In the last couple of days, amidst the events in Iran, there are a lot of non-Iranian accounts – some paid mouths and some shy Islamic Republic lovers like the Palestinian leftist crowd – bashing the Shah. Let's expose some of these narratives:
1- The Shah was not a dictator – he was a parliamentary king under the Mashroteh (Constitutional Monarchy) system, one of the biggest achievements in Iranian history, equivalent to America's Founding Fathers
2- He gave women the right to vote before Switzerland – Iranian women voted in 1963; Swiss women couldn't until 1971
3- He gave women divorce rights, child custody rights, and raised the marriage age through the Family Protection Law – and he did this despite the Islamic clergy and religious networks fighting him tooth and nail every step of the way
4- He transformed Iran from a WWII-invaded (1941), famine-stricken country into a nation that major world powers owed money to by 1979 – in less than 40 years
5- He co-founded OPEC (1960) and gave oil-producing nations control over their own resources and pricing
6- He started Iran's civilian nuclear program through diplomacy and negotiation – with no sanctions, no conflicts, and without making either the East or West feel threatened
7- He gave Iran international prestige through the 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire (1971) – the same ceremony critics call "too expensive" actually increased Iran's tourism revenue from $45 million in 1971 to $152 million by 1976, and made the Iranian passport one of the most powerful in the world
8- He ended a centuries-old feudal system through the White Revolution (1963) – took land from the landlords who had exploited farmers for generations and redistributed it to the people who actually worked it
9- He made education free, expanded access to schools, and sent thousands of students abroad on full government scholarships including living expenses – and even when many of those students protested against him from abroad, he never cut their funding
10- He built world-class universities – Sharif University, expanded Tehran University, Pahlavi University (now Shiraz University), and opened a Harvard-affiliated branch in Iran
11- He built a modern healthcare system – hospitals, clinics, and medical infrastructure across the country
12- He created the Knowledge Corps, Health Corps, and Development Corps – instead of wasting time in traditional army service, university graduates served in rural areas to fight illiteracy, provide healthcare, and develop infrastructure in small towns that had no schools or clinics
13- He established retirement and pension plans for workers
14- He built Iran's steel and iron industries, automobile manufacturing, and petrochemical plants – when the West refused to share steel technology, he turned to the USSR and got it done anyway, showing how dynamic and internationally flexible he was
15- He built stadiums, highways, dams, and railways still in use today
16- He expanded the Trans-Iranian Railway
Iranians now know what a mistake the 1979 revolution was. Many of the revolutionaries have verbalized and written about their mistake, and some have apologized to the Pahlavi family
even former MEK members who escaped the cult.
others like Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the world-renowned filmmaker, and Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, are among those who have acknowledged this.
Do not be surprised why Iran is going back to its glory days.
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