By staking his political future on foreign military intervention, Reza Pahlavi may have closed off the political reinventions that sustained him for decades.
Reza Pahlavi’s political life has been tied to a succession of “political projects” for Iran’s future. Over the years, he has tried everything from proposing an “assembly of elites” and offering solutions to the country’s chronic crises, to aligning himself with civil movements and political protests inside Iran, and finally to pursuing regime change with foreign assistance.
But the latest project is different. This time, he has not simply embarked on another political experiment. He has placed his own future, his family name, and the symbolic capital built over years of “Pahlavi nostalgia” on the gambling table.
In the eyes of his critics, he mounted a horse saddled for him by Israel and sections of the political establishment in Washington. That horse was supposed to carry him from the political margins of exile to the seat of power in Tehran. But has it?
For now, the horse looks tired and depleted, galloping across difficult terrain: the dead end of war, repeated civilian killings, failed optimistic predictions, the loss of supporters, and the anger of parts of the very society that was supposed to see “Pahlavi” as a solution for the future.
For more than four decades, Reza Pahlavi has occupied an unusual position. He is neither a king, nor the secretary-general of a party or political front, nor the leader of a government in exile, nor merely a symbolic figure. At times he has called himself a “citizen” rather than a “prince”. At others, he has donned the mantle of “heir to the constitutional monarchy”. At one moment he is a facilitator of transition, at another the sole authentic voice of the nation; sometimes the axis of a coalition, and more recently a figure his supporters call the “leader of the transition and the collapse of the Islamic Republic”.
For a long time, this very fluidity worked to his advantage. He could evade responsibility while continuing to draw on the political capital of the Pahlavi name. But there are moments when the political landscape becomes so polarised, and the two sides of a conflict move so far apart, that even such shapelessness becomes impossible.
Politics does not always allow people to remain hidden in the fog. Sometimes events come knocking and ask: Where exactly do you stand? What is your position?
The 38-day US-Israeli war with Iran was such a moment for Reza Pahlavi. For years, he had spoken of the need for foreign pressure, Western support for the Iranian people, breaking the machinery of repression, and helping bring about a political transition. In the opening hours of the war, he sent a message effectively telling the people of Iran: the help President Trump promised you has arrived.
But once the war entered its second and third days, the issue moved beyond general slogans about “supporting the Iranian people”. A war commanded by someone else places a self-proclaimed leader in an awkward position. He must remain on good terms with the “kingmaker” bombing his country while avoiding alienating his prospective “subjects”, at least until the keys to power are in his hands.
Caught in the Trap of Events
War is no joke, nor is it merely a political project devised in Washington for imagining a “golden” future for Iran. War also means missiles, schools, children, cities, infrastructure, military bases, oil tankers, and burned bodies.
And from the very first day, events forced Reza Pahlavi to answer for his position.
The attack on Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab and the killing of many children was one of those moments that made Pahlavi’s political shapelessness impossible. It raised a simple question: when a war you welcomed or supported begins killing civilians and children, what do you say?
What was Reza Pahlavi’s answer? He issued a message of condolence. To the families in Minab? No. To the side responsible for the catastrophe in Minab.
“My heart aches for the three American heroes killed by the regime and the five who were wounded. The people of Iran will forever be indebted to them. To their grieving families: please accept our boundless love, deepest condolences, and eternal gratitude.”
Even political novices rarely make such a devastating mistake. Why would someone with four decades of varied political experience walk so easily into this trap?
The only plausible explanation is that he imagined the process of being crowned would be short and swift, and therefore placed appeasing his kingmaker ahead of acknowledging the dead children.
Pahlavi’s critics argue that he lost part of his moral capital in this test. His silence—or his attempt to adopt a position that offended neither side—in the face of civilian killings, particularly events such as Minab, carried an unmistakable meaning for many Iranians who may have opposed the Islamic Republic but nevertheless regarded a foreign attack on Iran as a catastrophe.
The former prince appeared less concerned with standing beside those who had suffered than with standing beside the scenario intended to place the crown of power on his head.
Pahlavi’s supporters describe this judgement as unfair. But even if one accepts their account, in politics, “image” often matters more than “intention”. And the image that emerged was disastrous for Pahlavi.
