Europe, but seemed poised to take control of the Middle East.
This is not how you achieve piece in the middle east, I may have felt something a lil sadistic when seeing the picture of 2 men at a recent event. Perhaps…