A new Shah for Iran

Here's an irony of Bush's stated "democratization" policy toward the Middle East: True democracy would replace the region's dictators and monarchs with people we do not like, cannot control, and cannot (easily) do business with. Another irony is that the new target nation, Iran, is somewhat more democratic than are the nations we favor, such as Saudi Arabia.

In that light, you may be interested in an interview that (hold your noses) Wizbang reprints from (hold your noses tighter) Human Events. The subject of the interview is Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah -- deposed for damn good reason, I might add -- who clearly wants to be the new ruler of Iran. The son sometimes styles himself "Reza Pahlavi II" even though he never reigned. I'm not sure how to reconcile his disingenuous bleatings about democracy with his family history of tyranny. The fact that he has used an ordinal number to which he is not entitled is all the clue you need that he has something other than pure democracy in mind.

Check out this cute exchange:

You don't believe Iran needs a nuclear weapon to balance Israel's nuclear weapon?

No.

You would not demand that Israel disarm?

Since when has Israel been a threat to anyone? Israel just wants to be left alone and live in peace side by side with its neighbors. As far as I'm concerned, Israel never had any ambition to territorially go and invade, I don't know, Spain or Morocco or anywhere else...

Pahlavi then goes on to spew the usual crap about the Jews and Cyrus the Great. You know the drill.

It's easy to guess just who is sponsoring this fellow's ambitions. Harder to guess how he can hope to get away with the argument that Israel never fought a war of agression, or that Iran has. (The Iran-Iraq war began when Saddam Hussein's army marched into Iran.) And I'm still wondering why we should not insist on universal disarmament in the region.

By the way, Pahlavi has his own blog. Well, these days, who doesn't?

One last point. Why is Wizbang blue and Cannonfire red...?