Anti Communists

"I must enforce the Iranian laws, which are designed to combat communism. This is a very real and dangerous problem for Iran- and, indeed, for the other countries in my area and in the Western world. It may be that when this serious menace is removed, the laws can be changed, but that will not be soon. In any case, the complaints and recent disturbances originate among the very troublemakers against whom the laws have been designed to protect our country. They are really just a tiny minority, and have no support among the vast majority of Iranian people."

"The Shah's rule was a mixture of failures and successes; neither all one nor all the other. Some of the vaunted economic and developmental achievements were impressive- others were shallow and superficial. But in the end the important failures were primarily political- the Shah had no programme for restoring representative government and his only solution for dissent was repression. If he had succeeded in making the monarchy truly popular, perhaps he could have sustained that for a time- but instead the monarchy became more remote and disconnected from the attitudes and concerns of ordinary Iranians."

"Nixon has the audacity to tell me to do nothing in the interest of my country until he dictactes where that interest lies. At the same time he threatens me that failure to follow his so-called advice will be to jeopardize the special relations between our two countries. I say to hell with such special relations."

"Thank God we in Iran have neither the desire nor the need to suffer from democracy."

"We were wrong to believe that the British are our friends. You are obsessed solely with yout own selfish interests and treat us as a people beyond the pale. But your attitude is a matter of profound disinterest. Your democratic system has already erupted into chaos. We shall soon overtake you and in a decade you will be struggling in our wake. Perhaps then you will remember how you treated us."

"I have learned by experience that a tragic end awaits anyone who dares cross swords with me; Nasser is no more, John and Robert Kennedy died at the hands of assassins, their brother Edward has been disgraced, Krushchev was toppled, the list is endless."

"He [the King of Morocco] spends half his time asleep and the rest of it buried between the legs of the fairer sex."

"We may be delighted to see Israel putting the Arabs in their place, but we have repeatedly condemned their occupation of Arab territory."

"For all its apparent tolerance, the USA maintains a peculiar balance between the forces of capitalism and democracy. To achieve this I feel sure the country is guided by some hidden force; an organization working in secrecy, powerful enough to dispose of the Kennedys and of anyone else who gets in its way."

"Better that he take risks than that he ends up a shrinking violet like Ahmad Shah Qajar."

"If [the British] have the fucking audacity to advise me ever again, I shall fuck them so rigid that they'll think twice before crossing my path in future."

"The consequences of the Ayatollah's blood-thirsty fiasco could be disastrous for the whole of Islam and particularly for Shiism. The systematic destruction, in the name of religion, of a state and a society which vigilantly safeguarded the peace, could have effects in this part of the world which would be disastrous for sincere believers of the Koran, and even for those who believe less wholeheartedly. The murderous megalomania and the agitation of Qom, combined with the miserable dictatorship of a handful of mollahs, are, I insist, all in direct contradiction with the essential principles of Islam."

"Government by inquisition has never been good. However, since January 1979, our country has been under the yoke of inquisitorial power. Five centuries after the Spanish Inquisition, Iran is living under the terror of a new Torquemada who is more pitiless and more sinister than its predecessor. In fact the Inquisition tribunals did not sentence men to be executed unless they were known to be heretics. They had the opportunity to recant and to repent; and they would call witnesses, which the Iranian Torquemada does not allow. The tribunals are said to be Islamic. But the truth cannot be overlooked, and genuine Islamic law insists on the right of an accused man to defend himself. Islam is never served by hatred, vengeance and murder, but by justice, goodness, forgiveness and high moral standards. This explosion of hatred, supposedly "in the name of God", is an insult to God and to our religion. And this insult, I repeat, unfortunately threatens to do great harm to Islam, just as the Inquisition did great harm to Catholicism."

"Since the beginning of 1979, it has often been said that the Shiite religion, like the ephemeral French Republic of 1792 is "one and indivisible". Nothing could be further from the truth. Those in power do not represent the élite of the hierarchy. Narrow-minded and mediocre, they are as far removed as it is possible to be from the noble ideas of the Prophet. They are ignorant of essential political, economic and social realities of the day, but nonetheless they claim to legislate."

