Prince

Hours before a ceasefire took effect between Israel and Iran on June 24, the son of Iran’s last shah, Reza Pahlavi, held a televised news conference in the French capital, Paris.

Dressed in a grey suit and blue tie with his hair combed back, the 64-year-old exiled (and self-styled) crown prince of the monarchy that Iranians overthrew in 1979 urged the United States not to give Iran’s government a “lifeline” by restarting diplomatic talks on its nuclear programme.

Pahlavi insisted that Iran’s Islamic Republic was collapsing. “This is our Berlin Wall moment,” he said, calling for ordinary Iranians to seize the opportunity afforded by Israel’s war and take to the streets, and for defections from the military and security forces.

But the mass protests Pahlavi encouraged never materialised.

Instead, many Iranians – including those opposed to the government – rallied around the flag in a moment of attack by a foreign force. It appears that Pahlavi, who said in his Paris speech that he was ready to replace Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and lead Iranians down a “road of peace and democratic transition”, had misread the room.

While he was willing to align with Israel in achieving what he perceives to be the greater goal of overthrowing the Islamic Republic, the majority of his compatriots were not.

If anything, Pahlavi may have squandered the little support he once had by choosing not to condemn Israel’s heavy bombardment of Iran, which killed more than 935 people, including many civilians, said Trita Parsi, an expert on Iran and the author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States.

“He has – in my estimation – destroyed much of the brand name [of the shah] … by going on TV and making excuses for Israel when it was targeting our apartment buildings and killing civilians,” he told Al Jazeera.

Pahlavi’s office did not respond to requests for comment from Al Jazeera.

Generational appeal

The level of support for Pahlavi is disputed, but many experts doubt it is extensive.

Still, what support he does have – particularly in the Iranian diaspora – often emanates from opposition to the Islamic Republic and nostalgia for the monarchy that predated it.

Yasmine*, a British-Iranian in her late 20s, said that members of her own family support Pahlavi for the symbolism of the pre-Islamic Republic era that he represents, as opposed to what he may actually stand for, adding that she believed that he lacked a clear political vision.

“He really symbolises what Iran was [a government that was secular and pro-West] prior to the Islamic Republic, and that’s what those who are asking for Reza Pahlavi want back,” she told Al Jazeera.

Her aunt, Yasna*, 64, left Iran just months before the 1979 revolution to attend university in the United Kingdom. While she supports Pahlavi for the reasons her niece mentioned, she also believes Iran will no longer be a pariah to the West if he returned to rule Iran.

“He’s somebody from my generation, and I have a clear memory of growing up in the days under the shah … he’s also so friendly with America, Europe and Israel, and we need somebody like that [in Iran],” Yasna said.

Analysts explained to Al Jazeera that the lack of a prominent alternative to Pahlavi – due to the Iranian government’s crackdown on political opposition – was part of Pahlavi’s appeal.

They also pointed out that support for Pahlavi is tied to the distorted memory that some have of his grandfather, Reza Khan, and his father, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Reza Khan was widely credited with creating an ethno-centralised state that curtailed the power of the religious clergy and violently cracked down on opponents and minorities. That repression continued under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

However, Yasna speaks fondly of the Pahlavi family and hopes Reza Pahlavi can soon carve out his own legacy.

“Reza’s grandfather brought security to the country, and his father helped us move forward. I now think Reza can unite us again,” she said.

Family history

The Pahlavis were not a dynasty with a long and storied past. Reza Khan was a military officer who seized power in the 1920s, before being replaced by Mohammad Reza in 1941.

Foreign powers had a role to play in that, as they did in 1953, when the US and the UK engineered a coup against Iran’s then-elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who had nationalised the assets of the Anglo-Persian oil company, now known as BP, in April 1951.

“The British thought it was their oil,” explained Assal Rad, a historian of Iran and the author of State of Resistance: Politics, Identity and Culture in Modern Iran.

“They had no recognition of the colonial past that allowed them to forcefully take the resource, nor recognition of Iran’s right to take the resource for itself,” she told Al Jazeera.

Prior to the coup, Rad explained that the shah was engaged in a power struggle with Mosaddegh, who openly criticised the shah for violating the constitution. The former wanted to maintain his control, especially over the military, while the latter was trying to mould Iran into a constitutional democracy with popular support.

The coup against Mosaddegh was ultimately successful, leading to another 26 years of progressively more repressive Pahlavi rule.

According to a 1976 report by Amnesty International, the shah’s feared intelligence agency (SAVAK) often beat political prisoners with electric cables, sodomised them and ripped off their finger and toenails to extract false confessions.

