Wall Street Journal :

A new documentary project that gives a say to people close to the shah and his toppled monarchy is testing the limits of today’s Iranian regime.

Hossein Dehbashi, a 43-year-old Iranian documentary filmmaker, is making a splash in Tehran by giving voice to some of the most controversial figures in Iran: high officials and leading lights of the regime of the shah, overthrown in 1979 during the Iranian Revolution.

Long disparaged as traitors and dupes, the officials should be seen more objectively, says Mr. Dehbashi, who earlier this year published the first four volumes of an ambitious new oral history that gives a say to members of Iran’s ancien regime.

“They’ve got their stories to tell,” says Mr. Dehbashi.

Those are fighting words in Iran. As the first generation of the country’s revolutionary leaders age, they are struggling, even among themselves, to define the identity and future of the country and its theocratic regime—and they are not eager to cast a more understanding light on the monarchy they toppled.

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