Reza Pahlavi

• 1. Introduction

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  Reza Pahlavi declared himself king of Iran on the 31st of October 1980, his twentieth birthday, taking the title Reza Shah II from exile. The monarchy he claimed had been abolished the year before. Almost at once, John Trattner, a spokesman for the United States Department of State, said Washington did not intend to support him. Trattner added that the United States recognized the new post-revolutionary Iranian government. Pahlavi was the son of Iran's last Shah. In the decades since, he has become a political activist and dissident, and he now lives in the United States. How does a crown prince raised for a throne that no longer exists become a voice for a national referendum? Who has backed him, who follows him, and how would anyone measure that? And what does he say Iran should become if the Islamic Republic falls?

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• 2. From Palace to Texas

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  A birth in Tehran in 1960 came with gifts to the public. The Shah pardoned 98 political prisoners, and the government announced a 20 percent cut in income tax. Reza Pahlavi was the eldest son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Empress Farah, the Shahbanu. His siblings were Farahnaz, Ali Reza and Leila, and he also had a half-sister, Shahnaz. In 1967, at his father's coronation, he was officially named Crown Prince of Iran.

  Inside the royal palace stood a private school that carried his own name, the Reza Pahlavi School. Only the imperial family and court associates could attend it.

  Taj, the Tehran football club now called Esteghlal, held a special place in his boyhood. He was a keen player and spectator, and National Iranian Radio and Television even broadcast his support for the club. Taj performed in annual rallies held on his birthday, which tied the club to the Pahlavi regime. He also backed Taj Abadan, another club of that era.

  He was eleven when he made his first solo flight. A year later he held a pilot's license.

  In August 1978 the Imperial Iranian Air Force sent the young cadet to the United States. At Reese Air Force Base near Lubbock, Texas, he joined 43 cadet pilots in a one-year training program. They flew the Cessna T-37 Tweet and the Northrop T-38 Talon. The revolution led by Ruhollah Khomeini toppled his father and cut the course short. He left the base in March 1979, roughly four months early. He then rejoined his family, who traveled under tight security from Morocco to the Bahamas to Mexico.

  Williams College took him as a student in September 1979, but he dropped out in 1980. He next enrolled as a political science student at The American University in Cairo, though his attendance was irregular. By 1981 he had reportedly left that program too and was studying privately with Iranian professors. His subjects were Persian culture and history, philosophy, and oil in Iran. In 1985, while living in Morocco, he earned a B.S. in political science by correspondence from the University of Southern California. Besides his native Persian, he is fluent in English and French. The Cairo years also placed him beside his father during the Shah's last illness.

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• 3. Plots in Exile

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  Media reports from the Shah's last weeks described a quiet push by some monarchist figures. They reportedly urged him to name his younger son, Ali Reza, then 13, with a regency council in charge. Their argument was that Reza's background, training and interest in public affairs were too limited for the role. The Shah was understood to have rejected the idea. He died on the 27th of July 1980, and Farah Pahlavi proclaimed herself regent, a title that existed in pretense only. Today Reza stands first in line of succession to his late father. Ali Reza held second place until he died by suicide in 2011.

  By 1981 Reza Pahlavi was living in the Koubbeh Palace and building close ties with pro-monarchy groups. Left-wing dissidents and other opposition groups rejected him. In March he issued a Persian New Year statement urging every opponent of the government to unite behind him in a “national resistance.” Yet he made no public reaction when President Abolhassan Banisadr was deposed. He was equally silent in June, when tens of officials, including Chief Justice Mohammad Beheshti, were assassinated.

  In August 1981 he announced that he had been secretly planning to overthrow the Iranian government. He said he had been unwilling to reveal the plans because “I do not wish to jeopardize the lives of some of our best children.” He added that “the necessary steps are being taken in the best orderly way to save Iran.”

  Yaakov Nimrodi gave a radio interview to the BBC in 1982 that pointed to a more concrete scheme. He said that he, Adolph Schwimmer and Adnan Khashoggi had worked with Pahlavi and General Said Razvani on a coup to install Pahlavi in Iran. According to Samuel Segev, both the CIA and the Israeli cabinet approved the plan. It was abandoned after Prime Minister Menachem Begin resigned in 1983. The new leadership under Yitzhak Shamir thought Israel should not be involved in a new adventure.

