The son of the late Shah of Iran, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, has warned of the consequences for the volatile Middle East and the rest of the world if the popular uprising in Iran is crushed, according to the Wall Street Journal 0f 22 June.
The defeat of the uprising would not only threaten global stability but could lead to nuclear war, the Crown Prince told a news conference here.
"Their defeat will encourage extremism from the shores of the Levant to the energy jugular of the world. At worst, fanatical tyrants who know that the future is against them may end their present course on their terms: a nuclear holocaust," he told a room packed with reporters at the National Press Club in Washington.
[To watch the Crown Prince's address, follow this link.]
The Crown Prince urged the Western media to continue to act as "the information artery connecting different parts of the freedom movement in Iran" by globally spreading the messages coming from the protesters inside the country.
The Iranian government has suppressed foreign media coverage of the protests in Iran, but Iranians have been sending messages and videos to news outlets or acquaintances outside the country using social networking sites, online video and photo outlets and the micro-blogging source, Twitter.