Iran: the Shah's son receives a prize in Germany intended for the Iranian people, against a backdrop of controversy

The son of the deposed shah, Reza Pahlavi, received a prize for freedom in Frankfurt on Saturday, during a controversial ceremony, with detractors of this exiled opposition figure deeming him illegitimate for this award intended for the Iranian people.

Thousands of Reza Pahlavi supporters nevertheless showed their support for him in the streets of Frankfurt, while he received this honorary prize from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, close to German liberals.

There were “around 18,000,” German police told AFP. They waved, according to a reporter on site, flags with green, white and red horizontal stripes with a lion and a sun, the banner of imperial Iran replaced after the Islamic revolution of 1979, and Israeli flags.

“Reza Pahlavi, you have emphasized many times: it is up to the Iranian people themselves to decide their future. To no one else. We take you at your word. You will keep this prize until you can present it to freely elected representatives of the Iranian people,” said Friedrich Naumann Foundation Chairman of the Board Steffen Saebisch.

Reza Pahlavi promised to “keep this award only provisionally, as a depositary”. “One day - and I believe that day is closer than the moribund clerical regime is willing to admit - I will return it to the hands of its rightful owners, the Iranian people. And this, not in a foreign land, but in our capital, Tehran,” he added, cheered by a few supporters present at the ceremony, in the former Protestant temple of Saint Paul in Frankfurt.

However, among the Iranian opposition in exile, this heir to the throne of the Shah of Iran, in exile in the United States since the 1979 revolution which overthrew his father, is far from unanimous.

In an email sent to AFP, Shahin Gobadi, spokesperson for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), political showcase of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK), considered "terrorist" by Tehran, stressed that the choice of Reza Pahlavi "has aroused strong objections from many Iranians and other people who question the basis on which an unelected and politically motivated figure contested can be assigned such a symbolic representative role.

“It is a scandal and an insult to the Iranian people as well as to all people who fight for freedom in Iran,” Sahar Sanaie, spokesperson for the Association of Germans of Iranian Origin in Hesse (region where Frankfurt is located), told AFP.

On the German side, the choice of Reza Pahlavi also raised eyebrows: the Frankfurt social democrats boycotted the event, arguing that he was not a legitimate representative of the Iranian people.