Reza Pahlavi - Country Quotes

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My preoccupation is not running for office. We are trying to liberate our country first. Then I am ready to serve my compatriots in whatever capacity. If they want me to play a more important role, so be it.

Reza Pahlavi
Almost 50 million of the country's 70 million population are young people under 30 years. They have access to information about what is going on in the world. They understand just how bad are the things now occurring in Iran. I think soon my countrymen will realize that the present regime does not care about ordinary people but cares exclusively for itself. Besides, we have opposition cells throughout the world, since many Iranians left their homeland after the revolution. With them, as well as with the opposition inside the country, we are in close contact.

Reza Pahlavi
Of course [the opposition] can be supported! I mean, for God's sake, from Solidarity in Poland to the ANC in South Africa… there was a great degree of support. But they [the Poles and South Africans] did it. It was not some foreign country doing it.

Reza Pahlavi
The current regime is trumping the Shiite-Sunni card, pitting national minorities at each other's throat. However Iran is a country which for centuries accorded welcome to people of different nationalities and faiths. So when we come to power, national minorities will have their rights guaranteed. The present regime creates too many complexities like terrorism, economic instability, nuclear menace, extremism. When it clears the stage, 90 percent of world problems will be resolved.

Reza Pahlavi
[The Islamic Republic] is completely at odds with what the people of Iran stand for. There is a generational battle taking place. There is a flight of capital from Iran; the people of Iran are clear as to the consequences. They look at it as a whole-our country is going down and all of our resources are being badly managed by corrupt officials. The people of Iran are committed to putting an end to it. This regime will not survive-I have no doubt about that, but it should be at the hands of the Iranian people and not foreign intervention. Right now, we need to help the people help themselves.

Reza Pahlavi
My country, Iran, is youthful in its demographic properties, rich with a multi millennia culture and an alive and vibrant society. In our defiance of the ruling theocracy, my compatriots need and deserve all the moral help and support they can get in order to bring about fundamental change by establishing a system of governance that is in keeping with the imperatives of our time: a secular democracy in place of the current ruling theocracy.

Reza Pahlavi
Make no mistake; the people of Iran will not risk their lives for a candidate, but rather for the dream of human rights, freedom, democracy and ultimately a better life. Like all great enduring movements, this is about ideas, and for this reason the most profound slogan being chanted is: We don't want our votes back! We want our country back!

Reza Pahlavi
… a good university where one can study in peace and freedom may seem common place to you. But not so for many thousands of students in my homeland whose eager young minds remain constrained and constantly shackled by a closed and dogmatic atmosphere that has been ruthlessly imposed on them by an unpopular dictatorship. Consequently, universities in my country are not places for critical learning, and students are not given the kind of opportunities that they need to freely debate contemporary issues or contemplate the shape of the future in the manner that is common practice here in the West.

Reza Pahlavi
Violence is useless. Civil disobedience is a necessary and effective tool to get the job done. The system must be paralyzed and national reconciliation facilitated. A police State can not control a massive uprising. Iranians, in particular the youth, are aware of what is going on in the world. The regime is archaic. The country is on the brink of explosion. But this should not happen in anarchy. What we want is a democratic and peaceful implosion. If the champion of reforms, Mohammad Khatami, couldn't do anything, it is not Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, the most detested and most corrupt individual in the country, who can bring about change. What we have is a paralyzed mafia regime.

Reza Pahlavi
We know the country, its potential, its resources, where it was and where it could have been. We should be at the level of a Taiwan or a South Korea today, not ranked 150th in the world, even though we are an oil-producing country... We should not have our Iranian rap artists say the regime is promising us yellow cake when we don't even have bread to eat.

Reza Pahlavi
External sanctions against the regime do not suffice. You have to bring into your calculation … an element of pressure from within... And the only way [to] do that is by strengthening the hand of the people inside the country.

Reza Pahlavi
My father voluntarily left the country to avoid bloodshed. He ordered the Army not to engage in skirmishes with the population. The transition happened rather peacefully. The difference now is the regime is calling on all possible coercive forces including civilian guns-for-hire. They are trying to hang on more violently as we go along. But despite the crackdown, you must admire the degree of discipline for people not to retaliate with violence. That's amazing.

Reza Pahlavi
At this crucial moment in the life of our country, I would like to offer my blood to save the inviolability of our dear native land.

Reza Pahlavi