“At the end of the day, the shah’s regime was a brutal dictatorship and non-democracy,” Parsi told Al Jazeera.

Economic inequality between the rich urban classes and the rural poor also grew under the shah, according to a 2019 Brookings Institute report by Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, an economist at Virginia Tech University.

And yet, the shah appeared detached from the plight of his own people throughout his reign. Rad referenced a lavish party that the shah threw in 1971 to celebrate 2,500 years of the Persian Empire.

The luxurious party brought together foreign dignitaries from across the world, even as many Iranians struggled to make ends meet, highlighting the country’s economic disparities.

“He was celebrating Iran with nothing Iranian and no Iranians invited nor involved, and he even had student protesters arrested beforehand because he didn’t want incidents to occur while he was doing this,” Rad said. “The party was one of these monumental moments that led to the disconnect between him and his own people.”

Coupled with state repression and rising poverty, the Persian Empire celebration was one of the factors that eventually led to the 1979 revolution.

Reza Pahlavi was in the US when the revolution erupted, training to be a fighter pilot.

He was just 17 years old and has never returned to Iran since. Instead, a life in exile began, with the ultimate goal always remaining a return to his home country – and power.

As the eldest of the shah’s two sons, loyalists to the monarchy recognised Reza Pahlavi as heir apparent after his father passed away from cancer in 1980.

He has since spent the majority of his life in the US, mostly in the suburbs of Washington, DC.

Initially focused on restoring the monarchy, Pahlavi has shifted his rhetoric in the last two decades to focus more on the idea of a secular democracy in Iran. He has said he does not seek power, and would only assume the throne if asked to do so by the Iranian people.

Opposition outreach

Pahlavi’s attempt to broaden his appeal came as he also reached out to other opponents of the Iranian government.

Some have outright refused to work with him, citing his royal background. And others who have worked with him have quickly distanced themselves.

One of the most important examples of this was the Alliance for Democracy and Freedom in Iran, formed in 2023, in the wake of antigovernment protests that began the previous year.

As well as Pahlavi, the coalition included Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad, human rights activist and actress Nazanin Boniadi, former footballer Ali Karimi, and the author Hamed Esmaeilion.

But problems emerged from the very meeting organised to form the coalition in February 2023.

According to Parsi and Sina Toossi, an expert on Iran with the Center for International Policy (CIP), Pahlavi rejected any proposal to collaborate with the other attendees at the meeting in Washington, DC’s Georgetown University, either by agreeing to make decisions based on a shared consensus or through some kind of majority vote.

He instead wanted all attendees to defer and rally behind him as a leader of the opposition.

Another issue that followed the Georgetown meeting was the behaviour of Pahlavi’s supporters, many of whom were against anyone associated with left-wing politics, and defenders of the actions of the shah’s regime.

“The monarchists [his supporters] were upset that Reza was put on par with these other people [at the meeting],” said Toossi.

The coalition soon collapsed, with Esmaeilion referring to “undemocratic methods” in what many perceived to be criticism of Pahlavi.

Israeli connections

Two months after the Georgetown meeting, and as the newly formed alliance quickly collapsed, Pahlavi made a choreographed visit to Israel with his wife Yasmine.

As Al Jazeera previously reported, the visit was arranged by Pahlavi’s official adviser Amir Temadi, and Saeed Ghasseminejad, who works at the US right-wing think tank the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), which frequently publishes analyses that call on the US to use military force to deter Iran’s regional influence and nuclear programme.

During the visit, Pahlavi and his wife took a photo with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara.

Yasmine and I were very pleased to meet with @IsraeliPM and Sara @netanyahu. We expressed appreciation for Israel’s continued support for the Iranian people’s democratic aspirations and emphasized that, as the children of Cyrus the Great, Iranians aspire to have a government that… pic.twitter.com/lInuy4lwdC

— Reza Pahlavi (@PahlaviReza) April 19, 2023

The trip highlighted Pahlavi’s close ties to Israel, a relationship that had been cultivated for years, even if it was less publicly acknowledged initially.

During George W Bush’s first term as US president in the early 2000s, Pahlavi approached the powerful American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – a powerful lobby – to speak at their annual conference, according to Parsi.

The offer was rejected, with AIPAC members explaining that he would hurt his own brand as an Iranian nationalist if he were to speak at their annual conference, Parsi explained.

