Iranians want democracy, not Pahlavi restoration

It would be amusing, were it not to show how removed President Trump is from the reality, that he wishes the son of the deposed Shah to be the new ruler of Iran.

- M.D. NALAPAT

What is taking place in the Middle East is, or ought to be, a war against the clerical regime that has ruled and ruined Iran since 1979. Earlier, the Shah of Iran had been persuaded to permit his most virulent critic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to be permitted to go into exile in France rather than be imprisoned and executed the way so many critics of the Shah were. In the safety of France, supported financially by the anti-Shah emigre community in France, Ayatollah Khomeini penned one astringent essay on the Shah every other day. Copies of these were smuggled into Iran and laboriously cyclostyled and made into copies that were distributed throughout Iran. As a consequence, much to the dismay of SAVAK, the dreaded secret police of the Shah, Ayatollah Khomeini had much more influence in Iran although in exile than he ever had while in Iran.