Iran’s theocratic regime is tottering on the brink of collapse, according to the former crown prince whose family was dispossessed in the 1979 revolution that brought the mullahs to power.
“I think the events have passed this regime,” Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah of Iran, said Wednesday at the Hudson Institute. “We are in a mode of a final implosion.”
Pahlavi, who has lived in exile for the four decades since the Islamic Republic came to power, called for U.S. and European leaders to abandon any thought of negotiations with Tehran. Instead, he maintained that Trump should make regime change the goal of the “maximum pressure” campaign that U.S. officials have orchestrated since the withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal.
“I think people smell the opportunity for the first time in 40 years,” Pahlavi said. “The people have had it. Today’s generation of young Iranians cannot take it anymore. They want to have an opportunity for a better future, they want to be on the path of modernity and freedom. The only thing that stands between them and the free world is this regime.”
Pahlavi offered that assessment against the backdrop of yet another round of protests in Iran sparked most recently by the admission that Iranian forces mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian airliner carrying 176 people. The protests contradicted Iranian claims that the funeral of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani united the nation.
“The people of Iran need to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel,” the ex-royal said. “They need to have hope that they won’t be abandoned, because they have already braced and risked their lives with no support whatsoever. Imagine what they can do if they start having real support for a change — beyond rhetoric.”
Trump renewed the sanctions waived under the 2015 nuclear agreement in an effort to force Tehran to agree to new restrictions on their military and nuclear program. Pahlavi argued against even that level of engagement while maintaining that his proposal for increased U.S. support for regime change would not require the type of military intervention that overthrew Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq.
“All we need to know is that you are on the right side of the equations,” he said. “The people are doing the job. It’s not going to be American forces. It’s not going to be an intervention of any sort.”
Instead, he argued that a clear denunciation of the regime would motivate wavering security forces to defect. “If this message is sent loud and clear, trust me, more and more members of the military forces and paramilitary forces will say, ‘the time has finally come for us to lay down our arms and join our brethren on the streets,'” Pahlavi said. “The degree to which complete demoralization occurs in totalitarian regimes is directly correlated to the degree of optimism and hope that the people facing them sense at a crucial moment in history.”