  In May 1986 Pahlavi disclosed that he had recently formed a government-in-exile, with the aim of establishing a constitutional monarchy in Iran again. In February 1989 he gave an invited talk at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. His support at the time was limited to upper-class Iranian Americans. He raised $1 million for his political work over two months in the spring of 1989. He moved in a narrow circle of exiled officials and academics, guarded by aides such as his childhood bodyguard Ahmad Oveyssi. Another longtime bodyguard, Ali Haydar Shahbazi, would soon sue him.

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• 4. Courts and Family

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  Ali Haydar Shahbazi, a former Imperial Guard member aged 58, filed his lawsuit in 1990 in the district court of Alexandria, Virginia. He said he had given up more than $400,000 in property in Iran because Pahlavi promised, “I'm going to take care of you better than my father did.” He claimed Pahlavi fired him in 1989 with a handshake and $9,000. He sought $30,000 for taxes and penalties, plus an undetermined sum for his retirement. Pahlavi's attorney replied that Shahbazi had received gifts worth several thousand dollars and had lived luxuriously in the Great Falls, Virginia, house. The attorney said the bodyguard was let go because his client had run out of money. Pahlavi called Shahbazi a loyal friend and told the judge, “I was not involved in the day-to-day handling of my financial affairs.” In 1991 District Judge Albert Vickers Bryan Jr. dismissed the case. Media reports said Pahlavi cried in court when it was thrown out.

  Also in 1990, Pahlavi and his close aide and financial adviser Ahmad Ali Massoud Ansari sued each other. Pahlavi accused Ansari of embezzling $24 million, while Ansari claimed a $1.7 million lien against Pahlavi. Pahlavi's attorney said his client had trusted Ansari completely because of his political duties and lack of financial experience. The attorney also accused Ansari of being an agent for the Islamic Republic, which Ansari denied. Ansari blamed Pahlavi's extravagance for the missing money. Asked for a full accounting, Ansari said the documents had been destroyed to prevent a possible seizure. In 1996 the court ordered him to repay $7.3 million to Pahlavi and fined him another $2 million. A December 2018 Politico report said Pahlavi is thought to live mainly on what is left of his family wealth.

  Yasmine Etemad-Amini first drew his attention around 1985. They married on the 12th of June 1986 in Greenwich, Connecticut, when he was 25 and she was 17. They have three daughters: Noor Zahra, born on the 3rd of April 1992, Iman Laya, born on the 12th of September 1993, and Farah Mitra, born on the 17th of January 2004. Iman married the American businessman Bradley Sherman in 2025. In 2004 Pahlavi was named the unofficial godfather of Princess Louise of Belgium. After years in Morocco and Paris, he settled in Great Falls, Virginia, and in 1996 became a resident of Potomac, Maryland.

  Asked about religion in 2009, he called it a private matter. He then described himself as a Shia Muslim by education and conviction, and as “very much a man of faith.” On the 6th of April 2024, he and Yasmine visited the Bhandara Atash Kadeh Zoroastrian temple in Houston and took part in the Yasna ceremony. He said Zoroastrianism is intertwined with Iranian history and civilization, and that its influence would keep growing among Iranian youth.

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• 5. Foreign Hands

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  A speech lasting 11 minutes reached Iranian television in 1986 after someone pirated the broadcast frequency. In it, Pahlavi vowed, “I will return.” Bob Woodward wrote that year that the Reagan administration had authorized the CIA to support and fund Iranian exiles, Pahlavi among them. The Tower Commission report of 1987 acknowledged that the CIA was behind the broadcast. A group in Paris calling itself Flag of Freedom had claimed responsibility in September 1986.

  When James Mann asked the CIA in February 1989 whether it had helped Pahlavi, an agency spokesperson answered, “We would not confirm nor deny an intelligence matter.” In 2006 Connie Bruck of The New Yorker wrote that Pahlavi had CIA funding for several years in the eighties, ending after the Iran-Contra scandal. Andrew Friedman of Haverford College says the cooperation began after Pahlavi met director William J. Casey, and that he received a monthly stipend. Friedman also links Pahlavi's home in Great Falls to its closeness to the George Bush Center for Intelligence.

  Pahlavi denied it all in a 2009 interview with The New York Times. He said he relied on no sources other than his own compatriots and called the CIA allegations “absolutely and unequivocally false.” By 2017 his tone had changed. He told Jon Gambrell of the Associated Press that he would work with anyone willing to help liberate Iran, “whether it is the U.S. or the Saudis or the Israelis or whomever it is.” He added that he would not compromise Iran's national interests or independence.