“AIPAC had told him that perhaps it wasn’t a good idea because it could delegitimise him, which tells you something about how disconnected [Pahlavi] was from the realities of the Iranian diaspora,” he told Al Jazeera.

But, about 10 years ago, during US President Donald Trump’s first term, Pahlavi also began to surround himself with advisers who have long called for closer ties between Iran and Israel and for the US to continue its “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign against Iran’s government, according to Toossi.

Trump’s maximum pressure campaign hurt common people more than the Iranian government. It resulted in sharp inflation and major depreciation of its currency, making it difficult for many Iranians to afford basic commodities and life-saving medications, according to Human Rights Watch.

According to Toossi, Pahlavi appeared somewhat aware of the economic hardships brought on by sanctions, which may explain why he supported US President Barack Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015.

The JCPOA ensured global monitoring of Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for much-needed sanctions relief.

However, Pahlavi quickly began to align with Trump when he came to power the following year, Toossi said. Trump scorned the JCPOA and finally pulled out in 2018 before beginning his maximum pressure policy.

The disconnect between Pahlavi and regular Iranians over this issue could also be seen in his actions during the 2023 trip to Israel.

Pahlavi made a well-publicised trip to the Western Wall, in occupied East Jerusalem, which holds considerable religious significance for Jewish people across the world.

The vast majority of Iranians are still Shia Muslims – even if many are secular– and Pahlavi did not visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam. The Western Wall is part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound’s exterior wall.

Out of touch

In hindsight, the 2023 trip to Israel and Pahlavi’s apparent friendly relations with Israeli officials have damaged his reputation, said Toossi.

“In short … what’s been going on with the Iran monarchy movement is a very clear, evident and above-the-table alliance with Israel,” he told Al Jazeera.

“He was really the only opposition figure that was supportive of [Israel’s war],” he added.

According to Barbara Slavin, an expert on Iran and a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Centre in Washington, DC, Pahlavi’s rhetoric was “counterproductive” during the 12-day war.

Slavin said Pahlavi has largely been disconnected from the feelings and perspectives inside Iran because he simply has not been there since he was a teenager, and his failure to condemn Israel’s bombardment of civilians has turned a lot of people off.

“After all the civilians Israel killed, [his relationship with Israel] really has a bad smell,” she told Al Jazeera.

Parsi agrees and adds that he doesn’t think Israel truly believes that Pahlavi can one day rule the country due to his lack of popular support both in and outside of Iran.

Parsi believes Israel is simply exploiting his brand to legitimise its own hostility towards Iran.

“He is … useful for the Israelis to parade around because it gives them a veneer of legitimacy for their own war of aggression against Iran” during the fighting, he said.

“[Israel] can point to [Pahlavi] and say, ‘Look. Iranians want to be bombed.’” Parsi said.

But that is a turn-off for many Iranians, including those against the government.

Yasmine, the British-Iranian, is one of them.

Pahlavi, in her view, was not charismatic and had cemented his unpopularity among Iranians, both inside Iran and outside, with his call for Iranians to take to the streets as Israel attacked Iran.

“He was asking Iranians to rise up against the government so that he will come [to take over],” Yasmine said. “He was basically asking Iranians to do his dirty work.”

*Some names have been changed to protect the safety of interviewees

July 1 (UPI) — Cloudflare announced it will begin blocking AI web crawlers to prevent them from “accessing content without permission or compensation,” from all of its clients beginning on Tuesday.

Cloudflare blocking AI crawler bots builds off the tool launched in September last year that allowed publishers the ability to block crawlers with one click but announced Tuesday the option to block them will be implemented by default for all of its clients.

“AI crawlers have been scraping content without limits. Our goal is to put the power back in the hands of creators, while still helping AI companies innovate,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. “This is about safeguarding the future of a free and vibrant Internet with a new model that works for everyone.”

Cloudflare is a content delivery network which helps businesses and applications by caching the data closer to end users and it estimated that 16% of global internet traffic goes directly through it’s service in a 2023 report.

The company also announced it will implement a Pay Per Crawl program that will allow some publishers to set a price that can be viewed by companies to decide whether they want to pay the fee for its content.

AI crawlers are automated bots with the intent to extract large amounts of data from websites, to train large language models from companies such as OpenAI and Google.

AI crawlers are typically seen as more invasive and selective when it comes to the data they consumer. They have been accused of overwhelming websites and significantly impacting user experience,” Matthew Holman, a partner at U.K. law firm Cripps, said.

“If effective, the development would hinder AI chatbots’ ability to harvest data for training and search purposes,” he added. “This is likely to lead to a short term impact on AI model training and could, over the long term, affect the viability of models.”