"Let the dog bark; the moon shall beam on."

"At no time during my reign were there more than 3,164 so-called political prisoners, most of whom were terrorists. Since February, it is certain that tens of thousands of men and women have been arrested and imprisoned under frequently inhumane conditions."

"You approach the Mullahs as if they are normal people. They are not. You see them in your own image; you should not."

"Nixon is a strong leader with a good grasp of the world's problems. He knows that the only way to argue with the communists is from a position of strength."

"It is a fact that throughout my reign, representatives of the Red Cross were allowed to visit the kingdom's prisons at liberty. Our penitentiaries were open to all official investigators. Every prisoner's lawyer knew the details of the charges against his client, and had time in which to prepare his defence and find the necessary witnesses. Finally, a condemned man had the right of appeal, after which I often exercised my right of pardon. It is no longer like this. The so-called "Islamic tribunals" are an insult to the elevated principles of the Koran."

"Yugoslavia is, with Iran, the only country which under difficult, not to say agonising, circumstances stood up to Joseph Stalin. It was not easy to unite ethnic groups or to modernize a country like Yugoslavia, and it must be acknowledged that Marshal Tito achieved something extraordinary. May God grant that his successors be as capable as he."

"I wish to salute the intransigent patriotism and the unflinching determination for independence of the Roumanian president. I was allied to him by a true friendship."

"As for King Hussein of Jordan, I cannot praise him enough. He is not only a friend, but a brother. His qualities as a man and his goodness of heart are enhanced by great courage and a true love of his country."

"... I have always endeavoured, as my double duty of believer and sovereign dictated, to follow the precepts of the sacred Book of Islam: precepts of balance, justice and moderation. Although my religious education was very literal, in that I learnt to understand the precepts of the Koran precisely according to the text, we have seen that on several occasions throughout my life, I have felt myself to be very particularly in the hands of the Almighty."

"It was always with great pleasure that I met the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie who had shown great patriotic energy in his resistance to Italy. Our conversations were frank and animated and I occasionally hazarded to suggest various reforms to him. I was a young student when I heard him unsuccessfully defend his country from the rostrum of the League of Nations at Geneva. The League of Nations was powerless and today the United Nations is no more effective. What has happened to Ethiopia?"

"I am tied by a very solid friendship to President Senghor. He is a statesman of international standing and a remarkable administrator, a master of the French language and an authentic poet. I spoke to him at length about the "negritude" which is a genuine doctrine of cultural synthesis. It echoed profoundly in me since, throughout my life, I have delved ceaselessly back to the deepest and most ancient roots of my own country."

"I am convinced that the majority of the religious hierarchy today deplores the hardship inflicted on our people. I am referring not only to the martyrs but of the families who have been dispersed and terrified, who have no resources, and to the four million unemployed who are suffering from the economic chaos of a country which only a year earlier was giving employment to a million foreigners. Those who have chosen to serve God must feel profoundly sad at seeing ridicule poured on the most sacred principles of our religion."

"My friend, Hassan II,... is a sovereign of rare intellectual qualities. He is a descendant of the Prophet and holds a doctorate of Law from the University of Bordeaux and thus, perfectly combines two cultures, the European and the Koranic. It is superflous to add that I pray for him and his loyal people."

"Nikita Khruschev was a difficult man to deal with, often very hard, always determined. But his peasant side which made him alternatively good-natured and cunning, also made him likeable."

"All ideological differences set apart, I cannot help having a sincere admiration for Mr Brezhnev. He is to all appearances an outstanding diplomat. He abides by the policy of peaceful co-existence as laid down by the Helsinki agreement. And he has succeeded in making his country as powerful as it is today: the first nuclear power in the world, soon to be he first maritime power; as for the land and air forces, their superiority is so great that it bears no comparison."

