What future for Iran?
Publisher
:
Denoël
Parution date
:
2009
EAN
:
9782207261033
Number of pages
:
254
Description
Thirty years after the Islamic Revolution, the son of the last Shah of Iran speaks out about the country of his birth, the legacy of his father, and his commitment to the cause of a democratic Iran.
Reza Pahlavi was a teenager in 1979 when his father, the shah, was ousted at the start of the Iranian Islamic Revolution. In the years since, Pahlavi, who now lives in Maryland, has been a leading advocate of the principles of freedom, democracy, and human rights for Iranian citizens; he is involved with reformist activists both inside Iran and abroad. Pahlavi’s message to the international community is simple: The only choice is not between the endless negotiations, which serve only the Islamic republic, and a military option with terrible consequences first for the Middle East and then for the rest of the world. There is a third way, less costly and more legitimate. This option proposes the support of democratic forces in Iran and a genuine dialogue, not with the mullah regime but with the Iranian people.
In What Future for Iran? Pahlavi, in discussion with journalist Michel Taubmann, considers how the third option can be achieved. Among his suggestions: the institution of a democratic parliamentary system based on a monarchy or a republic, with a constitution founded on the International Declaration of Human Rights, the establishment of a lawful state guaranteeing the civil liberties of its citizens, a national reconciliation based on the model of South Africa, and finally the separation of religion from the state.
Pahlavi recognizes and discusses the faults of his father’s regime. Although he is the legitimate heir to the peacock throne, he does not seek restoration of the monarchy. What he does want is that Iranian people alone be given the right to choose the eventual form of their new system, whether that is a parliamentary monarchy, or a republic.
Author
Réza Pahlavi - Michel Taubmann : Reza Pahlavi was born on October 31, 1960, in Tehran, Iran. He was in Texas, studying to be a fighter pilot, at the time of the Islamic Revolution. He then completed his education at the University of Southern California. Pahlavi is the author of Winds of Change: The Future of Democracy in Iran (Regnery Publishing, 2002) and has given interviews to VOA Persian TV, CNN, and BBC One, as well as to international periodicals such as El-Watan, Newsweek, and Time magazine.
Michel Taubmann is a French journalist. Just after the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, he formed a think tank, Cercle de l’Oratoire, which he now leads and which produces a journal, Le Meilleur des mondes.
For more information on Pahlavi’s latest speeches and press releases, please visit his Web site: http://www.rezapahlavi.org.
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