PNN programs will examine this historic event and its impact including interviews with eyewitnesses. On February 11, the anniversary itself, the second hour of News & Views' nightly newscast will center entirely on the Revolution. That program and others throughout the week will feature interviews with:
· Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a one-time senior confidante and heir apparent to Ayatollah Khomeini;
· Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, first President of the Islamic Republic;
· Empress Farah Pahlavi, the deposed Shah's wife, discussing the tumultuous end of her husband's reign;
· Babak Amir Khosravi, Communist Party leader in the pro-Revolutionary movement who later split with the Revolution's goals;
· Jacques Hubert, senior editor at Les Echos, a major political and financial French newspaper, who covered Iran before and after the Revolution;
· Hedayat Matin Daftari, grandson of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq, who represented a Leftist element in the pro-Revolutionary forces, discussing the role of intellectuals in the Revolution;
· Hassan Shariatmadari, son of Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari, who was a supporter of the Revolution but was later rejected by the Revolution;
· Mohsen Sarzgara, a founding father of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps who later turned against Khomeini;
· Khosrow Akmal, former Chief of Protocol in Iran's Imperial Court; and
· Manucher Razmara, Minister of Health under Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar.
VOA has the largest combined radio and television audience of all international broadcasters in Iran, with one in four adult Iranians tuning into a VOA show at least once a week. Programs are also streamed on our website, www.VOANews.com/Persian.
The Voice of America, which first went on the air in 1942, is a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors. VOA broadcasts more than 1,250 hours of news, information, educational, and cultural programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 115 million people. Programs are produced in 45 languages.
For more information, call the Office of Public Affairs at (202) 203-4959, or e-mail publicaffairs@voa.gov.
