Hours earlier than a ceasefire took impact between Israel and Iran on June 24, the son of Iran’s final shah, Reza Pahlavi, held a televised information convention within the French capital, Paris.
Wearing a gray go well with and blue tie along with his hair combed again, the 64-year-old exiled (and self-styled) crown prince of the monarchy that Iranians overthrew in 1979 urged america to not give Iran’s authorities a “lifeline” by restarting diplomatic talks on its nuclear programme.
Pahlavi insisted that Iran’s Islamic Republic was collapsing. “That is our Berlin Wall second,” he stated, calling for odd Iranians to grab the chance afforded by Israel’s warfare and take to the streets, and for defections from the army and safety forces.
However the mass protests Pahlavi inspired by no means materialised.
As a substitute, many Iranians – together with these against the federal government – rallied across the flag in a second of assault by a international drive. It seems that Pahlavi, who stated in his Paris speech that he was prepared to switch Supreme Chief Ali Khamenei and lead Iranians down a “highway of peace and democratic transition”, had misinterpret the room.
Whereas he was prepared to align with Israel in attaining what he perceives to be the larger purpose of overthrowing the Islamic Republic, the vast majority of his compatriots weren’t.
If something, Pahlavi could have squandered the little assist he as soon as had by selecting to not condemn Israel’s heavy bombardment of Iran, which killed greater than 600 individuals, together with many civilians, stated Trita Parsi, an professional on Iran and the writer of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and america.
“He has – in my estimation – destroyed a lot of the model identify [of the shah] … by occurring TV and making excuses for Israel when it was focusing on our condominium buildings and killing civilians,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
Pahlavi’s workplace didn’t reply to requests for remark from Al Jazeera.
Generational enchantment
The extent of assist for Pahlavi is disputed, however many specialists doubt it’s in depth.
Nonetheless, what assist he does have – significantly within the Iranian diaspora – typically emanates from opposition to the Islamic Republic and nostalgia for the monarchy that predated it.
Yasmine*, a British-Iranian in her late 20s, stated that members of her circle of relatives assist Pahlavi for the symbolism of the pre-Islamic Republic period that he represents, versus what he may very well stand for, including that she believed that he lacked a transparent political imaginative and prescient.
“He actually symbolises what Iran was [a government that was secular and pro-West] previous to the Islamic Republic, and that’s what those that are asking for Reza Pahlavi need again,” she instructed Al Jazeera.
Her aunt, Yasna*, 64, left Iran simply months earlier than the 1979 revolution to attend college in the UK. Whereas she helps Pahlavi for the explanations her niece talked about, she additionally believes Iran will now not be a pariah to the West if he returned to rule Iran.
“He’s someone from my technology, and I’ve a transparent reminiscence of rising up within the days beneath the shah … he’s additionally so pleasant with America, Europe and Israel, and we want someone like that [in Iran],” Yasna stated.
Analysts defined to Al Jazeera that the shortage of a distinguished various to Pahlavi – because of the Iranian authorities’s crackdown on political opposition – was a part of Pahlavi’s enchantment.
Additionally they identified that assist for Pahlavi is tied to the distorted reminiscence that some have of his grandfather, Reza Khan, and his father, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Reza Khan was broadly credited with creating an ethno-centralised state that curtailed the facility of the non secular clergy and violently cracked down on opponents and minorities. That repression continued beneath Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Nonetheless, Yasna speaks fondly of the Pahlavi household and hopes Reza Pahlavi can quickly carve out his personal legacy.
“Reza’s grandfather introduced safety to the nation, and his father helped us transfer ahead. I now assume Reza can unite us once more,” she stated.
Household historical past
The Pahlavis weren’t a dynasty with an extended and storied previous. Reza Khan was a army officer who seized energy within the Twenties, earlier than being changed by Mohammad Reza in 1941.
International powers had a task to play in that, as they did in 1953, when the US and the UK engineered a coup towards Iran’s then-elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who had nationalised the belongings of the Anglo-Persian oil firm, now often known as BP, in April 1951.
“The British thought it was their oil,” defined Assal Rad, a historian of Iran and the writer of State of Resistance: Politics, Identification and Tradition in Fashionable Iran.
“That they had no recognition of the colonial previous that allowed them to forcefully take the useful resource, nor recognition of Iran’s proper to take the useful resource for itself,” she instructed Al Jazeera.
