Inside Reza Pahlavi's faltering bid to lead Iran | TheBriefWire
Inside Reza Pahlavi's faltering bid to lead Iran
Published 28 July 2026 · world
PARIS: As the U.S. and Israel went to war on Iran this year, a transformative moment seemed to have arrived for Reza Pahlavi, son of
PARIS: As the U.S. and Israel went to war on Iran this year, a transformative moment seemed to have arrived for Reza Pahlavi, son of the autocratic shah who was overthrown in 1979. Despite not having set foot in Iran in almost half a century, Pahlavi had been actively campaigning in the U.S. and Europe, giving speeches about a bright new future for his homeland, raising money and meeting elected officials. "The Iranian people have called on me to lead the transition after the regime is gone," he declared on the social-media platform X shortly after the war began in late February. "I have accepted that responsibility." In Texas this March, Pahlavi received one of the most enthusiastic receptions at the Conservative Political Action Conference. As he took the stage, staunch supporters of President Donald Trump and a large contingent of Iranian Americans, many draped in the pre-revolution Iranian flag that flew during his father's rule, lavished him with a 45-second standing ovation. Four days later, Trump horrified many Iranian emigres by declaring in a social-media post: "we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!" To the shock of some of Pahlavi's Iranian-American financial supporters - one of whom said the donors had recently given his campaign more than $3 million in the hope he could lead a new, transitional government in Iran - the exiled prince didn't swiftly condemn Trump's remarks. Now, Pahlavi's triumphant appearance at CPAC appears to mark the apex of his rise as the most visible candidate vying to step in should the hardline Islamic government fall. Although he continues to campaign, his candidacy has sputtered. In mid-January, Trump told Reuters that Pahlavi "seems very nice, but I don't know how he'd play within his own country." And behind the scenes his administration sidelined the prince. As Iranian-American human rights activist Ahmad Batebi prepared to address a January 15 United Nations Security Council meeting on Tehran's bloody crackdown on protests earlier that month, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz personally urged him not to mention Pahlavi by name, according to two people familiar with the exchange. Although Batebi supports Pahlavi, he complied. In a statement, Waltz told Reuters he suggested "a tight focus" on Batebi's own experience of torture in Iranian prisons and "the barbarism of the regime" would make "the greatest impact, rather than opposition politics." In June, the tattered ceasefire pact signed by the U.S. and Iran made no mention of regime change. Instead, the U.S. agreed to respect Iran's sovereignty and refrain from interfering in its internal affairs - and publicly dismissed Pahlavi again. "The President of the United States never said that his goal was to install Reza Pahlavi to become the new leader of Iran," U.S. Vice President JD Vance told podcaster Megyn Kelly after Trump announced the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding on June 14. Pahlavi and his top aides were left to blast the agreement on social media. Meanwhile, some of Pahlavi's financial backers, who communicate in a private WhatsApp group, have grown disillusioned not just by his muted criticism of Trump's extreme wartime threats. In private calls, according to three people familiar with the matter, Pahlavi listened to but ultimately ignored their advice to try harder to unify the opposition and to forcefully condemn some of his more radical supporters' violence against and harassment of other Iranian dissidents. There is no evidence that Pahlavi had anything to do with those incidents. Pahlavi's faltering leadership bid highlights one of the major flaws in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran: the lack of a clear alternative to the Islamic Republic. Shortly after the bombing began in late February, Trump called for the Iranian people to rise up and take over their government. But despite an air strike that killed the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the government has survived the onslaught - and in the view of many Iran watchers, has tightened its hold on power. 'I'M A BRIDGE TO THE DESTINATION'In two interviews with Reuters this month, including a lengthy video sit-down in Paris, Pahlavi stressed that Iran's current government is "very close" to collapse. "This campaign started as a lifetime mission to liberate Iran 46 years ago," he said. "And it has never been about me. It's been about the Iranian people and their right to self-determination." His role, he said, is to lead a transition to a new democratic government: "I'm not the destination, I'm a bridge to the destination." The Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York didn't respond to requests for comment. While Pahlavi's supporters see him as a unifier, several attempts he was involved in to unite the long-divided opposition collapsed. In one case in 2023, three people familiar with the matter say, his wife insulted other opposition leaders, which she denies. Two activists also say he was mostly all talk and no action during a campaign to designate as a terrorist organization the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which wields vast military, political and economic power in Iran.
