Reza Pahlavi appeared at the French Press Club last month to continue pushing for a unified Iran behind the force of a secular democratization movement. The elder son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the late Shah of Iran, he will address a Cornell audience in the Schwartz Auditorium of Rockefeller Hall at 6:15 p.m. today.
“The speech at Cornell University will have a major policy objective for the Iranian democratic movement,” said Kamran Beigi grad who helped arrange the event.
Though a descendant of the Iranian monarchy, Pahlavi represents a youth movement calling for a national referendum to move Iran toward freedom and self-determination for its people. Pahlavi has traveled in Europe and the United States to denounce the Islamic regime that currently holds power in Iran. However, his supporters note that the situation in Iran transcends a basic split between modernism and fundamentalism.
“The current shift in the Iranian people’s attitude toward democratization will have an inevitable corresponding shift in the political structure of Iran, which in turn will have inevitable regional consequences,” Beigi said.
Since 1984, Pahlavi has lived with his wife and two daughters in Maryland. While gathering international support for the plight of those suffering from repression and inequality in Iran, Pahlavi also directs attention to world-wide terrorism, conflict and diplomacy.
Pahlavi’s talk is sponsored by the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs. It is free and open to the public.
Archived article by Matthew Hirsch