Mohammad Reza I of Iran Quotes

Soviet propaganda is remarkably effective and the Americans are even more remarkably stupid.

What's happened recently in Pakistan, India and Kuwait only goes to show that it's futile to imitate Western democracy. They've ended up exactly where they started.

The Times and the Guardian accuse us of operating a police-state. The BBC Persian programme has made similair allegations, saying that countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia should be denied access to Western military technology. What are the bloody fools on about? Do they seriously regard Iraq, or Algeria, or Libya as liberal regimes?

Who on earth do the Americans suppose their allies are amongst the Arab world? Even Saudi Arabia they seem to regard as nothing more than a reservoir of oil and money.

It would serve the Americans right if we emptied the prisons and let the subversives take power. They'd soon show Washington just how much they appreciate good old American values.

... the Jewish press in the USA is solely responsible for our poor publicity.

Pride comes before a fall- although in [Henry Kissinger's] case it's more conceit than pride.

To be first in the Middle East is not enough. We must raise ourselves to the level of a great world power.

Muslim brothers be damned; they're our greatest enemies. You know yourself that I'm a Muslim, even a fanatical Muslim. But that does nothing to alter my opinion of the Arabs.

Nixon would like to consign us to to the level of the most backward countries in the whole Middle East. Why lower us to the standard of the Saudis rather than raising the Saudis to meet us?

Nixon has the audacity to tell me to do nothing in the interest of my country until he dictactes where that interest lies. At the same time he threatens me that failure to follow his so-called advice will be to jeopardize the special relations between our two countries. I say to hell with such special relations.

The great powers claim that whatever they possess is theirs by right, but whatever we, the smaller countries possess is negotiable.

Nixon is a strong leader with a good grasp of the world's problems. He knows that the only way to argue with the communists is from a position of strength.

Better that he take risks than that he ends up a shrinking violet like Ahmad Shah Qajar.

He [the King of Morocco] spends half his time asleep and the rest of it buried between the legs of the fairer sex.