Iran’s Exiled Prince and Israel Urge Iranians to Fight for Freedom
Israel has made it clear its attack on Iran is targeting its nuclear capabilities and military leadership, not its citizens. Now the exiled prince, son of the late Shaw of Iran, has been joined by Israel’s former Prime Minister, calling for Iranians to rise up for freedom.
“Your time is now,” Naftali Bennet said in a video that was translated into Persian. “Your time is now to rise up against your cruel dictators. You have a horrible regime, and you’re a good nation. An old, disconnected, corrupt and egotistical regime, a regime that is cruel and incompetent. This is the time to rise up. We’ve taken out the heads of the military, the heads of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“If not now, when? There won’t be a better time. And I want to tell you something: Israel is not at war with the Iranian people. We’re at war with the regime, with the nuclear program. We respect the Iranian people.”
Former crown prince takes to social media
Adding to the calls for action, Reza Pahlavi—the exiled son of Iran’s last Shah—released his own message to Iranians this week. In a video (below) posted on social media, Pahlavi said the regime in Tehran is “finished” and it’s time for people to take back their country. “The Islamic Republic has reached its end and is falling,” he said. “Now is the time to reclaim Iran.”
He described Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as “hiding like a frightened rat” and told Iranians that the system of repression is “collapsing.” His message was blunt: don’t stand against your neighbors for a regime that’s losing its grip. He called on security forces and state workers to step aside and let change happen, insisting this is a moment that won’t come again.
“All it takes now is a nationwide uprising to put an end to this nightmare once and for all,” Pahlavi said. He urged Iranians to unite and resist, saying the chance for a different, democratic future was at hand, especially as Israel steps up pressure on Iran’s rulers.
Iran, originally known as Persia, is one of the oldest civilizations in the world. It’s emperor Cyrus the Great, who ruled in the sixth century B.C. and expanded his empire until it was the largest in world history at the time, was one of the most tolerant rulers in history. He is highly respected among the Jewish people for freeing them from the Babylonian Empire and permitting them to return to Israel and Jerusalem and rebuild their temple.
Before the Islamic revolution of 1979, Iran had good relations with Israel. The country was Western by all standards, and women enjoyed all the freedoms of democratic nations.
Then came the Islamic Revolution headed by the Ayatollah. But the visceral hatred of Israel and Jews, evidenced by the Islamic regime, has been clear from the inception of its rule. This is better characterized than Iran being the only country in the world that objected to a 2022 United Nations resolution that condemned the denial and distortion of the Holocaust.
In 2012, former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, speaking at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said, “In a private discussion we held in Tehran in October of 2000, Ali Khamenei told me that Israel must be burned to the ground and made to disappear from the face of the earth,” adding that Khamenei declared that “Iran’s war against the United States and Israel is inevitable.”
–Metro Voice and wire services
