Crown Prince of Iran says Islamic regime weaker than ever, and the people are ready to revolt
Reza Pahlavi believes Iran is ripe for a revolution.
As the eldest son of the last Shah of Iran, the 63-year-old Crown Prince is on a mission to drive the radical Islamic men who overthrew his father 45 years ago out of power and replace them with a secular democracy chosen by and for the Iranian people.
His Royal Highness says the Islamic regime is weaker than ever before and that the Iranian people are hungry for change.
"The fight for freedom and liberty is a cause that never ends until it's done," Pahlavi told CBN News.
Now, he's warning the United States and Western powers to not be fooled by the election of Iran's new President Masoud Pezeshkian.
"We call this the circus of elections in Iran," Pahlavi said.
Pahlavi is the regime's most vocal and prominent critic. He calls Pezeshkian a "lackey" handpicked by a radical Muslim system bent on keeping Iranians in a constant state of repression and fear.
"In all these years, it really didn't matter who was presented because all the shots are finally called by Khamenei, the supreme leader," he explained.
During a wide-ranging interview with CBN News, the son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, said Iranians are clamoring for political change like never before.
"The regime's own figures demonstrate that at least 73% of the population want another form of government," Pahlavi said. "I imagine the numbers are much higher than that because if it was an actual open polling you would probably have that in the 90 percentile range."
In 1979, as heir to the throne, Pahlavi was in the U.S. training to be a fighter pilot when radical Muslim leaders forced his father to relinquish the monarchy, sending the entire family into exile.
Pahlavi says the aftermath led to an Islamic-run regime that would devastate his ancestral homeland where today 60% of the people live below the poverty line.
"Forty-five years of clerical rule in the name of religion and the immediate element of persecution and the fact that our country has fallen behind in terms of being on the route towards progress, because Iran by now should have been the South Korea of the Middle East, instead it's the North Korea of the region," the Crown Prince told CBN News.
Under the mullah's reign, Iran has become a leading state sponsor of terrorism and the root cause of instability in the Middle East and beyond.
"It finances Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, all in its proxy wars, and of course, its whole network of activists they have that are doing the bidding of the regime in the outside world, even in Western capitals, intimidating and threatening journalists, members of the Jewish community or what have you as an example," Pahlavi said.
Forty-five years after the radical Muslim clerics took over the country, His Royal Highness says the mullahs of Tehran are weaker than ever before and that their legitimacy has been lost in the eyes of a majority of Iranians.
"When you lose your legitimacy, whether it's religious legitimacy or political legitimacy, then you are simply holding on by sheer repression. When you have a regime that is completely delegitimized when you have people who no longer believe in the system, even if they did at some point and they want out, that makes this system vulnerable."
Click here to read the rest of the article posted by CBN News on July 29, 2024. This portion is reposted with permission.
Click below to watch the interview.
Born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and of Indian descent, CBN News’ Senior International Correspondent and Co-Anchor, George Thomas, has been traveling the globe for more than 20 years, finding the stories of people, conflicts, and issues that must be told. He has reported from more than 100 countries and has had a front-row seat to numerous global events of our day. George’s stories of faith, struggle, and hope combine the expertise of a seasoned journalist with the inspiration of a deep calling to tell the stories of the people behind the news.
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