Picture books are not usually the stuff of Supreme Court rulings. But on Friday, a majority of justices ruled that parents have a right to opt their children out of lessons that offend their religious beliefs — bringing the colorful pages of books like “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” and “Pride Puppy” into the staid public record of the nation’s highest court.

The ruling resulted from a lawsuit brought by parents in Montgomery County, Md., who sued for the right to remove their children from lessons where LGBTQ+ storybooks would be read aloud in elementary school classes from kindergarten through 5th grade. The books were part of an effort in the district to represent LGBTQ+ families in the English language arts curriculum.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that schools must “notify them in advance” when one of the disputed storybooks would be used in their child’s class, so that they could have their children temporarily removed. The court’s three liberals dissented.

As part of the the decisions, briefings and petitions in the case, the justices and lawyers for the parents described in detail the story lines of nine picture books that were part of Montgomery County’s new curriculum. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor even reproduced one, “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” in its entirety.

Here are the nine books that were the subject of the case:

Pride Puppy
Author: Robin Stevenson
Illustrator: Julie McLaughlin

Book “Pride Puppy” published by Orca Book Publishers.

(Orca Book Publishers)

“Pride Puppy,” a rhyming alphabet book for very young children, depicts a little girl who loses her dog during a joyful visit to a Pride parade. The story, which is available as a board book, invites readers to spot items starting with each of the letters of the alphabet, including apple, baseball and clouds — as well as items more specific to a Pride parade.

Lawyers representing the parents said in their brief that the “invites students barely old enough to tie their own shoes to search for images of ‘underwear,’ ‘leather,’ ‘lip ring,’ ‘[drag] king’ and ‘[drag] queen,’ and ‘Marsha P. Johnson,’ a controversial LGBTQ activist and sex worker.”

The “leather” in question refers to a mother’s jacket, and the “underwear” to a pair of green briefs worn over tights by an older child as part of a colorful outfit.

The Montgomery County Public Schools stopped teaching “Pride Puppy” in the midst of the legal battle.

Love, Violet
Author: Charlotte Sullivan Wild
Illustrator: Charlene Chua

Book “Love Violet” published by macmillan publishers.

(macmillan)

The story describes a little girl named Violet with a crush on another girl in her class named Mira, who “had a leaping laugh” and “made Violet’s heart skip.” But every time Mira tries to talk to her, Violet gets shy and quiet.

On Valentine’s Day, Violet makes Mira a special valentine. As Violet gathers the courage to give it to her, the valentine ends up trampled in the snow. But Mira loves it anyway and also has a special gift for Violet — a locket with a violet inside. At the end of the book, the two girls go on an adventure together.

Lawyers for the parents describe “Love, Violet” as a book about “two young girls and their same-sex playground romance.” They wrote in that “teachers are encouraged to have a ‘think aloud’ moment to ask students how it feels when they don’t just ‘like’ but ‘like like’ someone.”

Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope
Author: Jodie Patterson
Illustrator: Charnelle Pinkney Barlow

Book “Born Ready” published by Random House.

(Random House)

In “Born Ready,” 5-year-old Penelope was born a girl but is certain they are a boy.

“I love you, Mama, but I don’t want to be you. I want to be Papa. I don’t want tomorrow to come because tomorrow I’ll look like you. Please help me, Mama. Help me be a boy,” Penelope tells their mom. “We will make a plan to tell everyone we know,” Penelope’s mom tells them, and they throw a big party to celebrate.

In her dissent, Sotomayor notes, “When Penelope’s brother expresses skepticism, his mother says, ‘Not everything needs to make sense. This is about love.’ ”

In their opening brief, lawyers for the families said that “teachers are told to instruct students that, at birth, people ‘guess about our gender,’ but ‘we know ourselves best.’ ”

Prince and Knight
Author: Daniel Haack
Illustrator: Stevie Lewis

“Prince and Knight” is a story about a prince whose parents want him to find a bride, but instead he falls in love with a knight. Together, they fight off a dragon. When the prince falls from a great height, his knight rescues him on horseback.

When the king and queen find out of their love, they “were overwhelmed with joy. ‘We have finally found someone who is perfect for our boy!’ ” A great wedding is held, and “the prince and his shining knight would live happily ever after.”

“The book Prince & Knight clearly conveys the message that same-sex marriage should be accepted by all as a cause for celebration,” said Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion, a concerning message for Americans whose religion tells them that same-sex marriage is wrong.

