Iranian Jews may still contribute to a post-Islamic revolutionary Iran, even if they don’t live there, says the exiled prince Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah. Wide-ranging interview by Karmel Melamed in JNS News:
Q: When you visited Israel last year, you interacted with many Iranians in the country who welcomed you warmly. What surprised you the most about the Iranian community in Israel, and how did their interactions with you, which Persian-language news media broadcast, impact perceptions of Iranians worldwide about Israel?
A: First of all, I wasn’t surprised, because I knew of that sentiment from the very beginning. The Iranian Jewish community in Israel, compared to peers elsewhere, has from the very beginning been the most vocal that we had to flee the country but has remained Iranian, attached to the motherland.
This was not a surprise to me. I knew it from the very beginning. This sentiment is present today more than ever.
I’ll tell you what was more of a surprise to me. On the last day before I returned to Europe, I was strolling on the beach in Tel Aviv in front of the shoreline, and average Israeli citizens would walk up to me excited, knowing full well why I was there. They said how hopeful they were that we can have this relationship again between our two countries. That was an element that I didn’t expect—that level of enthusiasm and interest.
Q: For more than four decades, Iran’s once-sizable Jewish community has nearly completely fled Iran for its safety and due to the persecution it experienced at the hands of the Islamic Republic ruling Iran. What sort of future do you foresee for these Iranian Jews—who live primarily stateside and in Israel and who have achieved significant success there—after the regime is no longer in power? What roles might they have in helping to rebuild Iran?
A: It’s no secret that many of the people in Iran who brought in factories, industry and investments to help the country modernize were Iranian Jews.
Of course, they are part and parcel of Iran’s future. I’d like to stress one point. When Hitler was mounting his war and carrying out the events of the Holocaust, I wonder how history took a change.
The attack on Pearl Harbor propelled America to engage in the Second World War. Until then, it didn’t want to have anything to do with it, knowing what Hitler was doing to the Jews. Even before the war, in Iran, we were harboring Jews and protecting them and we did so especially when the war started.
We had Iranian diplomats in Europe like Abdol Hossein Sardari, who helped get visas to Jews in France. Iran was a country—dare I say the only country in the Middle East—that actually gave refuge and asylum to fleeing Jews.
I think Iranians do embrace that. Iran was a country that was once respected in the world. Iranians were one of the few peoples who would travel to many countries without visas. The Iranian passport had value. They were respected.
Today, they’ve been humiliated and painted as terrorists.
All that context of course includes Iranian Jews rebuilding the nation. It goes without saying. It’s obvious.
There were those that had to but didn’t want to leave Iran who were murdered by the regime. It forced an exodus and exile. Many would have preferred to stay, but how could they do so under such a level of immediate discrimination?
They don’t necessarily have to return physically, but they can contribute to Iran in a hell of a lot of ways. They still have that attachment and can still find that role.
At the end of the day, history will not repeat itself if we do not forget what happened before. Today’s new generation of young Iranians needs to understand a little bit of what contributed to that development in the past. It was not imposed on them, but Iranians participated in it voluntarily.
Imagine how much more can be done in Iran once the atmosphere is opened, outside of all of these discriminations, and everybody has equal opportunities to contribute and what a bright future we could have. That’s the message we should spread around the world far beyond whether we are Jewish, Bahá’í or Muslim, or whatever ethnicity or whatever political thinking. The country can in fact help itself.