Eighty years after World War II and the fall of Hitler’s fascism in Germany, the use of Nazi symbols such as the swastika and the denial of the Holocaust are considered crimes. This crime and its model must remain in the memory of contemporary humanity and even future generations so that no one can repeat it under any name or pretext.
In 1979, Iran witnessed a major revolution in which the people overthrew the hereditary monarchy. Although Ruhollah Khomeini later exploited the people’s emotions, rode this wave, and committed crimes far more horrific than those committed during the monarchy, the intention of the revolution was to dismantle the royal regime, which until then had deprived people of all freedoms.
The Shah’s secret police, SAVAK, was among the most feared security forces of its time. SAVAK became notorious for its medieval and inhumane torture methods.
The German Government Will Not Receive the Son of Iran’s Last Shah
Whipping with cables, beatings, electric shocks, the “Apollo” torture device, pulling out fingernails, and forcing political prisoners to sit on electric stoves and heated metal plates were among SAVAK’s known methods, documented by Amnesty International.
It should be noted that members of SAVAK either fled Iran or played a major role in shaping and organizing the repressive apparatus of the mullahs’ dictatorship. All methods of repression used by the Iranian regime are derived from and developed out of methods originally created by SAVAK.
By banning the activities of all political parties and permitting only the Rastakhiz Party, which supported the Shah, the monarchy effectively denied any political activity to others. This was the same policy later carried out and completed by Khomeini through establishing a one-party system and suppressing all other ideologies and ethnic groups.
Now, years after the Pahlavi monarchy and after uprisings such as the January 2018 protests, the former Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, through extensive propaganda and media hype, is calling for a return to the past and the restoration of his father’s monarchy, which was overthrown by the Iranian people nearly 50 years ago. This group is spending enormous sums trying to revive a corpse that the people of Iran buried years ago.
What is noteworthy, however, is the sound of fascism echoing through the streets of Europe. Royalist groups are openly calling in European streets for the killing of other opponents, including members and supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). The PMOI played an active role in overthrowing the Shah’s regime, and afterward Iran’s regime executed nearly 120,000 of their members and supporters.
Now, even before reaching power, this group is openly calling for the death and massacre of other opponents. Their slogan is the same fascist slogan, “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer,” which was chanted at all Nazi gatherings during Hitler’s era.
Yesterday, Sunday, May 10, a group of people held a gathering in the city of Regensburg in Bavaria, Germany, while wearing the SAVAK emblem on their chests. This act constitutes a crime, complicity in, and defense of the crimes committed by the Shah’s SAVAK secret police. Such actions cannot whitewash the crimes of the former monarchy. The hysterical actions of royalist fascism are the other side of the coin of the religious fascism ruling Iran and resemble the actions carried out by the current Iranian regime for its own survival. During the Iranian people’s uprising in January 2026, we saw how individuals affiliated with the regime killed many Iranians.
This group has not yet come to power, yet they already promise the same kinds of actions. Unfortunately, in Western countries, nostalgia for returning to the past and portraying that era as a dreamlike country has managed to dress the monster of monarchy in the image of a beautiful angel in some minds.
The American magazine The Atlantic, in an article titled “The Iranian Royalists’ Thuggish Edge,” exposed the deep contradictions within a movement struggling with authoritarian tendencies.
The article begins by referring to the killing of an outspoken Iranian exile named Masood Masjoody in Canada. He was a fierce critic of Reza Pahlavi, and shortly afterward Canadian police charged Razavi and Soltani, two Pahlavi supporters, with premeditated murder. The author of the article adds:
“The murder, in other words, appears to have been part of a war within the Iranian opposition—one that pits Pahlavi against a growing host of critics who see him and his movement as dangerously autocratic.”
The author further notes:”This is the man who told an interviewer back in 2023: ‘My life has been for the past 40 years here in America. My children live here, my friends live here, everybody that I know is here. If I was to go back, what do I go back to?'”
Pahlavi and his supporters have built their palace of dreams on the prospect of a foreign attack against Iran, and with the ceasefire between the United States and the Iranian regime, this icy palace has begun to melt. No honorable Iranian has ever called for a foreign attack on their own country.
Pahlavi’s supporters, however, see foreign war and the destruction of Iran as the only path to placing the former Shah’s son on the throne. Yet everyone knows that although the Iranian regime is very weak and fragile, it will never be overthrown through foreign military attack. If Western governments seek regime change similar to what occurred in Iraq, the consequences of which continue to this day, then this is certainly the worst possible path for changing the regime.
This war proved that the rule of the mullahs cannot be overthrown through airstrikes, but that such attacks only push the region toward permanent chaos. The solution for Iran is overthrow through organized resistance.
The people of Iran have repeatedly proven that they can confront the regime of the mullahs. Regional and global powers must recognize the Iranian people’s right to freedom and democracy and support this solution. In fact, peace and stability in the region, free trade, security, and mutual respect between governments can only be guaranteed through this path.
For years, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) has viewed pluralism, secularism, and the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime as the solution for Iran. In this regard, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi has presented a 10-point plan explaining what a future Iran would look like.
After the 40-day war by the United States and Israel against the Iranian regime, the world witnessed firsthand that foreign war is not the solution for the region and, on the contrary, only increases the complexity of the situation.
