Reza Pahlavi Comments on Iranian Protests

The son of Iran’s last shah spoke at a press conference Monday about the election protests in his homeland.

Reza Pahlavi warned that if the opposition is crushed in Iran, it could lead to problems not only in that country but around the world. He even warned of a nuclear conflict.

“Their defeat will encourage extremism from the shores of the Levant to the energy jugular of the world,” said Pahlavi, who left Iran a year before the ouster of his father, shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in the 1979 Islamic revolution.

“At worst, fanatical tyrants who know that the future is against them may end their present course on their terms: a nuclear holocaust.”

Pahlavi was at times emotional during the presser at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. He claimed to have military and clerical sources in Iran telling him some leaders were willing to switch sides and join the opposition.

“It’s almost a revolutionary climate,” he said.

“Let me assure you, (the movement) will not die because we will not let it die.”

Born in 1960, Pahlavi was once the Crown Prince of Iran until the revolution overthrew his father. He lived in Egypt and Morocco until settling in the United States in the 1980s. Pahlavi now lives in Maryland with his wife and three daughters.