January 16th marks the anniversary day when Mohammad Reza Pahlavi--the last Pahlavi dictator--fled Iran once he found his regime collapsing. On this occasion khamenei.ir publishes excerpts from Ayatollah Khamenei's speeches on the collapse of the Pahlavi dictatorship:
People rose up and ousted Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Gradually the regime's organizations, office workers, military staff, and even officials joined the people in their movement. Consequently, indications of the collapse of the Pahlavi regime visibly emerged, and finally the regime fell out. Prior to the day, when Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled from Iran, the Pahlavi regime had actually collapsed. He realized remaining in Iran would be useless. Thus, they made a puppet out of a miserable, wretched, notorious man--who later became even more notorious--to preserve a regime on the brink of total annihilation. He was in office for thirty-forty days, until Imam Khomeini (ra) came back to Iran; and everything revolved around this one single move.
The monarchy in Iran was hollowed out. Why? It was because of the people’s uprising. Why did the people rise up? They rose up for their creed, because their slogans were Islamic slogans; because, the leaders, Islamic mentors, and clergy were trusted by the people.
February 03, 1995
U.S. gave refuge to the the Pahlavi dictator
The U.S. gave refuge to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who fled the Iranian nation, and they received him as an invitee. Mohammad Reza had with him properties worth billions of dollars, which he had invested in the United States. Anywhere in the world, when someone at the top of a regime is ousted, his personal properties are confiscated; they are transferred to the nation and new state that comes into power. If you read newspapers on various issues, you will see that has been the norm elsewhere in the world. What Mohammad Reza Pahlavi did was unheard of; in that, he kept for himself all that money--which belonged to the Iranian people--and then he locked it in his and his agents’ bank accounts in the U.S.
They did not offer up a single penny to the Iranian nation, and kept every bit of it for themselves; today, they still they have it with them. As of now, the U.S. regime owes the Iranian nation billions of dollars. Yet, they hold onto properties that the government and nation of Iran has previously bought and, overtime, has needed. To this date, they have not given back any of these assets to the government and people of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iranian assets in the U.S. have been frozen and never returned. Why? Because, they were wishful they could annihilate the Islamic Republic. They thought to themselves: 'today we won’t give them back their money to make use of.' This is to say, that since the victory of the Islamic Revolution, the regime overseeing the United States has adopted the same approach towards Iran as it did before the revolution; in other words, it practiced animosity and hostility towards the Iranian nation and the Islamic Republic establishment. It was during such a similar setting that the storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran had occurred.
November 02, 1994
