Reza Pahlavi - Regime Quotes

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The current regime is, by any measure, the standard-bearer and global poster child for militancy, brute autocracy and corruption. If they are in fact students of my father, his ultimate act of refusing suppressive bloodshed in favor of exile should be their test.

Reza Pahlavi
Sanctions in themselves can not be enough, because if you weaken society, while you weaken the regime, it has less means to really combat [the government]. If [the opposition] is reinforced and reinvigorated, then the whole dynamics of the situation is changed.

Reza Pahlavi
The regime's ban on coverage by international media, its treatment of reporters and draconian restrictions on their activities and maligning them as agents of imperialism is actually testimony to the effectiveness of these media.

Reza Pahlavi
The idea of reform has been discredited and came to an ultimate dead end. It was unthinkable that this regime could ever reform itself. There is no process of change that could come from within.

Reza Pahlavi
The world is facing a regime today that is totalitarian, racist, fascist, and yet what has been done about it?

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
One has to look at the fundamental nature of the clerical regime in order to understand its true and ultimate intentions. Since its advent in 1979, the regime's leaders – starting with Khomeini himself – set out to export their radical ideology to the region and beyond. The primary mission (raison d'être) of the regime is to convert other regimes to its own mold with the goal of establish a modern-day Islamic Shi'ite Caliphate. It is so stated and defined in its Constitution as well as that of the Pasdaran's (Revolutionary Guards).

Reza Pahlavi
The regime is not reformable. We tried it for 20 years. The central issue is to do away with the theocracy. A secular government is a prerequisite to democracy. It's in the best interest of the clerical establishment, too: the sanctity of religion has been most damaged by religious governance. The regime has been presenting everyone secular as anti-religion. The violence has been committed in the name of religion.

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
The regime has cleverly tried to play the nationalistic card, arguing for the nation's sovereign rights to nuclear energy. Indeed, no one in the world has challenged Iran's sovereign right to nuclear energy; rather it has demanded more transparency in order to demonstrate its lack of ambition beyond the peaceful use of nuclear technology. This transparency is what the regime is lacking.

Reza Pahlavi
For three decades the regime has been effective in squashing its citizenry and monopolizing all communications with the outside world. That must end. Let us remember that the iron curtain could also not have fallen without the tacit support of the free world. Iranians too deserve this same kind of help.

Reza Pahlavi
I encourage investment in technologies that increase communication with the Iranian people. America in particular needs to increase the available mediums of dialogue with the Iranian people by strengthening the ability of the Iranian people to access news and information and to overcome the electronic censorship and monitoring efforts of the Iranian regime... This renewed dialogue would allow the world to demonstrate its solidarity with the democracy-seeking Iranian people. It would also improve the accuracy of the information received from Iran. But perhaps most importantly, improving these technologies would allow the Green Movement within Iran to communicate, organize and mobilize much more efficiently.

Reza Pahlavi
The regime maintains its suffocating grip over the citizens by using brute force and repression of dissent. Gruesome acts of public executions are barbaric methods and chilling reminders of the fate of dissenters in Iran. Through fear and humiliation, the regime commands submission. Public stoning of women and the execution of underage youth are revolting reminders of the regime's callous disregard for human life, dignity and civility.

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
The choice of future government should be left to the Iranian people to decide in a free election... What form it ultimately takes is up to them. The essential point to me is that there is no way we can achieve our aspirations as a nation unless we have a secular regime, as opposed to this theocracy... Without a clear separation of the state and religion you cannot have the beginning of any form of democratic system.

Reza Pahlavi
I don't doubt ever that this regime will end... There is no question about that. The question is when and at what cost and how can we help expedite the process to reduce the toll and the cost to our nation.

Reza Pahlavi
Last summer, the people of Iran achieved something unprecedented in the history of the 31-year-old Islamic Republic. For the first time, the Iranian people coordinated mass-scale demonstrations against this totalitarian theocratic regime. These demonstrations and protests continue even today, questioning – well beyond the election results of last June – the very legitimacy of the regime and the so-called Supreme Leader Khamenei.

Reza Pahlavi
[The current Iranian regime is like] a combination of Hitler, the Soviets and apartheid which treats minorities and even women in a fascist manner. Yet the world seems to do nothing about it. This is odd to me.

Reza Pahlavi
I believe we can find unanimity among a diverse group of forces for the elimination of a system in which the regime tries everything to claim legitimacy... We are waiting for this boycott to show that the regime is only hanging on by sheer terror. The last time Iran voted, the regime was not even willing to tolerate its own candidates. There is no more faith in its system.

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
… a military strike would only delay Iran's efforts to become a nuclear power, and we would still have the same regime in place. In order to fundamentally resolve the issue, we need to support the forces within Iran that want to topple the regime.

Reza Pahlavi
The regime has completely disregarded its own kind. The crackdown during Ashura, one of the holiest days in Shia Islam, was an unprecedented offense to people's deepest beliefs. So they cannot appeal to their own religious base. Even conservatives realize that by now.

Reza Pahlavi
I have vociferously rejected and expressed my opposition to any kind of military action against my homeland! There is a much better way – far less costly and more legitimate – to put an end to the principal source of militancy in our region: Supporting the people of Iran, as the most natural ally to the free world in their quest to rid themselves of the clerical regime. A combination of domestic pressure coupled with a cohesive international economic and diplomatic pressure will enable the people of Iran, an army in place, to rid themselves of the regime. It however very much concerns me that due to the mounting domestic problems the regime is faced with, it may in fact invite and seek such a confrontation.

Reza Pahlavi
Our youth have defied and derided a regime which is not mindful of their future but is obsessed with the hereafter. The Iranian youth keep defending their right to live their age and the epoch in which they are born; that is to say in a world flourished by science and learning, and not mourning and martyrdom.

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
The ruling clerics have repeatedly accused those of us striving for a secular alternative of leading a campaign against religion. This is, of course, not true. On the contrary, I would argue that it is in fact in the interest of religion and the clergy itself to have a separation of religion from government. Many of our high-ranking, non-governmental clergymen have attested to this fact for many years. Since the advent of Islam in Iran, the biggest harm done, not only to people, but to the faith itself, has been under this so-called Islamic regime – which I frankly prefer to call the anti-Islamic regime!

Reza Pahlavi
The cataclysmic shift the clerical regime brought to my homeland and the region over 30 years ago was immediate. The destabilization of the Middle East began as soon as the revolutionary regime of Iran established itself and set out to implement its foremost mission: to export its brand of Islamic rule and Revolution beyond Iran's borders, targeting the Middle East first.

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
Of course Iranians don't hate Israel. The regime wants you to think so. Our nations share a biblical relationship since the times of Cyrus, who helped the Jewish people in their hour of need. This is our hour of need. We're asking Israel's help to free us from our tyrannical regime. Are you going to help us, or are you going to bomb us?

Reza Pahlavi