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Mohammad Reza Chah Pahlavi ou Muhammad Rizā Shāh Pahlevi dit Aryamehr , né le 26 octobre 1919 à Téhéran et mort le 27 juillet 1980 au Caire, était le second et dernier monarque de la dynastie Pahlavi de la monarchie iranienne. Dernier chah d'Iran, il régna du 16 septembre 1941 au 11 février 1979 . Contraint à l'exil le 16 janvier 1979, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fut remplacé par un conseil royal et renversé par la Révolution iranienne, mais n'a jamais abdiqué officiellement. Il succéda à son père, Reza Chah, lorsque ce dernier, jugé trop proche de l'Allemagne nazie, fut contraint d'abdiquer en septembre 1941 lors de l'invasion anglo-soviétique de l'Iran. Au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, le jeune chah fut confronté aux tentatives sécessionnistes dans les provinces du nord-est lors de la crise irano-soviétique et aux rébellions tribales dans le sud du pays. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi se rapprocha par la suite des États-Unis et entretint des liens très étroits avec la Maison-Blanche, en particulier avec les présidents Dwight Eisenhower et Richard Nixon.

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi assista à la nationalisation de l'industrie pétrolière iranienne, alors sous contrôle britannique depuis 1913, par son Premier ministre nationaliste Mohammad Mossadegh, à cause du refus de l'Anglo-Persian Oil Company de renégocier les termes du contrat d'exploitation des gisements pétroliers. Cette décision entraîna une crise internationale entre l'Iran et le Royaume-Uni. En réaction à l'influence grandissante de Mossadegh, les services secrets anglo-américains le renversèrent en 1953 pendant l'opération Ajax, non sans avoir envenimé la situation politique, obligeant le chah, qui les avait soutenus, à s'exiler en Italie. Cependant, grâce à l'armée dirigée par le général Zahedi, il fut rapidement restauré sur le trône. Évoluant ensuite vers une conception plus nationale, réformiste et autoritaire de la politique intérieure, le chah d'Iran entreprit, par référendum, un vaste programme de progrès social et de développement économique, la « Révolution blanche », associé à une répression des mouvements d'opposition incarnée par la SAVAK. À l'extérieur, tout en demeurant un allié de premier plan pour les Américains et les chancelleries occidentales, le chah se rapprocha aussi progressivement de l'Union soviétique puis de la Chine, traduisant ainsi un désir d'émancipation à travers plus de neutralisme.

Lorsqu'il entama une politique de partenariat économique privilégié avec l'Europe, en particulier la France , et surtout avec le Japon , au détriment des États-Unis, ces derniers lui retirèrent leur appui et décidèrent de précipiter son éviction. Les États-Unis vont ainsi soutenir fortement l'expression de mouvements contestataires étudiants, pourtant marxisants, et financer la communication pour la révolution islamiste de l'ayatollah Khomeini. Par ailleurs, il est clair que le poids de l'alliance américaine avec l'Arabie Saoudite et les autres monarchies du golfe , partenaires de l'Iran dans l'OPEP, mais rivaux pour la maîtrise du Golfe Persique, est un facteur qui amena les États-Unis à chercher à entraver le développement économique de l'Iran et son rôle de puissance politique régionale, à partir du moment où ils pensèrent ne plus être en mesure d'influencer l'Iran, du fait de la stratégie trop indépendante et ambitieuse du chah.

Si la politique volontariste du chah améliora considérablement le niveau de vie des Iraniens et permit au pays une modernisation rapide dans les années 1960 et 1970, elle contribua à élargir le fossé économique, social et culturel entre une partie de la population, fortement occidentalisée, et une autre, sensible au conservatisme religieux prêché par Khomeini. En 1978, de plus en plus critiqué, le chah dut faire face à un soulèvement populaire, la Révolution iranienne, qui s'accentua au fil des mois et d'où émergèrent les fondamentalistes chiites inspirés par l'ayatollah Khomeini. En janvier 1979, après avoir perdu progressivement ses soutiens traditionnels et l'appui occidental, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi nomma en dernier recours l'opposant social-démocrate Shapour Bakhtiar au poste de Premier ministre et quitta ensuite l'Iran. Le renversement du gouvernement Bakhtiar et la déclaration de neutralité de l'armée, quelques semaines plus tard, précipitèrent sa chute et contribuèrent à l'avènement de Khomeini. Contraint à l'exil et atteint d'un cancer, Mohammad Reza Chah Pahlavi mourut en Égypte l'année suivante. Wikipedia  

✵ 26. octobre 1919 – 27. juillet 1980
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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi: 92   citations 0   J'aime

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi: Citations en anglais

“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.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Page 145
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On world leaders and statesmen

“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.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 169
Attributed

“Muslim brothers be damned; they're our greatest enemies. You know yourself that I'm a Muslim, even a fanatical Muslim. But that does nothing to alter my opinion of the Arabs.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 330
Attributed

