The madness of cheering for Reza Pahlavi
The madness of cheering for Reza Pahlavi is that it asks us to forget the original sin. Iran’s democracy was strangled in 1953 when the CIA and Britain helped crush Mohammad Mosaddegh after he moved to take Iranian oil back for Iranians. So when MAGA swoons over the son of the Shah at the same time Americans march in No Kings protests, the hypocrisy isn’t subtle — it’s the whole bloody point.
‘It’s biblical’: Maga anxiety over Iran war on display at CPAC as Trump skips event.
The war was, in many ways, front and centre at CPAC, largely thanks to heavy attendance by supporters of Iran’s former crown prince Reza Pahlavi. They lined the road to the hotel venue with the flags of Israel, the United States and Iran during the time of the Shah, and delivered rapturous applause when he addressed the convention.
“Donald Trump will not lose”, said 73-year-old Mehrdad Ghafar, who grew up in Iran but fled after the revolution, and appeared at CPAC wearing a cap reading: “Make Iran great again”.
“He has gone through all these kind of wars bigger than this, and he came out successful,” he said.
The Guardian
The coup they always want you to forget
Mohammad Mosaddegh was Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister in 1951.
Because he wanted to nationalise Iranian oil for the Iranian people, the CIA staged a coup and installed the brutal dictatorship of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It was this brutal regime that fomented the Islamic Revolution, in what the CIA term as ‘blowback’.
We wouldn’t be dealing with a medieval Theocracy in the first place if the CIA hadn’t played God in Iran!
MAGA, monarchy and the farce of No Kings
Reza Pahlavi is the son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and has all the legitimacy of the Vichy French Regime.
To pretend to champion democracy by resurrecting the bloodline of the puppet regime that crushed Iran’s elected government is an audacity only Republicans could attempt with a straight face.
Promoting a crown prince born of a coup while the country is erupting in No Kings protests — that is such a perfectly American piece of political derangement it almost writes itself.