  In June 2025, during the Twelve-Day War, Pahlavi declared that the Islamic Republic was “on the verge of collapse.” He said internal divisions and defections signaled its downfall, and he urged the military and security forces to join the people. He did not condemn the Israeli bombardment of Iran, and some opposition figures criticized him for it. Sina Toossi of the American Center for International Policy said Pahlavi was really the only opposition figure supportive of the Israeli strikes.

  In October 2025, Haaretz and the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab reported on an Israeli-linked digital influence campaign promoting Pahlavi to Persian-speaking audiences. The investigation described fake social media accounts and AI-generated videos amplifying pro-monarchist messaging. Citizen Lab's analysis suggested the activity was synchronized with Israeli military operations in Iran. Investigators concluded that the network raised his international visibility but blurred how much grassroots support he truly had inside Iran.

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• 6. Counting Supporters

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  A 2009 report from the Brookings Institution found that Pahlavi lacked an organized following in Iran, because no serious monarchist movement existed there. It said he had little in common with the intellectuals and students who form the core of the reform movement.

  Abroad, the picture varied. In 2006, Connie Bruck described Los Angeles, home to about 600,000 Iranian expatriates, as a monarchist stronghold. A 2013 survey of Iranian Americans by George Mason University's Center for Social Science Research found that 85 percent backed no opposition group or figure. Of the remaining 15 percent, 20 percent supported Pahlavi.

  During the 2017-18 protests in Iran, social media videos showed demonstrators chanting for Pahlavi's grandfather and asking for his return. In many of those videos, the royalist slogans prompted others in the crowd to shout them down.

  In January 2023 the New York-based scholar Arash Azizi wrote that support for Pahlavi had become more visible among younger Iranians online and at demonstrations. He argued that Pahlavi has some degree of support, though it is hard to tell how wide. Azizi listed dissidents and celebrities who backed Pahlavi as a figurehead to unite anti-regime movements. They included Dariush Eghbali, who had been imprisoned under the Shah, the actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, the actor Hamid Farrokhnezhad and the Olympian Kimia Alizadeh.

  Polls point in different directions. A December 2022 online survey by the Netherlands-based GAMAAN group reached 200,000 Iranians, 158,000 of them inside Iran and 42,000 outside. Among respondents inside the country, 81 percent rejected the Islamic Republic. Pahlavi was the top first choice among 34 names for a proposed opposition “solidarity council,” with 32.8 percent of those inside Iran. Axios reported that his popularity exceeds that of any other opposition figure.

  A 2023 online poll came from the Empirical Research and Forecasting Institute in Berlin, a pro-Pahlavi body. Using machine learning, it found that almost 80 percent of its 9,000 respondents preferred Pahlavi to the current leadership. The conservative Middle East Forum cited that result against hesitation in American government circles about restoring the monarchy. The University of Navarra also published a 2023 article finding support for him inside Iran. A Change.org petition backing him as a representative for transition gathered more than 460,000 signatures.

  The Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi called his supporters “the opposition against the opposition.” Some critics argue that his visibility does not translate into an ability to unite or mobilize opponents. They say it even helps the government frame protests as foreign-backed and monarchist. In February 2026, crowds in three cities would offer a new kind of evidence.

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• 7. A Transition Plan

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  Toronto was the base for the short-lived Iran Future Association that Pahlavi started in 2008. In 2013 he co-founded the Iran National Council. In November 2014 he launched a television and radio network called Ofogh Iran, though a July 2017 report said the Ofogh Iran International Media telethon no longer belonged to him. In February 2019 he opened the Phoenix Project of Iran, a think tank in Washington, D.C., built on the Toronto group. According to the National Interest, it was designed to bring the opposition's various strains closer to a common vision for a post-clerical Iran.

  At the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in December 2018, he called for non-military support for those in Iran seeking a secular democracy. One news report said he was not openly calling for the Peacock Throne to return. It said he casts himself more as a symbol than a politician, yet calls himself “ready to serve my country.”

  Pahlavi says Iranians must choose their own system through a nationwide referendum. He has said he has no intention of a long-term leadership role if the regime falls. In 2024 he told the BBC he would prefer Iran to remain a republic, which he views as more meritocratic. The University of Navarra noted that he has refused to commit to restoring the monarchy but has not given up the title “prince” that his supporters use. He also argues for watchdogs and a stronger civil society so power does not concentrate in one group.

