I believe we can find unanimity among a diverse group of forces for the elimination of a system in which the regime tries everything to claim legitim… - Reza Pahlavi

My message to the rank and file of the IRGC and to the nation’s military and security forces is to part ways with this criminal regime and join the Iranian people in their revolution

It's now plain for the world to see how the supreme leader and his fellow power-hungry, mid-level clerics have been abusing the peoples' faith to maintain the big lie that they derive their legitimacy from Islam. Gone is the delusion that one man, Mr. Khamenei, can appropriate the powers of state in the name of God. So the supreme leader has lost his theocratic claim to legitimacy just as his favorite president has lost his claim to popular legitimacy. Because many in the armed forces and Revolutionary Guards are followers of religious leaders who question Mr. Khamenei, he cannot even count on presiding over a typical military dictatorship for long.

There was excess [during the Shah's reign] by some members of the Iranian SAVAK [secret police], there was a lot of repression, there were unnecessary acts such as torture that I never condone and in fact condemn.