Iran's exiled crown prince sees a chance for regime change

This rallying outcry is alluring for galore of the 4 cardinal Iranian exiles and expats worldwide, conscionable nether a 3rd of whom unrecorded successful the U.S., according to Iranian Foreign Ministry statistic from 2021.

“If alteration does come, the lone way that offers some stableness and a consciousness of nationalist continuity is done Pahlavi,” said Amin, 38, an Iranian present surviving successful Canada who declined to springiness his 2nd sanction oregon nonstop determination due to the fact that of fearfulness of speaking retired against the authorities adjacent from abroad.

There is simply a disagreement among experts astir Pahlavi’s popularity wrong Iran itself.

A 2022 survey by Gamaan, a Dutch-based probe group, gauged Pahlavi’s home popularity astatine 39%, acold much than then-Prime Minister Ebrahim Raisi, successful 2nd with 17%, and imprisoned Nobel Peace laureate Narges Mohammadi connected 15%.

“He is the lone nationalist fig wrong Iran with cross-generational, cross-class, and cross-ethnic legitimacy,” 1 salient Iranian diaspora relationship connected X, @upuouo, said past week.

Other contenders overseas see the dissident radical Mujahedeen e-Khalq, much commonly known arsenic the MEK, which has gained high-profile supporters including the erstwhile New York politician and Trump state Rudy Giuliani. But MEK, wide seen by Western experts arsenic a cult, has negligible enactment wrong Iran acknowledgment to its backing for Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq warfare of 1980-88.

Critics of Pahlavi spot him arsenic the pro-Western figurehead of a dynasty that took powerfulness successful the 1920s aided by the British, cemented its grip with assistance from the CIA, and is lone poised for a instrumentality pursuing airstrikes by Israel and the U.S.

Amin Aghdasi, 30, from Tehran, described him arsenic “a coward who betrays his nation” and idiosyncratic waiting “for powerfulness to beryllium handed to him.” Pahlavi “thinks a warfare transgression similar Bibi tin assistance bring backmost his monarchy,” Aghdasi added, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

NBC News has requested remark from Pahlavi’s media team, some connected concerns astir his familial ties to his father’s legacy, and the determination to usage preselected questions astatine his quality conference.

A young Iranian lad holds the nationalist emblem adjacent to a destroyed ambulance Tehran connected Monday.Morteza Nikoubazl / NurPhoto via Getty Images

Some analysts are besides skeptical of polling wrong Iran, wherever immoderate opinions tin pb to jailhouse oregon worse.

“There’s been a existent propulsion to get Pahlavi to beryllium seen arsenic a credible absorption fig successful Iran, but my consciousness is he’s not,” said Dina Esfandiary, the Middle East geoeconomics pb for Bloomberg Economics, Bloomberg’s interior probe division. “He’s got a pursuing extracurricular of the country,” but “honestly, wrong Iran, not that much. He hasn’t been wrong the state successful implicit 40 years” and galore “people judge his household is the crushed wherefore Iran is wherever it is today.”

She agrees determination are fewer bully options.

“That’s 1 of the reasons wherefore the Iranian people, portion they privation change, are acrophobic of it, due to the fact that they person cipher to coalesce around,” she said. Any lasting solution, she thinks, would “need Iranians to enactment unneurotic and to contiguous a viable opposition.”

One crushed that’s not been imaginable domestically is Iran’s crushing of successive protest movements with deadly force. Most notably the Green Movement of 2009, successful which marchers railed against that year’s rigged election, and the wide outcry implicit the decease of Mahsa Amini pursuing her detention for not pursuing pistillate headscarf laws successful 2022.

In Paris, Pahlavi sought to represent himself arsenic a exemplary of openness and selflessness who would assistance commencement a caller peaceful and antiauthoritarian epoch successful Iran, possibly on the lines of Spain’s King Juan Carlos I who helped dismantle the authoritarian authorities of Francisco Franco and found a parliamentary monarchy.

Though helium was reluctant to springiness a ceremonial sanction to the transitional relation helium mightiness play — saying “I don’t judge I request a title” — helium was unequivocal astir his connection to the ayatollah.

“Step down,” helium said down the tube of the camera. “If you do, you volition person a just proceedings and owed process of instrumentality — which is much than you person ever fixed immoderate Iranian.”