REZA PAHLAVI’S VANISHING ACTS: THE SHAH’S HEIR AND THE MIRAGE OF LEADERSHIP

For decades, the name Reza Pahlavi has loomed over the Iranian-opposition diaspora like a dark cloud. The exiled heir of the hated Pahlavi dynasty is a living reminder of why the Iranian people rose up in revolt against his tyrannical father the Shah. Yet, never one to neglect a chance to reclaim the Peacock Throne, Pahlavi has launched a series of initiatives that always begin with great fanfare and publicity and then fade into bleak irrelevance.

The most recent example is the “100 Cities – One Voice” project, first unveiled at the Munich Security Conference on February 16 this year, with Pahlavi in attendance. The project promised synchronized demonstrations worldwide, uniting Iranians under his leadership. Its first planned action on April 19 was to span 19 cities. In reality, only 14 events occurred, the largest in Frankfurt with around 20 participants. Other gatherings were tiny, in some cases a single person with a table and flags, yet were counted as “actions in support of Reza Pahlavi.” Websites and social media accounts affiliated with the project were silent on attendance figures and offered no verifiable photos or videos, while claiming participation in up to 45 cities.

The pattern is familiar. Over the past three decades, Pahlavi’s orbit has spawned numerous councils, foundations, and campaigns, such as the Council of Iranian Solidarity (1990s), the Foundation for the Children of Iran (1991), the Iran National Council (2013), Ofogh Iran International (2014), the Phoenix Project of Iran (2019), New Covenant (2020), and more recent initiatives including the Alliance for Democracy and Freedom in Iran, the Iran Prosperity Project, the National Cooperation Convention, the National Collaboration Campaign, the Emergency Phase Booklet “We will take back Iran”, and the Small Combatant Groups (Imperial/Immortal Guards).

Over three decades, these projects have consistently failed to survive beyond launch. Differences of ideology, Pahlavi’s arrogant authoritarianism, leadership rivalries, and the absence of sustained grassroots engagement have splintered efforts. The repeated cycle of short-lived initiatives, often ambitious in name but thin in structure, illustrates how the exile-based opposition under Pahlavi has struggled to present a cohesive alternative to the regime.

Pahlavi’s failures stem from three interlocking weaknesses. Exiled since 1979, he has no sustained internal presence. While ordinary Iranians suffer repression and destitution, he has lived a life of wealth and opulence on the back of the billions stolen from the Iranian people by his father. His initiatives rarely reach Iranian streets or activists. The mullahs’ regime remains entrenched, and Pahlavi’s brand, whether as “Crown Prince” or “citizen leader”, does little to bridge the gap between exile nostalgia and present-day realities.

The proliferation of councils, projects, and campaigns disperses energy instead of concentrating it. Each new launch appears as a fresh start, but with no institutional memory or operational depth. The opposition loses coherence when every few months a new initiative is announced, only to collapse under its own organizational weaknesses. In addition, the monarchical brand appeals to a small diaspora but resonates little inside Iran. Iranians, especially the younger generation that braved bullets in the 2022–23 nationwide uprising, do not long for dynasties; they demand liberty, democracy, and secular governance. Pahlavi’s fixation on his father’s autocratic legacy is an anachronism, out of step with contemporary aspirations.

This failure is part of a broader record. From the short-lived Washington-based Georgetown Coalition in 2022, to endless other councils and campaigns, Pahlavi’s political career has been a carousel of false starts. Sympathetic analysts advise organizational overhaul and engagement inside Iran, but these calls go unheeded. Instead, press conferences and exile statements dominate, creating the appearance of activity rather than achieving substance. Pahlavi’s stagecraft speaks to diminutive exile audiences, not the streets of Iran.

At a press conference in Paris on 23 June, Reza Pahlavi proclaimed that he was already in “direct communication” with Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers, seeking to build “a formal channel for military, security and police personnel to reach out” to him. He claimed that “these officers… these brave men” were contacting him and expressing a desire to join “this national salvation”.  This is not merely rhetoric, it is a dramatic shift in posture for a man who styles himself as the heir of the monarchy, and yet now appears prepared to enlist the mullahs’ very enforcers as instruments of his comeback. Even more troubling, his inner circle reportedly includes Parviz Sabeti, a longtime deputy of the Shah’s secret police, SAVAK. That Pahlavi would court the IRGC, an institution whose very purpose has been the preservation of the clerical regime, and resurrect ties to the SAVAK era, should sound alarm bells across the Iranian diaspora and to the West alike.

In the end, the path to freedom in Iran will not be paved by alliances with the apparatus of dictatorship, whether cloaked in green uniform or crimson sash. It must spring from the people themselves, the women and men on the street who cried: “Death to the oppressor, whether it’s the Shah or the (Supreme) Leader,” not from exiles negotiating with their oppressors’ cohorts. Anything less is a betrayal of their sacrifice. The Iranian people have made their verdict clear; they reject both the mullahs’ tyranny and the return of the crown. Between the turban and the throne, they choose neither. They choose freedom.

Reza Pahlavi remains trapped in nostalgia, forever promising unity yet presiding over fragmentation. His vanity campaigns, whether heralded as global awakenings or political breakthroughs, end as footnotes in the history of Iranian exile politics. The “100 Cities – One Voice” project joins a long line of empty initiatives. In the end, the Iranian people choose freedom and the international community must engage with forces capable of delivering this vision, not symbolic heirs of a bygone monarchy. In a free Iran there is no place for a naked emperor.