“For young children, to whom this and the other storybooks are targeted, such celebration is liable to be processed as having moral connotations,” Alito wrote. “If this same-sex marriage makes everyone happy and leads to joyous celebration by all, doesn’t that mean it is in every respect a good thing?”

Uncle Bobby’s Wedding
Author: Sarah S. Brannen
Illustrator: Lucia Soto

In “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” a little girl named Chloe learns that her beloved uncle is engaged to his partner, a man named Jamie. At first, she worries that the marriage will change her close bond with her uncle. But she soon embraces the celebration and the joy of getting another uncle through the union.

In the majority opinion, Alito wrote that the book sends children the message that “two people can get married, regardless of whether they are of the same or the opposite sex, so long as they ‘love each other.’ ” That viewpoint is “directly contrary to the religious principles that the parents in this case wish to instill in their children.” Parents ability to “present a different moral message” to their children, he said, “is undermined when the exact opposite message is positively reinforced in the public school classroom at a very young age.”

In her dissent, Sotomayor includes the entire book, writing that, “Because the majority selectively excerpts the book in order to rewrite its story.”

The majority’s analysis, she writes, “reveals its failure to accept and account for a fundamental truth: LGBTQ people exist. They are part of virtually every community and workplace of any appreciable size. Eliminating books depicting LGBTQ individuals as happily accepted by their families will not eliminate student exposure to that concept.”

Jacob’s Room to Choose
Author: Sarah Hoffman and Ian Hoffman
Illustrator: Chris Case

Book “Jacob’s Room To Choose” published by Magination Press.

(Magination Press)

“Jacob’s Room to Choose” is a follow-up to “Jacob’s New Dress,” a picture book listed as one of the American Library Assn.‘s top 100 banned books of the last decade.

Jacob wears a dress, and when he tries to use the boy’s bathroom, two little boys “stared at Jacob standing in the doorway. Jacob knew what that look meant. He turned and ran out.” The same thing happens to his friend Sophie, who presents as a boy and is chased out of the girl’s bathroom.

Their teacher encourages the whole class to rethink what gender really means. The class decides everyone should be able to use the bathroom that makes them feel comfortable, and makes new, inclusive signs to hang on the bathroom doors.

“After relabeling the bathroom doors to welcome multiple genders, the children parade with placards that proclaim ‘Bathrooms Are For Every Bunny’ and ‘[choose] the bathroom that is comfy,’ ” lawyers for the parents wrote.

IntersectionAllies: We Make Room for All
Author: Chelsea Johnson, LaToya Council and Carolyn Choi
Illustrator: Ashley Seil Smith

Book “IntersectionAllies: We Make Room for All” published by Dottir Press.

(Dottir Press)

“IntersectionAllies,” written by three sociologists, is a story about characters with different identities, including one who uses a wheelchair, and another, Kate, who identifies as transgender. One page shows Kate in a gender-neutral bathroom, saying, “My friends defend my choices and place. A bathroom, like all rooms, should be a safe space.”

In the majority opinion, Alito describes a discussion guide included with the book that he said asserts: “When we are born, our gender is often decided for us based on our sex . . . . But at any point in our lives, we can choose to identify with one gender, multiple genders, or neither gender.” The guide asks readers, “What pronouns fit you best?” Alito wrote.

What Are Your Words?: A Book About Pronouns
Author: Katherine Locke
Illustrator: Anne Passchier

“What Are Your Words” is a picture book about a child named Ari whose pronouns are “like the weather. They change depending on how I feel. And that’s ok, because they’re my words.” Ari’s Uncle Lior (who uses they/them pronouns) is coming to visit, and Ari is struggling to decide which words describe them.

“The child spends the day agonizing over the right pronouns,” the lawyers for the parents wrote. At the end, while watching fireworks, Ari says, “My words finally found me! They and them feel warm and snug to me.”

My Rainbow
Author: DeShanna Neal and Trinity Neal
Illustrator: Art Twink

“My Rainbow” tells the true story of a Black child with autism who self-identifies as a transgender girl. Trinity wants long hair, just like her doll, but has trouble growing it out. “The mother decides that her child knows best and sews him a rainbow-colored wig,” lawyers for the parents wrote.

The Montgomery County Public Schools also stopped teaching “My Rainbow” during the course of the lawsuit.

This article is part of The Times’ early childhood education initiative, focusing on the learning and development of California children from birth to age 5. For more information about the initiative and its philanthropic funders, go to latimes.com/earlyed.