January 6, 2011
Hamid Dabashi comments on the suicide of Alireza Pahlavi, son of the last Shah of Iran and the second of his children to take his own life, in a post on CNN.
Like other young Iranians, the late Alireza Pahlavi and before him his late younger sister, Leila Pahlavi, who also committed suicide in London in 2001, must have wanted to be a source of good for their homeland. There is no reason to doubt that possibility no matter what our politics might be. But historical circumstances and the ending of monarchy in Iran did not allow that to happen, and in exile the former queen and her four children have not been able to find a viable way of having a positive impact in their homeland.