Storming the Fortress of Power with Defenceless Bodies
The protests of 8 and 9 January 2026 must also be understood within this framework.
The calls for people to flood the streets, the unprotected bodies expected to storm the “security core of the regime” on behalf of the prince without any real plan, the expectation that the Islamic Republic would rapidly collapse, and then the price paid by protesters—all of this placed Reza Pahlavi in a position where he could no longer play merely the role of an “inspiration from afar” or a “remote-control leader”.
His opponents say he summoned people into a confrontation without the practical, organisational, or protective infrastructure necessary to support them. His supporters argue that responsibility for the protesters’ blood lies with the Islamic Republic, not with the person who called them into the streets.
Yet regardless of whether direct responsibility for the repression belongs solely to the government or whether some responsibility also lies with those who constructed the fantasy of easy change, the fundamental question remains: when a leader—or someone claiming leadership of a transition—calls people into a field of blood and danger, what does he imagine will happen the day after?
From One Project to the Next
This was not the first time Reza Pahlavi had launched a project only to move on from it later. His political career is full of beginnings, coalitions, withdrawals, and changes in language.
The Phoenix Project, launched with his participation and support as a platform for planning Iran’s future, was intended to give the Pahlavi movement an expert, forward-looking image. Before it, and alongside it, networks such as Farashgard attempted to transform Pahlavism from family nostalgia into a coherent political project. Yet many of these initiatives eventually lost influence, moved to the margins, or gave way to new slogans and new teams.
During the Green Movement, Reza Pahlavi tried to position himself alongside society’s democratic demands without becoming a decisive force within the movement. The Woman, Life, Freedom uprising created another opportunity.
The 2023 Georgetown meeting, attended by figures including Masih Alinejad, Abdullah Mohtadi, and Hamed Esmaeilion, briefly created the impression that an “opposition coalition” might become a serious reality.
That experiment did not last long either. A king, after all, does not sit as an equal among his subjects.
Divisions surfaced, the Solidarity Charter collapsed, and Reza Pahlavi quickly moved from a programme of coalition-building and political convergence towards a model of “one-man transition”.
From that point onwards, part of his support base took a different path. The agenda of a one-man transition is clear: promoting Pahlavi and destroying almost every rival force within the opposition became two sides of the same enterprise.
Opponents and critics—from republicans to the left, from nationalists to human-rights activists, from figures associated with the Jina uprising to former members of Pahlavi’s own circle—were subjected to intense attacks across media and social networks.
Reza Pahlavi, of course, says these campaigns of character assassination are not organised and have no connection to him or his office. Even the involvement of some of his closest family members in amplifying such waves of attacks has not led him to accept responsibility.
Perhaps he is telling the truth. But whether the claim is true or false ultimately changes little.
What can be observed is the emergence of an aggressive political ecosystem around him—one in which criticism of Pahlavi is quickly interpreted as treason, infiltration, acting as an agent of the Islamic Republic, or collaborating with the mullahs.
Again, it bears repeating: in politics, “image” often matters more than “intention”. And the image built brick by brick through Reza Pahlavi’s silence or failure to intervene effectively has been disastrous for him.
The Angry Team and the Impatient Prince
Reza Pahlavi has worked with, or benefited from the support of, many different individuals and circles in the past: from Bagher Parham and Amir Taheri and media figures close to the old monarchist establishment, to Parviz Sabeti—the controversial symbol of repression under the Pahlavi monarchy—and figures who moved through projects such as Phoenix and Farashgard.
But his current team means something different.
Figures such as Saeed Ghasseminejad, Alireza Kiani, and Amir Etemadi are frequently identified by Pahlavi’s critics as influential members of his political and media circle. They constitute the public face of a Pahlavi movement that sees itself as a government-in-waiting.
It is a controversial circle that even some veteran monarchists and constitutionalists have mockingly called “the Ayatollah’s children”, referring to the political or intellectual backgrounds of some of these figures and their distance from classical Pahlavism.
What distinguishes this team from previous circles is that its members appear to be more than advisers or spokespeople. In the battle over political narratives, members of the new team have also taken command of the front line.
Saeed Ghasseminejad, described in recent weeks—following a video message from Reza Pahlavi—as the “unofficial prime minister of Pahlavi’s transitional government”, openly advocates military attack as a means of regime change, even when questions about the costs to civilians and infrastructure are being raised.
