"Hatha Alyoum" presents a special and detailed investigative series highlighting the political and military career of Reza Pahlavi. It opens thorny files regarding his stances that sparked controversy in Arab and regional circles. The episodes review documents regarding his offer to volunteer as a fighter pilot against Iraq in the 1980s, and the series analyzes and scrutinizes the features of his modern religious and historical discourse and its relationship to current international variables.
In this profile report, "Hatha Alyoum" relies on numerous foreign sources to ensure complete accuracy and objectivity, presenting the Arab reader with a comprehensive and documented picture, far from traditional biases.
Historical documents reveal another face of the former Crown Prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, which differs completely from his current political image. Archives show a striking stance at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, where records point to an enthusiastic young man who wanted to defend his country's borders regardless of the ruler.
Some documentation suggests that his primary goal was to fight the Arabs, "because he is a fascist" who cannot tolerate Arabs or even Kurds.
Modern reports paint a completely different picture of a man seeking regional alliances based on ancient religious and historical texts.
History takes us back to September 23, 1980, when the grinding war between Iraq and Iran broke out. At that time, and according to what is mentioned on Reza Pahlavi's official website in the biography section, the young Crown Prince—who had completed his advanced training as a fighter pilot in the United States—sent an urgent telegram to the Iranian Air Force Command.
The offer at that time included an explicit request to be allowed to return immediately to Iran to join the ranks of fighter pilots to defend the safety of Iranian territory against the Iraqi attack.
Archives of the American agency "United Press International" (UPI) from that period confirm the validity of this incident. It published a report stating that the Shah's son put his deep political differences with the revolutionary regime aside and offered his military services as a professional pilot. However, the response was rejection and total disregard from the new religious regime, which considered his presence a political danger, leaving his offer as merely a historical document proving his desire to fight against Iraq at that time.
Events take us on a wide temporal leap to April 2023, where the scene changed completely. Instead of a warplane cockpit targeting Iraqi forces, Reza Pahlavi appeared in Tel Aviv in a visit described as historic. The Israeli newspaper "The Jerusalem Post" reported details of that visit, in which he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog, as the conversation was no longer about military strategies but shifted to deep spiritual and historical ties.
The "Times of Israel" newspaper, in its coverage of the event, indicates that Pahlavi used language charged with religious symbols. He described the relationship between the Iranian and Israeli peoples as an ancient biblical bond, invoking the story of King Cyrus the Great, who liberated the Jews from the Babylonian captivity 2,500 years ago. In his speech, Pahlavi considered that this relationship began since the time of the Bible and before the establishment of modern states, reflecting a shift in his rhetoric from abstract military nationalism to diplomacy based on shared religious heritage with Israel.
The "Iran International" website in English documents the moment Pahlavi stood before the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, where he recited Jewish prayers and placed his hand on the wall, recalling sacred texts. This was a scene through which he wanted to emphasize a message of peace based on the "Cyrus Covenant," thereby drawing a new path for a figure who began his public life preparing to bomb hostile targets in the First Gulf War and ended up calling for a strategic alliance from the heart of Jerusalem, based on religious texts dating back thousands of years.