Published: July 28, 2026 • 3:38 PM IST · Updated: July 28, 2026 • 4:08 PM ISTBy TheBriefWire Editorial Team
Key points
PARIS: As the U.S. and Israel went to war on Iran this year, a transformative moment seemed to have arrived for Reza Pahlavi, son of the autocratic shah who was overthrown in 1979. Despite not having set foot in Iran in almost half a century, Pahlavi had been actively campaigning in the U.S. and Europe, giving speeches about a bright new future for his homeland, raising money and meeting elected officials.
"The Iranian people have called on me to lead the transition after the regime is gone," he declared on the social-media platform X shortly after the war began in late February.
"I have accepted that responsibility." In Texas this March, Pahlavi received one of the most enthusiastic receptions at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
As he took the stage, staunch supporters of President Donald Trump and a large contingent of Iranian Americans, many draped in the pre-revolution Iranian flag...
Quick context: and Israel went to war on Iran this year, a transformative moment seemed to have arrived for Reza Pahlavi, son of the autocratic shah who was overthrown in 1979.
For this story, Reuters interviewed more than 50 people, including eight of Pahlavi's current and former associates; reviewed hundreds of pages of legal documents; and sifted through extensive video, photographic and social-media records of Pahlavi and his supporters, some of whom favor a restoration of Iran's pre-revolutionary monarchy. Pahlavi's main credential is being the son of the last shah of Iran. Unlike many successful revolutionaries of the recent past, such as South Africa's Nelson Mandela, Poland's Lech Walesa or the Islamists who overthrew his father, Pahlavi doesn't seem to have a mass organized movement inside the country ready to roll into power. Iran's repressive government also has culled potential alternative opposition leaders who might have risen to Pahlavi's level of prominence, imprisoning or killing thousands of dissidents and allegedly trying to assassinate critics abroad. Far from a sputtering campaign, Pahlavi described a robust "mobilization to overcome this regime" and told Reuters it's "not true" that he hasn't built a mass movement. Huge numbers of Iranians heeded his call to protest in the streets on January 8 and 9, he said, and many died when the government responded with gunfire. He said he communicates with "cell leaders" of "over a thousand different groupings" that span labor, academia, religion and ethnic organizations "to be ready to intervene the moment that we have that opening." Reuters was unable to independently confirm how many groups inside Iran are working with him. It was Tehran's "massacre" of demonstrators in January that Pahlavi said changed his view on foreign intervention. That month, an Iranian official told Reuters that deaths in street protests had reached at least 5,000; Pahlavi puts the figure at 40,000. "This regime demonstrates that it has no mercy whatsoever," he said. "It's willing to kill thousands upon thousands of its own citizens, and therefore there has to be an adjustment of how you look at things." The Iranian people are still the "boots on the ground," he said, but they need foreign military help to "equal the playing field." He said he hasn't sought the endorsement of any government or leader: "It is not for a foreign government to decide who or what should be the alternative for Iran. That's up to the Iranian people." In the interviews, Pahlavi did not directly address Trump's post about blasting Iran back to the Stone Ages but stressed, as he has in the past, that military strikes should "hit the regime as hard as you can" but spare "civilian infrastructure." Speaking about his own movement, Pahlavi unequivocally condemned violence by his more radical supporters and said he has worked hard to unify the Iranian opposition, gathering together representatives "from all walks of life, ideologies. In fact, I've reached out to people who were, at the time, my father's worst enemies. Today, they are fully on board working with me." Pahlavi said his critics "are entitled to their opinion. Some people may not like my face. Some people may think that I should be doing this and that," he said. But, he added, "I think for the most part, I'm enjoying a lot of support across the board, inside and outside of Iran." Some of that support, he acknowledged, comes from his family legacy: "Yes, I happen to have the Pahlavi name. And by the way, that's a positive. That's what people are chanting on the streets." While it's difficult to obtain accurate polling in an authoritarian society, a survey of 31,450 Iranians late last month found that about 48% view Pahlavi favorably, according to Ammar Maleki, director of the Netherlands-based Gamaan Research Institute, which conducts online polling in Iran. 'ROYALIST BUBBLE'It has been 48 years since Pahlavi, the eldest son of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was in Iran. An aviation enthusiast, he moved to Texas in 1978 at age 17 to begin jet pilot training at Reese Air Force Base. After the 1979 revolution - which began as a broad-based uprising against his father's repressive rule but produced the Islamic theocracy - he remained abroad, earning a bachelor's degree from the University of Southern California in social sciences and communication. His life in exile has been marked by repeated personal tragedy. His father died in 1980 from complications related to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. His younger sister, Leila, died in London in 2001 of a drug overdose. His brother Alireza, a doctoral student in ancient Iranian studies at Harvard University, took his own life in 2011. Pahlavi, 65, has never held a conventional salaried job, according to three people who have known him for years. Instead, he has spent his years in exile as a political activist, casting himself as leading the Iranian opposition and accompanied by a rotating set of supporters, some of whom have turned against him. "If an attorney decides to take a case pro bono, does this mean that he doesn't have a job?" Pahlavi told Reuters. "I've been doing this voluntarily for free for four decades as my sacrifice for the sake of my country." U.S. Representative Derrick Van Orden, a Wisconsin Republican who met Pahlavi in his Washington office in May, said he found him articulate and humble.