Alireza Kiani and Amir Etemadi also occupy prominent positions in the media environment surrounding Pahlavi. One serves as Reza Pahlavi’s personal aide; the other functions as a kind of “media bulldozer”, clearing the road ahead.
To examine the consequences of having these figures around Pahlavi, there is little need to reopen disputes over their political pasts. More important is their style of politics.
Critics say this circle has proved more capable of attacking opponents, compiling dossiers, making sometimes poorly substantiated allegations, and carrying out character assassinations than of building coalitions, planning institutions, or winning the trust of a diverse society.
But there is a problem. A bulldozer can clear a road. It cannot become the swift horse that carries you to the Marble Throne faster than everyone else. This situation is dangerous for Reza Pahlavi himself.
In the past, once a team had reached the end of its usefulness, he could quietly set it aside, remain silent for a few months, and then return with new faces and a new project. U-turn politics is manageable when its only cost is the resentment of a few advisers and a limited loss of supporters.
But this time, the story is bound up with blood and war. The blood of those who took to the streets on 8 and 9 January and were killed. The blood of civilians who died in US and Israeli attacks. And the blood of the children of Minab and Lamerd.
Nor are blood and war Pahlavi’s only obstacles to making another U-turn. The deeper problem is that he has climbed into a vehicle whose steering wheel is in somebody else’s hands.
The distancing of Ali Karimi and several other figures once sympathetic to Pahlavi is not merely an internal dispute. The attacks directed at people after each departure carry a double message.
They tell supporters that leaving the camp comes at a price. But they also remind Reza Pahlavi himself that members of his current team are not like some earlier figures who could easily come and easily go.
If he ever feels the urge to make another U-turn and discard this circle as he discarded previous ones, he may find himself dealing with people with long memories, high-reach social-media accounts, networks, media platforms, and a desire for revenge.
For this reason, Reza Pahlavi’s current gamble is not merely a wager on whether the Islamic Republic survives or falls. It is also a wager on his own ability to control the people fighting in his name.
In pursuit of an easy and painless transition, he has entered a relationship in which his team generates political power for him while simultaneously making him hostage to its own style of politics.
If the project succeeds, they will demand their share. If it fails, they will need a convenient target and a scapegoat.
And if Pahlavi, as in the past, decides to withdraw from the project and replace this circle with another, the same machinery of destruction now deployed against others may one day turn towards him and say: now it is time to open your file.
The larger problem, however, is that after the 38-day war, the project of restoring the monarchy can no longer rely on the “golden image of the Pahlavi era”.
For years, a significant part of Reza Pahlavi’s political capital was built on nostalgia: pre-revolutionary Iran, development, order, freedom of dress, international relations, a powerful military, and longing for a form of life destroyed by the Islamic Republic.
But nostalgia works only until it encounters fresh blood. When the Pahlavi name becomes associated with support for a foreign war, praise for the aggressor, silence in the face of civilian deaths, and unfulfilled promises of regime collapse, cracks begin to appear in that golden image.
Reza Pahlavi has made a gamble from which there may be no return. Either he wins and moves closer to the crown, or he loses and is politically written off. There will be no new project and no new team after this. The politics of the U-turn will have run its course.
If Reza Pahlavi does not win, the end of his political life may not come through an official announcement. There will probably be no press conference, no anguished resignation letter from the project of “saving Iran”.
His political end will come quietly and gradually. How? When his sponsors realise there is no hope left in him. When his supporters begin to hesitate and then fall silent. When those who have left his camp have more to say than those who remain loyal.
When society sees that the man who was supposed to represent an alternative future has, at a moment of war and bloodshed, become more of a burden than an asset. Reza Pahlavi can still deliver speeches and talk about leading a transition. But this time there is no U-turn available.
The horse saddled for him has carried him out of the safe terrain of nostalgia and onto ground marked by blood. On such terrain, one cannot fight political battles with nothing more than stories of “his father’s golden age”.
This is where political shapelessness has to end. One must take a clear position and accept responsibility. Reza Pahlavi remains miles away from doing either. And even if his foreign backers bring him to power at any cost, his would be a short-lived government, melting like snow beneath the July sun.
