Newsmax has regularly promoted Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah of Iran, as the county’s next potential leader. For once, however, that parade got rained on a bit — by Rudy Giuliani, no less. From a March 1 article:
Rudy Giuliani told Newsmax Sunday that reinstalling Iran’s former royal family would be a terrible mistake and warned it would amount to the United States imposing another leader on the Iranian people.
Giuliani said Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah, should not lead Iran.
“This is the heir of the crooked, brutal dictator who led to the revolution in the first place,” Giuliani said.
Giuliani said the abuses under the shah cannot be separated from the 1979 revolution that ultimately brought the Islamic Republic to power.
“The prison that is used by the ayatollah was built by the shah,” Giuliani said.
Installing Pahlavi would risk repeating past mistakes the United States made in intervening in Iran’s leadership.
[…]Giuliani said Pahlavi has been a “princeling” for 30 years.
“He goes to all the cocktail parties. He’s the prince of Iran, never worked a day in his life, never made a legitimate living,” Giuliani said. “And he’s living off the money that his father and mother stole from Iran.”
Ouch. At least Newsmax finally got around to pushing an alternative viewpoint.