Iran

On Feb. 11, 1979, the Shah of Iran was overthrown, causing the culmination of the Iranian Revolution and the beginning of the Islamic Republic of Iran. I was seven years old. My family was living in Washington because both of my parents had worked for the government.

Taraneh Rahimi was staying with friends on the night of Jan. 24 when masked, armed men barged into the house, put a bag over her head and took her away. They later came for her twin sister, Romina.

For months after that, their loved ones didn’t know where they were, or whether they were even alive. Their mother searched for her 20-year-old daughters everywhere, begging staff at hospitals, in courts and outside prisons for information about them, to no avail.

On Sept. 16, 2022, a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, was visiting Tehran with her parents. She was walking down the street when members of the hated religious police (Basij) jumped out of a car and shoved Mahsa into the passenger seat. They took her to the police station, where she was interrogated and beaten into a coma.

The twins were 19 and still in high school when they were taken from their beds in the dead of night by masked men later identified as being sent by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

After four months of desperately seeking news from hospitals and state institutions, their mother, Marzieh Nourmohammadi, finally learned their fate. Taraneh and Romina Rahimi had been seized over their decision to join millions on the streets of Iranian cities during the January protests against the regime. The twins were unrecognisable by the time of their mother’s prison visit in May.

OTTAWA – Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has invited the former crown prince of Iran, who is pitching himself as the best option to lead Iran back to democracy, to visit Canada.

Poilievre told a crowd at an event in British Columbia on Saturday that in addition to extending the invitation, he would also be meeting virtually with Reza Pahlavi, whose father ruled over the country as Shah until the 1979 Islamic Revolution pushed the family into exile.