Previous to the coup, Rad defined that the shah was engaged in an influence wrestle with Mosaddegh, who overtly criticised the shah for violating the structure. The previous wished to keep up his management, particularly over the army, whereas the latter was attempting to mould Iran right into a constitutional democracy with common assist.
The coup towards Mosaddegh was finally profitable, main to a different 26 years of progressively extra repressive Pahlavi rule.
Based on a 1976 report by Amnesty International, the shah’s feared intelligence company (SAVAK) typically beat political prisoners with electrical cables, sodomised them and ripped off their finger and toenails to extract false confessions.
“On the finish of the day, the shah’s regime was a brutal dictatorship and non-democracy,” Parsi instructed Al Jazeera.
Financial inequality between the wealthy city lessons and the agricultural poor additionally grew beneath the shah, in keeping with a 2019 Brookings Institute report by Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, an economist at Virginia Tech College.
And but, the shah appeared indifferent from the plight of his personal individuals all through his reign. Rad referenced a lavish celebration that the shah threw in 1971 to rejoice 2,500 years of the Persian Empire.
The luxurious celebration introduced collectively international dignitaries from internationally, at the same time as many Iranians struggled to make ends meet, highlighting the nation’s financial disparities.
“He was celebrating Iran with nothing Iranian and no Iranians invited nor concerned, and he even had scholar protesters arrested beforehand as a result of he didn’t need incidents to happen whereas he was doing this,” Rad stated. “The celebration was one among these monumental moments that led to the disconnect between him and his personal individuals.”
Coupled with state repression and rising poverty, the Persian Empire celebration was one of many elements that finally led to the 1979 revolution.
Reza Pahlavi was within the US when the revolution erupted, coaching to be a fighter pilot.
He was simply 17 years previous and has by no means returned to Iran since. As a substitute, a life in exile started, with the last word purpose all the time remaining a return to his residence nation – and energy.
Because the eldest of the shah’s two sons, loyalists to the monarchy recognised Reza Pahlavi as inheritor obvious after his father handed away from most cancers in 1980.
He has since spent the vast majority of his life within the US, largely within the suburbs of Washington, DC.
Initially centered on restoring the monarchy, Pahlavi has shifted his rhetoric within the final 20 years to focus extra on the concept of a secular democracy in Iran. He has stated he doesn’t search energy, and would solely assume the throne if requested to take action by the Iranian individuals.
Opposition outreach
Pahlavi’s try and broaden his enchantment got here as he additionally reached out to different opponents of the Iranian authorities.
Some have outright refused to work with him, citing his royal background. And others who’ve labored with him have shortly distanced themselves.
One of the vital necessary examples of this was the Alliance for Democracy and Freedom in Iran, fashioned in 2023, within the wake of antigovernment protests that started the earlier 12 months.
In addition to Pahlavi, the coalition included Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, ladies’s rights activist Masih Alinejad, human rights activist and actress Nazanin Boniadi, former footballer Ali Karimi, and the writer Hamed Esmaeilion.
However issues emerged from the very assembly organised to type the coalition in February 2023.
Based on Parsi and Sina Toossi, an professional on Iran with the Middle for Worldwide Coverage (CIP), Pahlavi rejected any proposal to collaborate with the opposite attendees on the assembly in Washington, DC’s Georgetown College, both by agreeing to make selections primarily based on a shared consensus or by means of some sort of majority vote.
He as a substitute wished all attendees to defer and rally behind him as a pacesetter of the opposition.
One other subject that adopted the Georgetown assembly was the behaviour of Pahlavi’s supporters, a lot of whom had been towards anybody related to left-wing politics, and defenders of the actions of the shah’s regime.
“The monarchists [his supporters] had been upset that Reza was placed on par with these different individuals [at the meeting],” stated Toossi.
The coalition quickly collapsed, with Esmaeilion referring to “undemocratic strategies” in what many perceived to be criticism of Pahlavi.
Israeli connections
Two months after the Georgetown assembly, and because the newly fashioned alliance shortly collapsed, Pahlavi made a choreographed go to to Israel along with his spouse Yasmine.
As Al Jazeera previously reported, the go to was organized by Pahlavi’s official adviser Amir Temadi, and Saeed Ghasseminejad, who works on the US right-wing assume tank the Basis for the Protection of Democracies (FDD), which incessantly publishes analyses that decision on the US to make use of army drive to discourage Iran’s regional affect and nuclear programme.
In the course of the go to, Pahlavi and his spouse took a photograph with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his spouse Sara.