"Mossadeq, the orator, is difficult to judge as a politician because of the perpetual contradictions between his words and his acts, and because of his sudden changes of mood from elation to depression before one's very eyes. His absolute certainty, violently expressed in hysterical speeches, would turn to tears and sobbing. He had frequent "diplomatic" illensses and he played out macabre comedies in which he would exclaim: "I am a-dying..." and so forth. He has been compared to Robespierre, to Renzi and even to characters from the Commedia dell' Arte."

"No doubt history will say that Eisenhower was a soldier. For my part, I will remember, above all, his goodness. He was a fundamentally good man who knew how to be loved by the Americans. I was fond of Ike."

"A situation in Asia that was not without considerable promise for the USA was to become far more threatening in 1979. The overthrow, in the face of mass-demonstrations, of the Shah of Iran, who left Tehran on 16 January 1979, and his replacement by a theocratic state hostile to the USA, combined with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 1979 to create a highly volatile situation that posed problems for analysts. There was the prospect, first, that the USA might lose the struggle for regional hegemony and, secondly, that this might have wider consequences across Asia. Although authoritarian and prone to initiatives that were not always welcome, Iran was America’s leading ally in South Asia, an opponent to Arab radicalism, and a block to Soviet expansionism and that of Iraq, a key Soviet ally. The USA had used Iran to support the Kurds against Iraq, and, in 1973, to send troops to help the Sultan of Oman overcome left-wing rebels based in the region of Dhofar, rebels backed by Communist powers. Iran was also a major purchaser of American arms, and a key oil exporter. Under the Shah, it had long played a central role in the forward containment of the Soviet Union, not least by providing important radar bases to screen the southern Soviet Union. After the collapse of Iran, the Americans fell back upon Israel."

"Henry Kissinger is possessed of a truly superior intelligence, in addition to which he has two qualities which, unfortunately, many great men lack: he is able to listen and he has a very subtle sense of humour."

"I cannot avoid wondering about the feelings of those who are now the apparent rulers of Iran. They are, despite their mistakes and the crimes which they have instigated, men of faith who claim to be sent by God. I hope they will eventually realize that the revolution which they believe they have brought about is not to the glory of God, but serves the forces of evil."

"The great powers claim that whatever they possess is theirs by right, but whatever we, the smaller countries possess is negotiable."

"My father loved us dearly and deeply. There were eleven of us and our love for him was full of admiration. We held him in a kind of respectful awe, so powerful and formidable did he seem. I soon learned that beneath the exterior of a rough cavalryman he had a very good heart."

"The world petroleum story is one of the most inhuman known to man: in it, elementary moral and social principles are jeered at. If powerful oil trusts no longer despoil and humiliate our country it is not because these predators have become human, but because we have won a hard-fought battle which has been going on since the beginning of the century."

"One of my chief "crimes" then, was to have wanted Iran to move from the oil age into the atomic age before it was too late. Must I blush for that? The peaceful use of nuclear energy did not create problems for radiation and contamination for us since we have vast stretches of desert... I was accused of having adopted the plans for nuclear power stations among others for reasons of "personal ambition". Was it not obvious that I would be dead before most of these plans had been carried out? Why speak of personal ambition then? It was rather a question of forseeing Iran's needs. My "personal" ambitions are known to all men of good faith - to preserve national unity, to make the Iranian people as happy as possible and to prepare a more peaceful future."

"Iran, because of the great leadership of the Shah, is an island of stability in one of the most troubled areas of the world. This is a great tribute to you, Your Majesty, and to your leadership and to the respect and admiration and love which your people give to you. We have no other nation on earth... closer to us in planning our mutual military security. We have no other nation with whom we have closer consultation on regional problems that concern us both. And there is no leader with whom I have a deeper sense of personal gratitude and personal friendship."

"I did not share the enthusiasm of certain politicians for the National Front leader, it was because I had noticed, in the past, some strange contradictions between Mossadeq's declared ends and his actions. Officially he defended nationalist anti-colonialism and was the most intransigent patriot who declared that no concessions or advantages should be granted to foreign powers. He described his doctrine as a "negative balance" and in fact his greatest failing was that he was negative."

