Times journalist Charles Bremner profiles 80-year-old Farah Pahlavi, widow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran, whose inglorious reign ended in 1979 with the birth of the Islamic Republic (A queen's treasure, The Australian, 9/2/19). Some gems from the former empress:
"In those days, Iranians were respected everywhere in the world, says the woman who was called the Jackie Kennedy of the East. 'Now you say you're from Iran and people look at you as if you'd said you come from god knows where. For 90 countries in the world, Iranians didn't need a visa. Now, even with a foreign passport they stop you at the frontier with 10,000 questions'."
"Devoting her life at a distance to the cause of the shah's orphaned people has enabled her to survive terrible knocks, she says."
"She is fueled by bitterness for the mullahs who, in her view, fomented revolution in 1978 with the connivance of communists, drove out a beloved monarch and crushed his people under Islamic dictatorship."
"Pahlavi... finds no fault in her late husband's reign. 'His Majesty', as she still calls him, was for her the wise and beloved father of a grateful nation."
"It is natural, she says, that Iranians yearn for a return of the shah. Reza [her 58-year-old son] is working from his Washington DC base to offer himself, should they want one day to restore him at the head of a constitutional monarchy."
What better example of the old adage 'They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing' than this?
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The old adage was the reason why the Bourbon kings of France were dispatched to the revolutionary guillotine.
The Shah and his family missed that one, now travel on foreign passports and live the high life on the plundered loot.
Incredibly, like the Bourbons, they long for a restoration and imagine the Iranian people want them back.
Hmmm, published in the Murdoch press, living in Washington, are they being legitimised and the public groomed for some impending neo-con scheme?
20 KILLED each month in the 12 months and close to 1000 wounded each month in the same period. Can you imagine if this was Syria or Venezuela or Iran?
More than 240 Palestinians have been killed and over 23,000 others wounded since the protests began on March 30. Two Israeli soldiers have been killed over the same period.
Thousands of Palestinians attended the funerals of teenagers Hasan Shalabi and Hamza Shteiwi in the Gaza Strip.
https://aje.io/www2j
Perhaps being groomed for 'restoration' in the eventual aftermath of the destruction of Iran?
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