{"id":330481,"date":"2025-04-13T18:26:25","date_gmt":"2025-04-13T17:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=330481"},"modified":"2025-04-13T18:32:49","modified_gmt":"2025-04-13T17:32:49","slug":"a-mothers-story-of-torture-loss-and-resistance-in-two-irans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/human-rights\/a-mothers-story-of-torture-loss-and-resistance-in-two-irans\/","title":{"rendered":"A Mother\u2019s Story of Torture, Loss, and Resistance in Two Irans"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Aziz
Aziz Rezaee (born Zahra Norowzi) is a 96-year-old Iranian dissident whose five children were killed by both the Shah\u2019s regime and the clerical dictatorship. She remains a symbol of resistance.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She was 14 when she buried her first child. By her twenties, she had buried three more\u2014killed not by war or illness, but by the Shah\u2019s secret police. Today, 96-year-old Aziz Rezaee lives in quiet exile on the outskirts of Paris, her feet still etched with the scars of torture, her soul carrying the weight of five children murdered\u2014four under the Shah<\/a>, one under the mullahs.<\/p>\n

In a moment when Iran\u2019s pre-1979 monarchy is increasingly romanticized in Western discourse and diaspora nostalgia, Rezaee\u2019s testimony is a powerful reminder of the era\u2019s brutal underside. Her life story spans two tyrannies, two revolutions, and the unbroken will of a mother who refused to surrender\u2014even as both the Shah\u2019s SAVAK and the Islamic Republic\u2019s Revolutionary Guards shattered her family in the name of state security.<\/p>\n

The original article, \u201cDecades of Resilience: One Woman\u2019s Harrowing Tale of Torture Under the Shah Sheds Light on Iran\u2019s Dark History,\u201d<\/em> by Hollie McKay, was originally published on hotair.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Decades of Resilience: One Woman’s Harrowing Tale of Torture Under the Shah Sheds Light on Iran’s Dark History<\/a><\/h3>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>April 12, 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Hollie McKay<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

PARIS, France \u2013 Fifty years later, anti-Iranian regime activist Aziz Rezaee still bears the scars of torture on the bottoms of her frail feet. Yet, the 96-year-old\u2019s years of abuse and political imprisonment stemmed not from the iron fist of the Mullahs but from their predecessor, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, revealing the underbelly of an Iranian epoch often romanticized by history as a bastion of freedom and progress.<\/p>\n

Rezaee children killed by the regimes of the Shah and the mullahs<\/h3>\n

\u201cIran was a beautiful place \u2013 but only for the very rich, not for the vast majority of Iranians, and that was the story of the Revolution,\u201d Aziz tells me from her small apartment on the periphery of Paris. \u201cAnd there was only one party \u2013 there could be no opposition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born Zahra Norowzi in 1929 in Tehran, Aziz \u2013 a better-known moniker that translates to \u201cdear\u201d \u2013married and gave birth to the first of nine children at age fourteen, a son named Hassan, who succumbed to pneumonia shortly after childbirth.<\/p>\n

However, such tragedy only marked the beginning of what was to come.<\/p>\n

Her nation\u2019s heartache, Rezaee asserts, took hold in the early 1950s with the western-engineered overthrow of Iran\u2019s<\/a> first democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, who nationalized Iran\u2019s oil industry. This act, along with other nationalist policies and Western fears of communism, led to a 1953 CIA and MI6-backed coup codenamed TPAJAX and Operation Boot, respectively, which toppled Mossadegh and restored the Shah as the sole power rather than a symbolic leader.<\/p>\n

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Guest Essay: One Woman's Harrowing Tale of Torture Under the Shah Sheds Light on Iran's Dark History https:\/\/t.co\/z8hEEeViZQ<\/a><\/p>\n

— Hollie McKay (@holliesmckay) April 12, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n