Mother Of Slain Protester Stands Firm In Face Of 13-Year Sentence
The mother of Mohammad Javad Zahedi, a victim of last year's protests, declared "I have stood for my Mohammad until the end," after being sentenced to 13 years in prison.
The mother of Mohammad Javad Zahedi, a victim of last year's protests, declared "I have stood for my Mohammad until the end," after being sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Zahedi, 20, lost his life on September 21, 2022, during the nationwide uprising when forces of the Islamic Republic opened fire in Sari, located in the north of Iran.
His mother Mahsa Yazdani had previously been sentenced to 13 years in prison by the Revolutionary Court in Sari. The charges against her included "insulting sanctities, inciting people to disrupt national security, insulting the leadership, and engaging in propaganda against the system."
The appeals court in Mazandaran Province affirmed the verdict on Monday, indicating that the most severe part of the punishment, a five-year imprisonment term, will be enforced.
Yazdani was arrested by security forces in Sari on August 22 and was released from prison on October 6 after posting bail.
During the uprising, well over 500 protesters lost their lives as security forces brutally suppressed the masses, and thousands were rounded up and imprisoned.
Amnesty International recently disclosed a document revealing that the commander overseeing suppression in Mazandaran province had issued orders for "ruthless and deadly force" against protesters in all major and minor cities of the province.
The families of those who lost their lives in the uprising have faced numerous pressures since the beginning of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran from travel bans to jail terms.
In a three-hour interview with entrepreneur and best-selling author Patrick Bet-David -- himself of Iranian Assyrian and Armenian origin -- Pahlavi said when his father, the last shah of Iran, knew about his cancer he wanted his son to succeed to the throne but his aspiration was eclipsed by the emergence of a leftist-religious revolution that altered the course of Iran’s history.
The former crown prince, who has long campaigned for a secular and democratic Iran rather than a restoration of the monarchy, has a large fan base in Iran and abroad. During the Women, Life, Freedom protests – ignited by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022 -- Pahlavi became a leading opposition figure, but he has critics among other dissident activists who do not see him as the leader of the opposition.
Despite at least four decades of Islamic Republic propaganda to indoctrinate Iranian children and youth against the Pahlavis, Iran’s last dynasty is still revered among Iranians, who chant slogans to honor the two Pahlavi kings who reigned in the 20th century during gatherings and rallies. Reza Pahlavi enjoys support thanks to his hereditary gift, among middle aged and older Iranians, but also he is popular among the Mahsa Generation Z youth, who see him touring the world to make the voices of Iranians heard and talking about transitioning from the Islamic Republic.
Asked about if he would consider running for a position in Iran after the collapse of the Islamic Republic regime, Pahlavi emphasized that the Iranian people are the ones who should decide on the future form of the government. “In order for people to be empowered, they have to have more than hope. They have to actually believe that it can be done. I believe that it can be done.”
He argued that most Iranians share Western values and the Islamic Republic is the obstacle on Iran’s path to connect to the global community. “We (Iranians) are your allies in principle” as a democracy seeking country. He asserted, “how many democracies do you know that go to war against one another?” He argued that Iran after the Islamic Republic is a country that the world can count on as a flagbearer of peace rather than an instigator of conflicts.
Questioned by Bet-David about how he sees the colossal challenge of overthrowing clerical rule, Pahlavi said, “There was a time I didn’t think that I would possibly see the fall of the Berlin Wall in my lifetime.”
The interview was the first time Pahlavi defended some of the policies of his father, tacitly trying to vindicate the last monarch and his notorious intelligence agency SAVAK. The secret police, domestic security and intelligence service, operated from 1957 until prime minister Shapour Bakhtiar ordered its dissolution during the climax of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Pahlavi argued that many of the prisoners held by SAVAK were among thousands of Soviet KGB agents active in Iran. He charged that Iran’s current ruler Ali Khamenei was among such prisoners who had undergone training under KGB in Palestinian camp in Lebanon.
Pahlavi also talked about how the US government at the time helped the Islamic revolutionaries topple his father while Bet-David showed a video of a debate in which former US President Ronald Reagan criticized Jimmy Carter for undercutting Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi. The prince also talked about his meeting with Carter and his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1978 at the White House. According to Pahlavi, the US politicians believed the establishment of an Islamic government in Tehran can stop the spread of Communism in the region.
Asked about why Iranians revolted against his father, he said the country was progressing toward a modern era “too fast,” explaining that the advances were rejected by the clergy who were conservative about any change in the social structure of Iran. “All of a sudden you find a country, where the income per capita jumps to the level it was, and people’s purchasing power made them capable of having so much more... and then you have the resistance coming from the clergy who never liked where my father was taking the country.”
Now Iranians have the lowest purchasing power unprecedented in history while women and minorities are persecuted,and Iran is far from the goals of Iran’s monarchs who believed the country would take its place among the top five countries of the world.
