"Recently I was at my uncle’s apartment in Tehran. He was watching a documentary about the Shah on illegal satellite TV from Turkey. The narrator was talking over stock footage of how the Shah’s health corps eradicated malaria in the countryside, of how he modernised Iran’s rail infrastructure, of how he took its natural resources back from foreign interests. “Everything that is functioning in this country today is because of him and his father!” my uncle said to no-one in particular. He turned to me: “Before the Shah, your grandfather used to have to go fight people, with guns and knives, just to get a bucket of water for his family to drink. The Shah made sure that everyone had clean water.” A presenter in suit and tie appeared on the screen, sitting in front of the pre-revolutionary flag and a statue of a lion. “In the Shah’s time, when I went to Italy, they stood up for me, they talked to me with respect,” the presenter said, slamming his fist on the table. “When I went to France they respected me as an Iranian. Now when I go anywhere in the world they think we are terrorists, they think we are barbarians.”"
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Anonymous, "Why Iranians are lapping up Shah memorabilia", The Guardian (17 June, 2015)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi
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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi (Persian: محمدرضا شاه پهلوی, pronounced [mohæmmæd-rezɒː-ʃɒːh-e pæhlæviː]) (26 October 1919 – 27 July 1980) was the Shah of the Imperial State of Iran from 1941 until he was deposed in 1979 by the Islamic Revolution. He died in exile in Egypt. His eldest son is Reza Pahlavi.
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