On February 26, 2025, news broke about a lawsuit filed in the United States against Parviz Sabeti, the head of the notorious Third Department of SAVAK (the Shah’s secret police) before the 1979 revolution. The lawsuit, filed by three political prisoners tortured during the Shah’s time, introduced Sabeti as the architect of institutionalizing torture in Iran and using forced confessions in public, obtained through torture. This practice was developed by Sabeti and has been expanded and used today in the mullahs’ regime.
The Independent reported that many sources say the Shah and Mullahs’ regime are “two sides of the same coin.” The legacy of torture was built by the Shah and expanded by the Mullahs’ regime. SAVAK was never dismantled, and was employed by the Mullahs’ regime.
Many political prisoners of the Shah’s time, in a statement recounting the crimes of the Shah and his SAVAK, exposed this strategy. Among them, 175 political prisoners of the Shah’s time, in their statements in January 2023, recalling their personal experiences and observations of brutal tortures by SAVAK and recalling the heroes who were martyred under torture, strongly condemned the inhumane actions of the remnants of the monarchical dictatorship and reactionary and colonial circles to whitewash SAVAK and the chief executioner of the torturers, Parviz Sabeti.
Also in January 2023, the fake opposition outfits were trying hard to promote the Shah’s son as an “alternative” through propaganda and fake followers, in order to push aside the revolutionary alternative. That same line, considering the illusion of a return to the ousted monarchy, in practice leads to the preservation of the mullahs’ regime, and implies that the current situation is preferred over the replacement of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).
Raising the photos of Parviz Sabeti, the chief executioner of the Shah’s SAVAK, also took place in that same month. The same person who was in charge of the Shah’s son’s political affairs in the United States, but now both he and the Shah’s son deny it and pretend to be pro-democracy in the United States.
At the time, the Iranian Resistance had exposed these ridiculous masquerades, reminding that the “free bus” (as the Shah’s son would call his so-called opposition coalition) that has SAVAK agents as passengers takes freedom and independence-seekers to the cells and execution groundsof Evin Prison.
The same “free bus,” which has as its legacy the 1953 coup against Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, and driven by the Shah’s son, was a gift to the heirs of SAVAK and the defectors of the mullahs’ regime.
The Resistance had warned that this is the road to transition from the turban and cloak of the mullahs to the bloody cloaks and boots of the shah regime.
And the Resistance had stressed that this deception, betrayal, deviation, and division only benefit the mullahs’ regime.
From the beginning, the Iranian Resistance has considered the fundamental demarcation of “Neither Shah, Nor Mullahs” as the “guiding light” of the struggle to overthrow the mullahs’ dictatorship and achieve a free and democratic republic in Iran, and in theory and practice, from official positions to the slogan of the operations of the Resistance Units on the streets, it has been loyal to it. It’s the guiding light which is the key to the progress of this resistance and this democratic alternative.
A hundred years ago, in the absence of an organized resistance and a worthy alternative, foreign powers were able to install Reza Pahlavi as their pawn ruling Iran. He had directly fought in the ranks of the Russian Cossacks against the freedom fighters of Iran’s 1906 Constitutional Revolution. And he came to power with a coup on February 21, 1921, to destroy the achievements of that revolution.
But now the guiding light of “Neither Shah, Nor Mullahs” and the slogans “Death to the oppressor, be it the Shah or the Leader” on the streets of Iran during the 2022 uprising and in the demonstrations of compatriots in different countries showed that the “People’s Front,” with all its diversity, has no room for the elements of the Shah and the mullahs’ regimes.
In this regard, the Iranian Resistance, while endorsing and emphasizing the complaint of 3 political prisoners tortured in the Shah’s SAVAK, once again calls on the judiciary and responsible officials in the United States to bring Parviz Sabeti, the Shah’s chief executioner, who was involved in the execution and killing of hundreds of political prisoners and in the torture of thousands of other political prisoners and is one of the most prominent examples of criminals against humanity in contemporary history, to justice.