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 became toppled withinside the Islamic Revolution of 1979, referred to as for more education for a destiny Iranian machine this is secular and democratic.
“It is truely 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 principal cities, with dozens killed, due to the fact 22-year-vintage 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 state-of-the-art repression is represented with the aid of using ladies.”
“I assume maximum Iranian ladies, once they have a take a observe the freedoms that ladies withinside the unfastened international revel in and exercise, are soliciting 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 power stimulated with the aid of using neighboring Turkey.
The remaining shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, permit 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 picks have to be respected.
“Women may also determine to put on or now no longer put on the veil. But it must be a choice, a unfastened choice, now no longer imposed for ideological or non secular reasons,” he stated.
Separation among church and state
Pahlavi, even as taking part in recognize in a whole lot of the exile community, says he isn’t always in search of to repair the monarchy, an concept that has constrained aid inner Iran.
Working with the remote places opposition, Pahlavi favors a constituent meeting that could write a brand new constitution.
“There’s no manner you could genuinely 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 notwithstanding dissent and antipathy from the West, specially the US.
But Pahlavi insisted that the machine should give up at any time — and that the arena had to be ready.
“We want to keep 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 is able to occur in some weeks or some months, and we want to consider the alternative.”
Pahlavi stated that there have to be a “managed implosion” with a smooth, non violent transition.
He praised a whole lot of the sturdy worldwide remarks at the protests, which includes from Germany and Canada.
But he referred to as for greater movement which includes the expulsion of diplomats and freezing of assets.
“It’s crucial for greater than simply giving ethical aid. These are the types of measures which can be impactful,” he stated.
He renewed his name for a strike fund to compensate workers, hoping that the national demonstrations should remodel right into a popular strike.
Pahlavi, even as helping diplomacy, voiced misgivings over a capability go back with the aid of using the US to the 2015 nuclear deal beneathneath which Iran could once more be permit to promote oil overtly on worldwide markets.
Western powers frequently agree with they can “create an incentive for the regime to extrade its behavior, so we will drag them lower back to be properly boys and behave,” Pahlavi stated.
But the Islamic republic, he stated, is rooted in exporting an ideology.
“With this regime, you can’t you can’t have a coexistence.”