Pahlavi Visit to Israel Brings Hope

The world was pleasantly surprised last week when the Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi and his wife Yasmin announced on April 16 that they were visiting Israel for Yom Hashoah—that is, all the world except for the Islamic Republic of Iran and its affiliated terrorist groups. The Pahlavis’ words and actions demonstrated their profound understanding that global peace and security depends upon friendship between Iran and Israel. The Pahlavis met with top Israeli officials and dignitaries including Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara, and Israel’s Minister of Intelligence Gila Gamliel.

At a moving and historical visit to the Western Wall, the Pahlavis inserted prayers into the Wall and paid tribute to the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Referencing an edict documented in the Book of Ezra, Reza Pahlavi stated “2,500 years ago, Cyrus the Great liberated the Jewish people from captivity and helped them rebuild their temple in Jerusalem.” With those words the Pahlavis refuted the fiction that Israel is a “neocolonial” entity with no roots in the Middle East and signaled that it is time to resume warm relations between Iran and Israel. 

Pahlavi added, “the regime in Iran does not represent the Iranian people.” They “aspire to have a government that honors [Cyrus the Great’s] legacy of tolerance for different faiths and protection of human rights.” Recent polling has indeed shown that Iranians hold a more favorable view of Israel than the EU and the UK. This polling has also shown that Reza Pahlavi has top favorability by far, from a list of potential alternative leaders of the Iranian people.

The Pahlavis also visited Yad Vashem. While there, Reza Pahlavi emphasized that “Anti-Semitism is evil. It’s not just a Jewish problem. It’s a problem for all humanity. Together with my Iranian compatriots, I condemn the Islamic Republic’s genocidal Jew-hatred and Holocaust denial, and commit to never allow such an unconscionable atrocity to ever happen again.” 

Indeed, one of the primary antisemitic tropes of Ali Khamenei, the theocratic leader of Iran, is to refer to the Holocaust as a myth. Each year, the Iranian government bankrolls the reprinting of the Tsarist forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” spends nearly $1 billion to arm terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and sponsors Holocaust denial and terrorism conferences to train BDS activists. The corrosive effect of these activities keeps violence alive not only in the Middle East but also globally, and spills over into European capitals, international bodies, and onto college campuses. 

The Pahlavis are proposing a true alternative vision, the Cyrus Accord, a peace treaty between Iran and Israel that would “rekindle friendship between Iranians and Israelis” and “seek cultural, scientific, and economic exchange with Israel and other neighbors across the region.” They recognize that, like the Abraham Accords—a peace treaty between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain—working toward the Cyrus Accord would signal a new role for Iran in the Middle East and globally. 

As an exemplar of their vision, the Pahlavis visited the Sorek Desalination Plant “to see Israel’s impressive water technology firsthand.” Noting the environmental disasters that the Islamic Republic’s mismanagement of Iranian natural resources has wrought (the Regime has indeed imprisoned, tortured and killed environmental scientists who spoke out), the Crown Prince proposed environmental scientific exchanges between Iran and Israel.

The Pahlavis also visited the Bahá’í World Centre in Haifa, honoring the most vilified religious minority in Iran. That alone acknowledged the plight of Iran’s many other oppressed religious and ethnic minorities, including Jews, Zoroastrians and Sunni Muslims. Although many of these groups have sought refuge in the diaspora, those who remain continue to be voiceless and oppressed by the regime.

The Pahlavis’ vision of freeing the Iranian people from its current theocratic dictatorship has wide support both inside Iran and in the diaspora.

The Pahlavis’ vision of freeing the Iranian people from its current theocratic dictatorship has wide support both inside Iran and in the diaspora. Iranian Americans, for example,  are lobbying Congress for passage of H.Res. 589, the Mahsa Act. This bi-partisan effort will sanction top regime officials, including Ali Khamenei, and implement mechanisms to hold the Islamic Republic accountable for its human rights abuses. The Act is named after the 22-year old Mahsa Amini, whose September 2022 death at the hands of Iran’s “morality” police sparked a powerful democratic movement to topple the regime that is still very much underway. 

During their visit the Pahlavis echoed the sentiments of many Iranians, noting that the visit to Israel affected them deeply and energized them to continue their struggle to free Iran.

At the Western Wall the Pahlavis entered into solemn prayer “for the day when the good people of Iran and Israel can renew our historic friendship.” May that day come soon.