Critical Questions To The Last Shah Of Iran

East is a Podcast provides “a critical lens on the history of the present of the modern Middle East and North Africa”. The interviews with experts and archival mashups are created by Sina Rahmani.

In this episode, already the fourteenth since 31 October, you can listen to a collection of interviews with Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, during his final years.

While in the first two decades the mainstream press mainly praised the Shah, in the 1970s the pressures on his regime increased internally and Western journalists were beginning to do their jobs. Interestingly, the shah chose to accept interview after interview, allowing himself to be pestered with critical questions — something a dictator usually won’t do nowadays.

Everybody will have the opportunity of full participation in our country. Economically wise and also politically wise. Although the approach to this ... eh ... problem is somewhat different. What we consider democracy might not be shared by other people.

Interviewer: “Is it what you consider democracy or what your people consider democracy?”

There is not much difference, because we are so close, I and my people.

Another interviewer asks: “Do you understand the slight dilemma that some western leaders feel about the close relationship with your government when there are some in Great Britain and America who feel that your regime is undemocratic. How do you respond to that?”

Well, your regimes are not more democratic than ours because in the name of democracy you make things that … pfff ... we are horrified about. There is more difference in standard of living between your people and our people.

Another interviewer asks about the number of political prisoners and whether torture exists in Iran, something the Shah denies.

It’s interesting to hear how confidently he talks about the future, only a few years before he was overthrown by the Iranian Revolution and he had to flee to Egypt where he died in the next year.