Son of Iran’s ousted shah receives controversial ‘Freedom Prize’ in Frankfurt

Reza Pahlavi, the son of the ousted shah of Iran, receives a “Freedom Prize” in Frankfurt awarded to the Iranian people in a controversial ceremony.

The prize is awarded by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, an activist group close to Germany’s liberal FDP party.

Iran “is a country not waiting to be taught democracy — this is a country being prevented from practicing it,” Pahlavi says at the ceremony at St. Paul’s Church, which hosted Germany’s first elected parliament in 1848-1849.

“A people ready to die for the right to vote is willing to exercise the right to vote,” Pahlavi says to applause from the audience, which included relatives of people killed in the regime’s brutal crackdown on protesters in January.

“You could not have chosen a people who better understand the meaning of the word ‘freedom’,” Pahlavi says.

He also says he is accepting the prize only as a “trustee” until a democratically elected government is in power in Iran.

“I hold it only temporarily,” he says. “One day I will place it in the hands of its rightful owners, not on foreign soil but in the capital, Tehran.”

Pahlavi’s father, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, was the last shah of Iran, an autocratic ruler who fled into exile in 1979 ahead of a broad revolution that overthrew the monarchy and later became consolidated under Islamist clerical rule.

While the streets of Frankfurt show support for Pahlavi, he also faces criticism for his own vocal support for Israel and what critics say is his failure to sufficiently distance himself from his father’s autocratic rule.

About 200 prisoners held in Iran had signed a letter protesting Pahlavi’s receipt of the prize, according to Sahar Sanaie, spokeswoman for the Society for German-Iranians in the state of Hesse, considering him a symbol of a “bygone dictatorship.”

Meanwhile, the Frankfurt branches of the centre-left SPD and Greens boycotted the event, arguing Pahlavi could not be considered a legitimate representative of the Iranian people.

And the Frankfurt branch of the far-left Die Linke said the church should not host the event, pointing to city statutes that prevent the place of worship from hosting political events.