The rise of Reza Pahlavi: Iranian opposition leader or opportunist?

Eric Lob, Florida International University

During the protests that ripped through Iran in January, one person who gained attention was Reza Pahlavi. Pahlavi, who lives in a suburb of Washington, D.C., is the son of the late shah of Iran, who ruthlessly ruled the country before being deposed during the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

Pahlavi emerged during the recent upheaval as a prominent political dissident in exile who encouraged and inspired Iranians to demonstrate. It remained unclear, however, what level of popular support he commanded inside Iran, not to mention whether he was, in fact, dedicated to democracy as the descendant of a monarch.

While some Iranians perceived Pahlavi as an opposition leader, others considered him an opportunistic figure with monarchical designs and a mixed track record.

Crown prince to political dissident

Born in Tehran in 1960, Reza Pahlavi was the eldest son of the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and his wife, Queen Farah Diba, making him the crown prince.

From 1941 to 1979, the shah ruled Iran with an iron fist. With funding and training from France, the United States and Israel, he established and deployed a secret police force, the SAVAK, that subjected political opponents to surveillance, imprisonment, torture and execution.

As popular discontent against the shah grew in 1974-75, Amnesty International estimated there were between 25,000 and 100,000 political prisoners in Iran.

Although the shah stated during the 1979 revolution that he would rather flee the country than fire on protesters, his security forces killed approximately 500 to 3,000 Iranians – though those figures are lower than those killed in the latest Iran protests.

In 1980, the shah admitted to mistakes, including acknowledging that his regime had tortured Iranians.

The shah and his family fled Iran in 1979, and the Islamic Republic subsequently was established. After the shah died in 1980, Reza Pahlavi declared himself the next shah and started his political activism against the Islamic Republic from abroad.

More recently, he attempted to organize and unify a divided opposition composed of ethnic and religious groups, leftists, rightists, centrists, republicans and, of course, monarchists. In the process, Pahlavi also aspired to raise his public profile.

From 2013 to 2017, he served as co-founder and spokesperson of the Iran National Council, an umbrella organization of opposition groups, headquartered in Paris. It reportedly suffered defections from some groups, which stifled its ability to accomplish much. In February 2019, Pahlavi helped establish the Phoenix Project of Iran, a think tank in Washington, D.C., dedicated to regime change and a transition plan in Iran.

During the 2022-23 Woman, Life, Freedom protests, sparked by the death of the young Iranian woman Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the morality police, Pahlavi called for rallies against the Iranian government in the United States, Canada and other countries. Leading opposition figures spoke at these rallies, and thousands of people participated.

That same year, some high-profile activists and celebrities, including some his father had imprisoned, endorsed Pahlavi as a leader or figure who could unite the opposition.

Presence and politics

In April 2023, Pahlavi made his first official visit to Israel, where he was hosted by Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The visit was condemned by Iranians, from regime supporters to anti-government activists, who were opposed to monarchy and unsympathetic to Israel.

After Pahlavi’s participation in the February 2025 Munich security conference was nixed, he and his supporters gathered in the city that month and in the summer to unify the political opposition and plan a post-regime transition. For Pahlavi, the meetings may have been simply a face-saving measure after the security conference snub.

As a political dissident, Pahlavi continually called for a popular uprising, regime change and a secular and democratic state. At the same time, he did not rule out the return of the monarchy, albeit a constitutional one, based on a national referendum and constituent assembly.

In an attempt to appease other opposition groups and some anti-monarchy Iranian citizens, Pahlavi occasionally insisted he was “not a political leader” and was “not personally seeking political office” in Iran if the regime fell.

On the foreign policy front – and following in his father’s footsteps – Pahlavi has advocated for Iran to align itself with the United States and Israel.

Unclear support, mixed record

As Pahlavi became more politically active abroad, questions surfaced about his viability as an opposition leader in Iran.

Discounting a 2023 poll conducted by a pro-Pahlavi institute indicating he was widely popular in Iran, it remained difficult to determine his support in Iranian society.

In a 2022 poll conducted by an independent, nonprofit research foundation with 158,000 respondents in Iran, Pahlavi received the highest percentage – 32.8% – among 34 candidates listed to serve on a transitional solidarity council, should the regime collapse.

At the same time, Pahlavi apparently lacked a serious monarchist movement and a strong connection with local opposition leaders and activists in Iran. He purportedly had little, if any, support among reformist or liberal groups in the country.

The lack of clarity concerning support for Pahlavi in Iran explained the hesitation of U.S. officials, including President Donald Trump, to engage with him. That did not deter Pahlavi from attempting to persuade them to abandon diplomatic talks and negotiations with the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program.

Despite the debates outside Iran about Pahlavi’s support within the country, pro-monarchy slogans increasingly appeared in Iranian social media postings and anti-government protests, including those in 2017-18, 2019-20, and 2022-23.

During the 2019-20 protests, the security forces arrested members of monarchist groups around the country and acknowledged their rising popularity and ability to infiltrate the government. Some reformist intellectuals suggested that monarchist slogans were merely a means for Iranian youth and other citizens to channel their anger and frustration at the authorities rather than expressions of true support for Pahlavi.

The slogans also reinforced the regime’s efforts to delegitimize the protests by portraying them as a plot by external and internal enemies, including the monarchists, to destabilize the country.

Throughout the 12-day war in June 2025 between Iran and Israel, which claimed the lives of 1,190 Iranian civilians and injured and displaced thousands more, Pahlavi publicly lamented the destruction of Iran’s military infrastructure that his father had initially built and the price its people paid for a war he blamed on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the regime.

At the same time, he was criticized by prominent political prisoners and other Iranian activists and citizens for betraying his country by supporting the Israeli strikes and failing to condemn them.

After the war, Israeli investigative journalists uncovered an influence operation conducted and funded by Israeli public and private entities to promote – among Persian-speaking audiences on social media – Pahlavi as a potential leader in a post-Islamic Republic Iran. The disinformation campaign created cynicism and controversy concerning Pahlavi’s true popularity inside the country and his tacit connection with Israel before and during the war.

Latest protests and future prospects

During the most recent protests, Pahlavi expressed support for protesters and encouraged them to demonstrate at certain times in the evening. The timing of the protests and demonstrations was intended to increase turnout by accommodating people’s work schedules and to maximize media coverage by aligning with news cycles.

Thousands of protesters turned out in the streets at those times, with some chanting anti-government slogans and others pro-monarchy ones.

His role in the protests was reduced after the regime cut off the internet and telecommunications between the people of Iran and the outside world, as well as among activists inside the country.

While some people praised Pahlavi for inspiring protesters, others asked whether he was responsible for sending them to detention and possible death, as some believed Trump was for similarly encouraging the protesters.

For the last 15 years, Pahlavi has intensified his efforts to unify the political opposition and gain greater exposure, culminating in him emerging as a central figure in the latest protests.

Yet there remain questions about whether he is viable as an opposition leader or is simply an opportunist.

His message about a democratic future for Iran has been largely consistent. However, his father’s repressive and imperial legacy, combined with his own royal pedigree and American and Israeli proximity, prevent him from finding favor with Iranians who oppose monarchy and prioritize sovereignty.

Now, the prospect of Iranians across the country rallying around Pahlavi remains as much of an open question as whether they will succeed in creating the conditions for his return by toppling the regime.

This story has been updated to reflect that Reza Pahlavi lives in a Washington, D.C. suburb.

Eric Lob, Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations, Florida International University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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