Son of Deposed Shah of Iran Announces Surprise Visit to Israel To ‘Rekindle’ an ‘Ancient Bond’

The son of Iran’s late Shah, who is hard at work uniting exiled anti-regime leaders to bring democracy to his homeland, Reza Pahlavi, is on his way to Israel. “I am traveling to Israel to deliver a message of friendship from the Iranian people, engage Israeli water experts on ways to address the regime’s abuse of Iran’s natural resources, and pay respects to the victims of the Holocaust on Yom HaShoah,” Mr. Pahlavi tweeted Sunday. The surprise visit will follow — and contrast — Friday’s al-Quds Day, an annual event created by the Islamic Republic to encourage Iranians and Muslims around the world to display anti-Israel and anti-American hostilities. Specifically, the day is designed to express rage against Jewish control over the city of Jerusalem.Since the days of Ayatollah Khamenei, the Tehran government regime has called for erasing the “cancerous” Jewish state. The mullahs have created and supported proxy armies to battle Israel, including Hezbollah, Hamas, and various other terrorist groups. Holocaust denial, including an annual cartoon contest to ridicule the Nazi attempt to annihilate all European Jews, has become a staple of the regime’s propaganda. The crown prince and son of the Shah, who was deposed in 1979, will land in Israel Monday, as the country marks Holocaust Remembrance Day, and will participate at a memorial ceremony at Yad Vashem. “I want the people of Israel to know that the Islamic Republic does not represent the Iranian people,” Mr. Pahlavi wrote. “The ancient bond between our people can be rekindled for the benefit of both nations. I’m going to Israel to play my role in building toward that brighter future.” In a press release, Mr. Pahlavi said he would meet top government officials, water and agricultural experts, and members of the Iranian diaspora. He also plans to visit the Baha’i temple and gardens at Haifa, a world spiritual center of a peaceful sect whose adherents are harshly persecuted by the regime in Iran. The Haifa visit, he wrote, will be “in solidarity with the Baha’i community.”Representing the Israeli government in hosting him, significantly, will be intelligence minister Gila Gamliel, according to Mr. Pahlavi’s press release. “The Iranian and Jewish people have ancient bonds dating back to Cyrus the Great and Queen Esther,” he wrote. “As the children of Cyrus, the Iranian people aspire to have a government that honors his legacy of upholding human rights and respecting religious and cultural diversity, including through the restoration of peaceful and friendly relations with Israel and Iran’s other neighbors in the region.”Iranians, he wrote, reject the current Tehran regime’s “genocidal anti-Israel and antisemitic policies and yearn for cultural, scientific, and economic exchange with Israel.” A democratic Iran, he wrote, will seek to reestablish relations in a possible Cyrus accord, named after the philo-semitic ancient Persian king. Mr. Pahlavi, who has for decades displayed steadfast commitment to a secular and democratic Iran, has most recently worked to unite fractious anti-regime voices in the Iranian diaspora. Earlier this year he appeared on stage with leaders such as journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, who support street protests against the regime. The protests erupted following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of Tehran’s morality police.While Mr. Pahlavi is a leading voice in the protest movement, “some in Western elite circles seem to have had an allergy to his last name,” an Iran watcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, Behnam Ben Taleblu, tells the Sun. At the same time, he adds, “the opposite is increasingly the case for the Iranian people. There has been no other person or family name chanted or invoked in slogans by Iranian protesters in various iterations of national protest over the past half decade.”Mr. Pahlavi’s Israel visit, Mr. Ben Taleblu adds, will paint a sharp contrast between today’s Islamic Republic and the Iran of tomorrow.

Son of Deposed Shah of Iran Announces Surprise Visit to Israel To ‘Rekindle’ an ‘Ancient Bond’

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