© Awful Avalanche
There is a fascinating Proto-Indo-European etymology, with a succulent twist involving a possible Germanic cognate [...] never mind, I'll save that for a different day.
Anyhow, our old friend Evgeny Krutikov is back with this very interesting op-ed. The topic is the heir to the Iranian throne, why the Israelis are counting on him to replace Ayatollah Khamenei, and why it ain't gonna happen.
One does to admit, however, that Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi is the spitting image of his dad:
© Salvatore Di Nolfi/EPA/TACC
In Persian, Reza is known as the Shah-Zade, the heir to the throne. He is 64 years old, resides in the U.S., and has called upon the Iranian people to rise up on his behalf, return him to the throne. Where he and his sponsor Israel can get to work dismembering the Persian Empire once and for all, replacing it with obedient, ethnically-based pro-Israel satraps.
Reza was only 19 years old when, in 1979, his father the Shah was shooed out of Iran. The young man proceeded to get a good education, earning several academic degrees, including one in Political Science.
© alamyLeila Pahlevi.
Apart from Reza, the rest of the Shah's family did not fare so well. In 2001 the Shah's daughter, Leila, who lived in Paris, committed suicide. Leila was a true beauty and worked as a Valentino fashion model. She suffered from debilitating psychological issues, including anorexia and bulimia; and was also a drug addict.
Ten years later, Reza's younger brother Ali Reza, living in Boston, also committed suicide. Like his sister, Ali suffered from clinical depression and shot himself.
This left just Reza, the Crown Prince. Unlike his siblings, he has always been sound of mind and very active politically. Israel's attack against his country gave him great hope that the regime would be swept away, and he would be able to return as the Shah. His chances of succeeding in this endeavor are roughly zero.
To be sure, Krutikov concedes, there is a certain amount of nostalgia, within Iran itself, for the era of the Shah. This nostalgia, plus a certain segment of public opinion, is what fed the false hope to the Israelis and their American sponsors. A certain segment of the Iranian middle class do indeed chafe at the Theocracy and wish they could live the lives of "ordinary people" in, say Europe. Enjoying the kind of personal liberties which people have in the "free" world. Life under the Shah was not all bad, because there was some modernization going on, and even some growth seen in the economy. It is fashionable to post nostalgic photographs of the "Shah" period when the streets of Tehran were filled with sporty-looking convertibles, and pretty Iranian girls in jeans and mini-skirts strolled freely with no fashion police to stop and punish them.
Despite the nostalgia though, nobody actually wants to return to that era of total corruption, class divisions, and the arbitrary rule of the secret police. Therefore, any monarchist impulses in modern-day Iran are just marginal and enjoy no mass public support. And that was true even before Israel launched its attack.
There are other Oppositionists besides the Monarchists, but none of these fractions are able to work together to build a cohesive alternative to the regime of the Ayatollas. This was shown during the mass protests of 2022, sparked by the deaths, in police custody, of several young women accused of degenerate behavior. The demonstrations erupted under the slogans: "Woman. Life. Freedom." The protests showed some promise of becoming massive but soon fizzled due to political differences among the various Opps factions.
© Awful AvalancheMossad Chief David Barnea.
Clearly the Israelis don't get it. They seriously miscalculated this part of the plan. For this, as for many failures of intelligence, Mossad chief David Barnea is to blame. It is such an elementary mistake to start a war whose victory depends on an unknown factor: the wishful hope of the target population rising up against their own leader. Either Barnea was given completely wrong information on this score, or he simply misinterpreted the information that was fed to him.
Crown Prince Reza also made a huge mistake, back in 2023, when he visited Israel. He participated in some events dedicated to the Holocaust, while meeting with Netanyahu and Gila Gamliel. No high-ranking Iranian had ever touched foot in the hated Israel before, and this visit earned him the sobriquet, in Teheran, of "the Zionist puppet". And this nickname is not just some propaganda trope or empty slogan. Ordinary Iranians feel this very deeply and considered that Reza had tried to legitimize the Israeli government, which they consider to be an illegal entity. If he wanted to be popular with his own people, the Crown Prince would have done better to just stay in America.
Adding fuel to the fire, Reza's daughter Iman married a Jewish-American businessman named Bradley Sherman. This marriage is a purely secular event and should not really have any bearings on anything; and yet this event completely ruined Reza's image in the eyes of the Iranian people, confirming their sense that he is nothing more than a Zionist puppet. [yalensis: Not since Queen Esther married Artaxerxes has the Persian royal house accepted a Jew into its ranks. That we know of...]
© Awful Avalanche
One small faction continued to oppose both sides, both the Ayatollas and the Pahlavis. But they are not willing to throw their support to the West without some kind of guarantees that the new regime will be better than the current one.
Crown Prince Reza has some understanding of these political dynamics. Therefore, he has strived to separate himself and his hopes for a restoration of the monarchy, from the ongoing Israel-Iran war. Claiming that the Israelis are not actually at war against the Iranian people. This illogic falls on deaf ears and is not at all what the Persians want to hear from their alleged Crown Prince. For obvious reasons, Reza has not been able to bring himself to outright condemn Israel, which is what they actually want to hear from him. And so they see, very clearly, that Reza Pahlavi is a traitor.
The Iranians, again, are not stupid. They saw what happened to their neighbors Iraq and Syria, and they know that the Israeli plan is to chop them up into ethnic/religious enclaves. Whereas they prefer to go on being a multinational, multiethnic empire. An empire with a history much longer than that of Israel, for that matter.
Since Reza is not allowed to criticize Israel, then he will never be King of the Persians.
Which also shows how dumb the Israelis are, in not understanding the mentality of the Persians. The fact that they thought, when the first rockets started falling, that the Iranians would rise up and support them. And put their puppet back on the throne! Who knew that the allegedly clever Israelis engaged in such utopian thinking?
Reader Comments
Rom 2: 29 No, a man is a Jew because he is one inwardly , and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man’s praise does not come from men, but from God.
Jeremiah 4:4
Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and remove the foreskins of your hearts , O men of Judah and people of Jerusalem. Otherwise, My wrath will break out like fire and burn with no one to extinguish it, because of your evil deeds.”
Deuteronomy 10:16
Circumcise your hearts , therefore, and stiffen your necks no more.
Philippians 3:3
For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh—
They are blind that the change had been written and prophesied long before it happened.
Hebrews 7:11Now if perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood (for on this basis the people received the law), why was there still need for another priest to appear —one in the order of Melchizedek and not in the order of Aaron? 12 For when the priesthood is changed, the law must be changed as well. 13He of whom these things are said belonged to a different tribe, from which no one has ever served at the altar.…
God said the temple would be destroyed so the second temple being built was not concentrated by God nor is the planned 3rd
On the other hand, they could not have stolen their gold so easily then ...