In 2010, I wrote a critical blogpost about political assassinations which might be solved, in particular, when asking who benefits. It was one year after the killing of a young woman, Neda Agha Soltan, during the bloody protests after the rigged Iranian election in 2009 which secured President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s second term. I compared two incidents.

“On 2 June 1967, the Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi visits, together with his wife Farah, West-Berlin. They wanted to attend a performance of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” at the Deutsche Oper. There were hundreds of demonstrators, both German students and Iranians protesting against the Shah, an oriental puppet of the western powers, in particular the U.S., usually wearing ludicrous fantasy uniforms. So-called Jubelperser represented the Iranian establishment, members of the Shah’s secret police and terror organization SAVAK. German and Iranian protestors were brutally beaten by these Jubelperser, unhindered by German policemen who only watched them but did not interfere.

Then a shot was fired. A German student, 26-year old Benno Ohnesorg, had been shot in his head from a distance of one or two meters by a German plain-clothes police officer, Karl-Heinz Kurras. Ohnesorg died on the spot. In two separate trials, Kurras was cleared of all charges. It was a huge scandal in the still young Federal Republic of Germany.

Kurras was widely considered, not only by left-wing and radical students, far-right. Ohnesorg’s assassination immediately meant radicalization of the students’ movement. A terrorist organization named itself after the date of Ohnesorg’s assassination, Movement 2 June, which years later kidnapped Peter Lorenz, a candidate for Mayor in Berlin. Fortunately, Lorenz wasn’t shot but released after imprisoned members of the other German terrorist group, Red Army Faction, had been set free and flown out to Aden in the Yemen.  The incidents of the Shah’s visit in Germany had definitely changed the course of history in the country.

For more than 40 years, the supposed motive of Kurras for killing the 26-year old student Benno Ohnesorg was inordinate hatred of a far-right outcast. But in May 2009, it was revealed that Kurras was an undercover agent of East-Berlin’s secret police and terror organization Stasi. The dictatorship in the German Democratic Republic had apparently an interest in fomenting riots in West-Berlin.”

The former Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, celebrated the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great from October 12–16, 1971. Given that he was a brutal oppressor of his people, the lavish festivities for international dignitaries at the ancient palace of Persepolis might have been the last nail in his coffin. In particular people living in rural areas, that is in the 60,000 villages, suffered from high inflation due to the numerous modernization projects, even a nuclear program, were literally facing severe food shortage. People in the rapidly sprawling urban areas feared the all-knowing secret service, SAVAK. All hated this Shah.

…

There was an emerging revolutionary situation in Iran in late 1978, and on January 16, 1979, a Tuesday, the Shah fled Iran in a private jet. On February 1, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini arrived at Mehrabad Airport in Tehran and the Revolution became Islamic. And Khomeini made sure that he was considered Imam.

On January 16, when the news arrived, I congratulated my fellow student from Iran on the successful revolution. The very idea!, she said, it’ll be worse.

Khomeini’s rule during the eight years of war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was extremely brutal. He died in 1989 after which Ali Khamenei was selected his successor.

Khamenei’s long regime of 36 years (he was assassinated by a joint US/Israeli air strike on February 28, 2026) was mainly characterized by terror in the country and outside Iran with its numerous proxies in Lebanon (Hisbollah), Syria, Gaza (Hamas) and later Yemen (Houthis). By the renewed nuclear program (after the Shah’s established it in the 1970s ironically with the help of the US); open and clandestine, for civil purposes and the development of a nuclear bomb. Crippling sanctions, leading to galloping inflation and prolonged economic decline without any hope for recovery. Rigged elections. And finally alienation of large parts of Iran’s young population, a population without hope in the future.

…

Only that, hopelessness, might explain why exiles outside the country are now calling for the son of the former Shah, also called Reza Pahlavi. But how should such a figure be able to disarm the Revolutionary Guards Corps and Basij, unify the nation, establish democratic institutions? After all, he’s just a name. His father’s name. What has the son done so far?

Don’t cheer. It’ll be worse.

2 March 2026 @10:52 UTC+1.

Last modified March 2, 2026.