"He's tall, and you know, he just looks presidential." Van Orden said he challenged Pahlavi over the "despicable" conduct of SAVAK, the shah's secret police, telling him "not everybody has the best memory of your father's rule, and he acknowledged it." Others have been less impressed. Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, a conflict-prevention organization, said that after meeting Pahlavi 15 years ago, he concluded he lacked the appetite for the political rough-and-tumble needed to lead change in Iran. "Talking to him, you realize he's much more passionate about football, food and photography than politics," Vaez said. "It was, and still is, abundantly clear that he doesn't have what it takes to be a leader." Scott Anderson, author of "King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution," a 2025 book about the uprising that toppled Pahlavi's father, said, "He's lived in this kind of royalist bubble." Anderson added, "Everything I've always heard about him from people in the Iranian diaspora is that he's kind of a lightweight." In response, Pahlavi said: "I could have easily decided back in Cairo when my father passed away, 'You know what? To hell with it. I can pursue, like many others, a life, business, other things.'" Instead, he said, "I decided to stay in it for the sake of my country." Anderson and other experts do agree that Pahlavi is the most widely recognized Iranian opposition figure. The opposition in Iran, a nation of more than 90 million, encompasses monarchists, socialists and Marxists, republicans, and a range of secular, religious and ethnic blocs. While they share opposition to the Islamic Republic, they often disagree fiercely over what and who should replace it. Citing the shah's authoritarian legacy, some of those opposition groups question whether Pahlavi would adhere to his stated plan to oversee a transitional government and then let Iranians choose their future system. Asked if he would rule out becoming monarch even if the Iranian people were to vote for a constitutional monarchy, Pahlavi told Reuters: "Well, I'm telling you, I am not running for office. That has never been my preoccupation. And it also depends on, at the end, what it is that best serves the country's purpose." Nostalgia for the stability and relative prosperity that some Iranians enjoyed during his father's rule has burnished his image over time. Nahid Khazraee, 54, left Iran when she was 16. She was among the protesters who marched through New York City on May 16 in support of Pahlavi. She wore a locket with images of Trump and Pahlavi, which she said symbolized "MIGA" - Make Iran Great Again. Pahlavi, she told Reuters, "is the only person that everyone would trust, because our grandparents, our family, they all used to have good days [before the] revolution happened." KICKING AND PUNCHING Dilovan Emadaldin Silashor thought he was going to die. On March 9, the Kurdish freelance reporter from Iraq was covering the aftermath of a fight that had broken out after Pahlavi supporters turned up at a Kurdish restaurant in London and demanded the establishment display Iran's pre-revolution lion-and-sun flag, a symbol of support for the shah's son. Iran's Kurdish minority is estimated to comprise between about 10% and 17% of the population. Moments after Silashor arrived, he said an Iranian man shouted abuse at a group of local Kurds standing guard outside the restaurant, sparking another confrontation. As Silashor filmed, several Iranian men turned on him, knocking him to the ground and repeatedly kicking and punching him in the head and back, he said. He put his satchel over his head to protect himself. "This is the end of my life," Silashor recalled thinking. He was treated in a hospital later that night for extensive bruising of his ribs and said he continues to suffer back and leg pain. After reporting the assault to police, Silashor said officers showed him photographs from which he identified one of his alleged attackers. Reuters reviewed that man's social media accounts, which contain numerous posts showing him attending pro-Pahlavi demonstrations and rallies. Many display the lion-and-sun flag. The man denied attacking Silashor in an online message to Reuters, saying, "I did not hit that boy at all." Police said they are still investigating after they arrested two men and released them without charges. The assault was one of at least four recent incidents across three countries - the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Austria - in which Reuters documented Pahlavi supporters engaging in violence or harassment. In addition, two Pahlavi supporters were charged in March in Canada with the murder of a Pahlavi critic. Addressing violence by his supporters, Pahlavi told Reuters: "I condemn it. I distance myself from that. I don't justify it. I don't condone it. And, in fact, I ask for whatever authority it is to have them face the crime they've committed. You cannot just go and start brutalizing people." In the Netherlands, police in The Hague are investigating online campaigns that allegedly harassed and threatened Iranians, a police spokesperson told Reuters.