Yasmine and I had been very happy to satisfy with @IsraeliPM and Sara @netanyahu. We expressed appreciation for Israel’s continued assist for the Iranian individuals’s democratic aspirations and emphasised that, as the youngsters of Cyrus the Nice, Iranians aspire to have a authorities that… pic.twitter.com/lInuy4lwdC
— Reza Pahlavi (@PahlaviReza) April 19, 2023
The journey highlighted Pahlavi’s shut ties to Israel, a relationship that had been cultivated for years, even when it was much less publicly acknowledged initially.
Throughout George W Bush’s first time period as US president within the early 2000s, Pahlavi approached the highly effective American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – a robust foyer – to talk at their annual convention, in keeping with Parsi.
The supply was rejected, with AIPAC members explaining that he would harm his personal model as an Iranian nationalist if he had been to talk at their annual convention, Parsi defined.
“AIPAC had instructed him that maybe it wasn’t a good suggestion as a result of it might delegitimise him, which tells you one thing about how disconnected [Pahlavi] was from the realities of the Iranian diaspora,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
However, about 10 years in the past, throughout US President Donald Trump’s first time period, Pahlavi additionally started to encompass himself with advisers who’ve lengthy referred to as for nearer ties between Iran and Israel and for the US to proceed its “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign towards Iran’s authorities, in keeping with Toossi.
Trump’s most stress marketing campaign harm frequent individuals greater than the Iranian authorities. It resulted in sharp inflation and main depreciation of its foreign money, making it troublesome for a lot of Iranians to afford fundamental commodities and life-saving drugs, according to Human Rights Watch.
Based on Toossi, Pahlavi appeared considerably conscious of the financial hardships introduced on by sanctions, which can clarify why he supported US President Barack Obama’s Joint Complete Plan of Motion (JCPOA) in 2015.
The JCPOA ensured international monitoring of Iran’s nuclear programme in change for much-needed sanctions aid.
Nonetheless, Pahlavi shortly started to align with Trump when he got here to energy the next 12 months, Toossi stated. Trump scorned the JCPOA and at last pulled out in 2018 earlier than starting his most stress coverage.
The disconnect between Pahlavi and common Iranians over this subject is also seen in his actions in the course of the 2023 journey to Israel.
Pahlavi made a well-publicised journey to the Western Wall, in occupied East Jerusalem, which holds appreciable non secular significance for Jewish individuals internationally.
The overwhelming majority of Iranians are nonetheless Shia Muslims – even when many are secular– and Pahlavi didn’t go to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest website in Islam. The Western Wall is a part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound’s exterior wall.
Out of contact
In hindsight, the 2023 journey to Israel and Pahlavi’s obvious pleasant relations with Israeli officers have broken his fame, stated Toossi.
“Briefly … what’s been occurring with the Iran monarchy motion is a really clear, evident and above-the-table alliance with Israel,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
“He was actually the one opposition determine that was supportive of [Israel’s war],” he added.
Based on Barbara Slavin, an professional on Iran and a distinguished fellow on the Stimson Centre in Washington, DC, Pahlavi’s rhetoric was “counterproductive” in the course of the 12-day warfare.
Slavin stated Pahlavi has largely been disconnected from the emotions and views inside Iran as a result of he merely has not been there since he was a young person, and his failure to sentence Israel’s bombardment of civilians has turned lots of people off.
“After all of the civilians Israel killed, [his relationship with Israel] actually has a nasty scent,” she instructed Al Jazeera.
Parsi agrees and provides that he doesn’t assume Israel actually believes that Pahlavi can someday rule the nation resulting from his lack of common assist each in and out of doors of Iran.
Parsi believes Israel is just exploiting his model to legitimise its personal hostility in the direction of Iran.
“He’s … helpful for the Israelis to parade round as a result of it offers them a veneer of legitimacy for their very own warfare of aggression towards Iran” in the course of the combating, he stated.
“[Israel] can level to [Pahlavi] and say, ‘Look. Iranians need to be bombed.’” Parsi stated.
However that could be a turn-off for a lot of Iranians, together with these towards the federal government.
Yasmine, the British-Iranian, is one among them.
Pahlavi, in her view, was not charismatic and had cemented his unpopularity amongst Iranians, each inside Iran and out of doors, along with his name for Iranians to take to the streets as Israel attacked Iran.
“He was asking Iranians to stand up towards the federal government in order that he’ll come [to take over],” Yasmine stated. “He was mainly asking Iranians to do his soiled work.”
*Some names have been modified to guard the security of interviewees