  In a March 2026 interview with 60 Minutes, he named core principles for a new Iran. They were territorial integrity, a clear separation of religion and state, and equality of all citizens under the law along with individual liberties. He has said about 50,000 current and former officials from Iran's government, military and security forces have registered on a secure platform he built. He indicated that some military and police units had signaled they would turn against the regime, and that many could be offered amnesty.

  Fears of chaos get a blunt answer from him. “We are not Iraq or Afghanistan,” he said, calling Iran a nation with millennia of unity and promising there would be no civil war. In a June 2025 interview with Iran International he promised a lawful transition. Transitional justice experts would ensure fair trials, he said, and no summary executions like those of 1979. In February 2023 he told The Daily Telegraph that senior officials should face trial while lower-ranking ones could be pardoned. He cited the Nuremberg trials and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission as models. The Iranian activist and journalist Homa Sarshar says his messaging has been consistent and that he belongs in a coalition.

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• 8. Streets and War

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  The Abadan building collapse set off anti-government demonstrations in Iran in 2022, and Pahlavi predicted that the Islamic regime would soon fall. He pointed to the shooting down of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, bans on importing foreign COVID-19 vaccines and tests, and rising food prices. He urged members of the armed forces who opposed the regime to engage in peaceful disruption.

  On the 11th of February 2023, the 44th anniversary of the Islamic Republic, he asked Iranians worldwide to protest. Rallies followed in the United States, Europe, Australia and Canada. He joined one in Los Angeles that drew more than 80,000 people. That month he told The Daily Telegraph that British and European governments should proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which would be “pulling out the biggest tooth the regime has.”

  He toured the United Kingdom in March 2023 and spoke at the Oxford Union. There he argued that “secularism is a prerequisite to democracy” and called for Internet access to be restored in Iran. He urged non-violent tactics, and a large demonstration outside backed him and called for his restoration.

  On the 17th of April 2023, he and Yasmine visited Israel to rebuild what he called the historic relations between Iran and Israel. He visited the Western Wall and Yad Vashem on Yom HaShoah and met President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He also paid a condolence call to the Dee family in the West Bank settlement of Efrat. Sisters Maia and Rina and their mother Lucy had died in a shooting during Passover.

  In July 2024 the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C., invited him to speak. He warned the United States not to launch a military campaign against the regime. “The problem that began in Iran must be ended in Iran,” he said. He added that a free Iran “doesn't seek your funding. It seeks your friendship.” Late in 2024, videos circulated purporting to show army defections in answer to his calls. His supporters used them to promote his National Cooperation initiative. Iranian authorities, conservative media and independent analysts disputed them, calling the videos staged or AI-generated deepfakes.

  The Munich Security Conference invited him in February 2025 and then withdrew the invitation under pressure from the Iranian regime. A second invitation was also cancelled. He called this a betrayal of the Iranian people and of Germany's democratic values. On the 18th of February he spoke at a Munich Convergence Summit of opposition groups, saying the aim was a mechanism for cooperation rather than another organization.

  During the 2025-26 protests he called on all Iranians, including security forces, to join in, and his name was chanted at many demonstrations. He told the German broadcaster ARD that he does not seek political power. In a 2026 interview, President Donald Trump called him “very nice” but doubted he could mobilize enough support inside Iran. Pahlavi replied that “millions of Iranians inside Iran and outside of Iran are calling my name.” He declared the 14th of February 2026 a global day of action. More than 250,000 people attended in Munich, and 350,000 each in Toronto and Los Angeles. Protesters inside Iran chanted from rooftops and windows during the rallies. In late February, special envoy Steve Witkoff confirmed he met Pahlavi at Trump's direction.

  When the 2026 Iran war began, Pahlavi called the attack a humanitarian intervention aimed at the Islamic Republic's machinery of repression, not at the nation. He urged Trump to take the utmost care to preserve civilian lives. The day before the attacks, he had released an updated Emergency Phase Booklet for his Iran Prosperity Project, covering the first six months after the regime falls. After the death of Ali Khamenei he told 60 Minutes that Iranians should be ready to take to the streets when the moment came.

  On the 11th of March he told Iranians to stay home and keep up the rooftop chants until he gave the “final call.” On the 15th of March he said a transition government under his leadership was ready to take control and set five economic goals. On the 5th of April he urged the IRGC to step down before the United States targeted Iranian infrastructure. The ceasefire began on the 9th of April, and he told Iranians to be patient because they would still need to deliver the “final blow.” On the 23rd of April, red liquid was splashed on him after a Berlin press conference where he criticized that ceasefire between Iran and the United States.

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