Dutch authorities questioned a 46-year-old business consultant, Shabnam Hosseini, for 5½ hours over allegations she engaged in doxxing Iranians in Holland, she said in a June 22 Instagram post. She ended the post with the slogan "Javid Shah," a Persian phrase meaning long live the king, and her social media accounts contain extensive pro-Pahlavi content. One target of Hosseini's social media activity was a 38-year-old software engineer. The man attended a Jan. 16 protest near The Hague against an apparently imminent U.S. attack on Iran. Hours later, the engineer, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said he discovered his photograph circulating online in posts portraying him as an Iranian government loyalist. One post came from Hosseini, who published the engineer's photo. In the post, she also said she had contacted the Dutch intelligence service AIVD, the counter-terrorism agency NCTV and the man's employer, urging the company to revoke his access to certain corporate data lest he use it to help Tehran target Iranians abroad. According to a police report, the engineer endured a torrent of similar accusations on social media, causing severe anxiety. The engineer's company told Reuters it was "aware of the situation" but declined to comment further. AIVD, NCTV and the Dutch national police all declined to say if they had any contact with Hosseini, and the Hague police didn't respond to questions about her. Hosseini told Reuters that police did not ask about her post concerning the engineer and that she does not regret posting about him. The protest he attended was a gathering of Islamic Republic supporters, she said, and information on suspected sympathizers should be collected for the "transitional government courts" she said would be established after the current government falls. In February, several self-identified Pahlavi supporters confronted Mehdi Shahparveri, the owner of a Persian restaurant in Vienna, demanding that he display the pre-revolution flag. When he refused, Shahparveri told Reuters, they threatened to destroy his business, insulted staff and frightened customers. The incident was videotaped and appears on social media. In a trial this month, a man was convicted on two charges - making a dangerous threat and coercion. He was ordered to pay Shahparveri a symbolic amount of 100 euros. Vienna prosecutors say they are still investigating a female suspect. Soon after the Vienna restaurant incident, academics and opposition figures, including some who had criticized Pahlavi for not embracing a wide enough range of opposition groups, held a conference in a London hotel. Organizers advised some attendees to leave by car through a basement exit because of fears of violence from a crowd of Pahlavi supporters outside, according to two attendees who requested anonymity. One told Reuters he left on foot anyway and was confronted by a group of about 20 people who spat on him, tried to knock him down, and demanded that he recite "Javid Shah." When he refused, he said, they again spat on him. Reuters was unable to independently confirm his account. A BUNCH OF "NOBODIES" According to some of Pahlavi's critics, he has failed to tamp down the abusive rhetoric that some of his closest aides, as well as his wife, have leveled against other Iranian dissidents, further dividing an already fractious opposition. In early 2023, opposition figures launched a unity effort that came to be known as the Georgetown Coalition after the university in Washington, D.C., where it first convened. As part of that effort, members gathered in Toronto in March 2023 for a panel discussion. As attendees waited in a side room to take the stage, Yasmine Pahlavi, the exiled prince's wife of 40 years, entered and, unprompted, told the other dissidents they were "nobodies" compared to her husband, according to three people familiar with the exchange. The remark stunned those present. Among them was Hamed Esmaeilion, whose wife and daughter were killed when Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shot down a Ukraine International Airlines passenger jet in 2020. Also present was the Iranian-American journalist and political dissident Masih Alinejad, who had been the target of an assassination attempt. Within weeks, amid disagreements over the group's direction, the coalition disbanded. In a statement to Reuters, Yasmine said she never made the remark, calling it a "complete fabrication. No such interaction occurred in Toronto. Such lies are disappointing." Others in the prince's inner circle have also been accused of launching divisive attacks on Pahlavi's opponents. One key aide, Saeed Ghasseminejad, wrote in a January post on
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