"They say that martial law] would have cost my country less than the bloody anarchy which is there now. I can only reply that it is easy to play the prophet a posteriori and that a sovereign may not save his throne by shedding his compatriots' blood. A dictator can, because he acts, because he acts in the name of an ideology which he believes must triumph whatever the price. But a sovereign is not a dictator. There is an alliance between him and his people which he cannot break. A dictator has nothing to hand over. Power lies in him, and in him alone. A sovereign receives a crown and it is his duty to pass it on."

"I wanted to build up Iran while we still had oil and thus to guarantee the life of the country after our oil reserves were exhausted. Therein lay the solution. We had to move fast, we had no time to spare. Finally, it is unquestionable that the oil lobby contributed actively to my downfall."

"I envisaged future generations of Iranians proudly taking their rightful place among the vast family of nations, and fulfilling their responsibilities with dignity. I hoped to see dispelled for ever the medieval shadows from which Iran had emerged only half a century ago, and that the light which is the very essence of Iranian civilization and culture would prevail. Throughout my reign, I lived only for the realization of this dream which was beginning to become reality. It will be seen that I worked tirelessly and keenly to this end. I had ceaselessly to struggle against all sorts of obstacles and difficulties. I had to confront innumerable plots and intrigues both inside the country and abroad. I combated the all-powerful, multi-national trusts and cartels when all my advisers warned me against such challenges. I may have made mistakes, of course, but this long battle was not one of them."

"No people can live in the past - not even in its own past. But if it no longer has a link with its history, it must of necessity perish. Persia, crowded with hardship and glory, ordeals and hopes. With the help of the Almighty, the lessons of the past constitute the best guide for the citizens of the future."

"It is woman's peculiar gifts, as well as man's, which make nonesense of any literal-minded notion of 'equality' of the sexes. Nobody could do greater harm to woman's real progress than to confuse 'equality' on the one hand with 'equality of opportunity' on the other. The Moslem religion and all the other great world faiths teach the complementary relationship of man and woman. They all reject the idea of their being 'equal' in the sense of identical or synonymous. Observation and common sense teach the same truths."

"I am continually amused by the Communist argument that the United States tries to prevent the less-developed countries from industrializing in order to keep them subservient to herself. In our extended dealings with the American aid authorities, we have never found this to be the case; on the contrary, they have helped us with a wide variety of industrial projects, including those that compete directly with American industries. The Americans have enough sense to prefer strong and prosperous friends, and they realize that their most lucrative international trade is with other highly industrialized countries, not with weak and backward ones."

"I will frankly confess that I was convinced that God had ordained me to do certain things for the service of my nation, things that perhaps could not be done by anyone else. In whatever I have done and whatever I do in the future, I consider myself as an agent of the will of God."

"I remember that on one occasion Mossadegh swooned in the midst of a speech to our Parliament. When a hastily summoned doctor started to loosen his clothes, Mossadegh instantly revived enough to clap his hand over his wallet. The old hypocrite had not been unconscious at all ; he was merely pretending in the hope of impressing his audience. I think this incident, observed by many, illustrates one of Mossadegh's cardinal characteristics- namely, his insincerity."

"In examining any dictatorship, there are two good tests. Firstly, what is the relation between the rulers and the proletariat or common people? Are the rulers members of the proletariat, as they would have you believe? Do they even identify their interests with those of ordinary citizens? The truth seems to be that, no matter where you find them, the so-called proletarian dictatorships are actually controlled by a small elite who ordinarily lose little sleep in worrying about the rights of the common man. Secondly, have the proletariat any effective say in what the rulers do? In the proletarian dictatorships I am familiar with, ordinary people enjoy little or no control over their Government or over their own lives and futures."

"... contrary to what many believed, my father was kind and tenderhearted, especially towards his family. His forbidding sternness seemed to melt into love, kindness, and easy familiarity when he was with us. Especially with me, his acknowledged successor to the throne, he would play lightheartedly. When we were alone together, he would sing me little songs; I don't remember his ever doing this in front of others, but when only the two of us were there, he would often sing to me."