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

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 241
In colloquial Persian, Ahmad Shah Qajar is a byword for ineptitude.
Attributed

“Who are they to try me? They should be tried first. [They are] people who are rejecting the United Nations resolutions, who are rejecting the Hague Court resolution, who are rejecting the world public opinion, who have no respect for any internation law, and who are massacring people, executing people, just imprisoning thousands and thousands and thousands without any reasons. Who is going to try them?”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

David Frost (January 1980), The Shah Speaks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKUQUDf5IBo&feature=related (video)
Interviews

“… the Jewish press in the USA is solely responsible for our poor publicity.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 427
Attributed

“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.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Page 162
Publications, Mission for my Country (1961)

“Today the name of America has a magic meaning for the most distant communities of the world.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Shah of Iran state visit to the USA, 1961 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1a5TAepYXs,
Interviews

“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.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 278
Attributed

“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.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Page 209
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On Islam and the Islamic Revolution

“To be first in the Middle East is not enough. We must raise ourselves to the level of a great world power.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 360
Attributed

“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.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Page 33
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On his father

“I personally object to the veil on aesthetic as well as other grounds; but I must admit that, for instance in the suburbs of American cities, I have often seen women attired more sloppily than our Persian women normally are.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Page 232
Publications, Mission for my Country (1961)

“O Cyrus, great King, King of Kings, Achaemenian King, King of the land of Iran. I, the Shahanshah of Iran, offer thee salutations from myself and from my nation. Rest in peace, for we are awake, and we will always stay awake.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Opening speech on October 12, 1971, when Iran marked the 2500th anniversary of Cyrus' founding of the Persian Empire
Speeches, 1971

“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.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Page 53
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On world leaders and statesmen

“… some parties think that only the rules laid down by their doctrines are the right ones. Our strength resides in the fact that our revolution does not desire the triumph of one class or of one ideology over another…. Ours is a White Revolution: we adopt no slogan but we embrace everything which seems good to us, whether it be labelled communism, socialism or capitalism….
My final aim is to bring Iran, within twenty years, to the same level of civilization and progress as will be enjoyed by the most highly developed countries. During the last ten years the degree of our backwardness has been halved, but it is this remaining backwardness which will be the most difficult to combat.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

January 27, 1963, as quoted in The Shah's Story, page 76
Speeches, 1963

“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.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Page 59
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On oil and nuclear energy

“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.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Page 144
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On world leaders and statesmen

“It would serve the Americans right if we emptied the prisons and let the subversives take power. They'd soon show Washington just how much they appreciate good old American values.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 465
Attributed

“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.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Page 167
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On Islam and the Islamic Revolution

“Taking Iran's history as witness, I declare that we, the Pahlavi Dynasty, nurse no love but that for Iran, and no zeal but that for the dignity of Iranians; recognise no duty but that of serving our state and our nation.
As the commander of this monarchy, I make a covenant with Iran's history that this golden epic of modern Iran will be carried on to complete victory, and that no power on earth shall ever be able to stand against the bond of steel between the Shah and the nation. We shall never again be caught unawares. The nation and the Imperial Arrned Forces, which come from the ranks of the people and derive their power from our inexhaustible national resources, are alert day in and day out to protect their country. No foreigner or his agents will ever have the chance to penetrate the unshakable structure of our national sovereignty because Iran's destiny is now shaped by Iranians and for Iranians - and this shall always be the case.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Message of the Shahanshah of Iran, Now Rouz, 1976 http://members.cybertrails.com/~pahlavi/speech1.html
Speeches, 1976

“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.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Page 207
Publications, The Shah's Story (1980), On Islam and the Islamic Revolution

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

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 233
Attributed

“There was a sharp break in my life after 1953. I came to realize that I couldn't have the same relationships with my friends. Friendship involves the exchange of confidence between two people, but a king can take no one into his confidence. I have even had to put some distance between myself and my old friend Hossein Fardoust whom I trust implicitly. I even observe certain distances with members of my family. I had to tell my mother- who is a very dictatorial woman- that it would be better if she didn't ask me for favours for I might have to refuse her.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

As quoted in Gérard de Villiers (1975), The Imperial Shah: An Informal Biography, page 273-274
Attributed

“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.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 236
Attributed

“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.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Page 301
Publications, Mission for my Country (1961)

“A crown, a throne could not be based on the not too very solid foundation of blood.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

David Frost (January 1980), The Shah Speaks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKUQUDf5IBo&feature=related (video)
Interviews

“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.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 254
Attributed

“Who on earth do the Americans suppose their allies are amongst the Arab world? Even Saudi Arabia they seem to regard as nothing more than a resevoir of oil and money.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 474
Attributed

“Pride comes before a fall- although in [Henry Kissinger's] case it's more conceit than pride.”

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Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 391
Attributed