As protests roil Iran, its exiled crown prince is taking a greater role, and winning more attention in some quarters.
He's advocating for regime change and wants to play a lead role in a council, formed with other opposition figures in the Iranian diaspora, who claim to represent the country's democracy movement.
After more than 40 years living abroad, mostly in the United States, Reza Pahlavi remains a polarising figure.
While he espouses the democratic, secular, and liberal aspirations that many Iranians hold, the shadow of his late father, the Shah, continues to loom over him.
And while there are many who are firmly against the theocratic system of the Ayatollahs, not everyone wants a return to a monarchy.
Iranians have been risking their lives in the latest wave of protests in Iran, sparked by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini (Jina Amini) on September 16.
The 22-year-old was killed by so-called "morality police" for "improperly" wearing her hijab, triggering widespread outrage and calls for regime change.
Pahlavi has consistently said he does not seek a role as a future leader of Iran, and whether Iran's people chose a republic or monarchy to replace the mullahs is their choice.
However, he does want the Iranian people to endorse him to help overthrow the Islamic Republic and lead the transition towards a secular democracy.
Whoever Iranians then elect in a free and open referendum is up to them, he insists.
"The role that I'm offering in this process of transition is to be of help to maintain a smooth process — to maximise the participation of democratic forces in this process," he tells ABC News.
He's not the only one seeking a lead role. It's late January when Pahlavi speaks to ABC News, and there's been some heated debate within the diaspora about whether one person – no matter how well-intentioned – should be given that power.
But since our interview, there's been a deliberate effort by Pahlavi and other expat opposition figures to shift the discourse and show that they stand united in taking down the Islamic Republic.
On February 11 – which marked the 44th year of the Islamic Revolution and was met by anti-Islamic Republic protests in cities all around the world – eight of these opposition figures, including Pahlavi, banded together at an event at Georgetown University in the US capital, Washington DC.
They spoke in support of one common message: for democratic countries to support the Iranian people in overthrowing the regime and establishing a secular democracy.
"The Islamic Republic has survived because of our differences, and we should put our differences aside until we come to the polling booth," Nobel peace prize laureate Shirin Ebadi said in a video message broadcast at the event.
'Discernible advocacy'
Ultimately, whatever group or leader comes after the Islamic Republic will come from within Iran.
That's something Pahlavi and others agree on.
But Iran's opposition has long been split into numerous factions, including monarchists, republicans, leftists, as well as groups formed within ethnic minorities including Kurds, Baluchis and Arabs.
Pahlavi, and others in this opposition group, say their role is to represent the democracy movement within Iran.
They urge other groups to join them (one of the criticisms by an Iranian diaspora news outlet journalist attending the Georgetown event was that not enough minority groups were invited to be part of it).
It's a role this group claims to be taking on behalf of those Iranian dissidents, activists, intellectuals, locked up in jails – many of whom have been subject to physical and psychological torture and some of whom face the death penalty.
Pahlavi says the protesters "will certainly benefit from having a more discernible advocacy".
"So we won't be questioned as to whether this is truly representing the aspirations – or the ask – that our compatriots have from the international community, legislators, political leaders, and decision makers," he tells ABC News.
Both he and activist Masih Alinejad have been invited to speak at the Munich Security Conference later this week, which is attended each year by foreign ministers and world leaders.
The conference is a networking opportunity, with high-profile Iranians pushing for regime change.
This year, the organisers have invited Iranian opposition members instead of regime leaders to participate.
It shows that while the regime's apparatus is still intact — and the protests have diminished (some argue temporarily) following the government's brutal crackdown — this latest uprising is still seen as one the most serious challenges to Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution.
'Lessons learnt'
When an Islamic Revolution overthrew the monarchy in Iran in February 1979, Pahlavi was 18 and had just finished high school.
He was undergoing military training as a fighter jet pilot in the United States and later was to return home to Iran, given his position as heir to the Pahlavi throne.
But when the monarchy led by his father, the then-Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was overthrown by a theocracy under religious cleric Ruhollah Khomeini, it forced the prince's family to flee, and the Shah died about one year later in Egypt.
Prince Reza Pahlavi became the exiled crown prince of Iran and has remained in the US ever since.
For more than four decades, in meetings with world leaders and in media interviews, Pahlavi has been highlighting the Islamic Republic's grave human rights abuses and calling for regime change via non-violent uprising.
For him, one of the lessons after the '79 Revolution is "the merits of secularism", and "separation of religion from state as a primordial principle and precondition to democratic order".
"We learned it the hard way, after (more than) 43 years of a religious dictatorship," Pahlavi says.
"That doesn't mean that at the end of the cycle, we have to necessarily define our liberty by being antagonistic to faith or religion, which should be a private thing in the first place, regardless of which religion exists in Iran."
While Pahlavi won't name names, he suggests that he is keeping in close contact with dissidents, many of whom are locked up in jails and cannot speak out themselves.
Pahlavi's vision for a secular democracy also includes other fundamental principles.
He says there is the need for greater tolerance and acceptance of Iran's disparate ethnic and religious groups.
This, he says, must be coupled with a system of effective checks and balances.
"Civil society, watchdogs and society that have everything under scrutiny, so you don't have a concentration of power," he says.
'Working in collaboration'
In January, an online campaign was launched by Iranian actor Ehsan Karami to give "power of attorney" role to Reza Pahlavi for the period of transition.
So far that petition has attracted almost 500,000 signatures— many from the Iranian diaspora, forced to flee Iran after the 1979 revolution.
There were also separate anti-Pahlavi petitions that were circulated online by his opponents saying he's not their representative.
However, they haven't gathered as many signatures.
When asked what role he intends to play and why the people should trust him, Pahlavi suggests he thinks he has the credentials to lead the transition, but also says he won't be alone in that process.
"We are past the era where the singular person articulates or represents the entire project," Pahlavi says.
And while Pahlavi is seen as a monarchist, he says that it is ultimately up to the people of Iran to decide what system of government they chose.
"The world needs to understand that it's not going to be one person, for example, yours truly, all of a sudden stepping in and defining the entire package in all by myself. No. It's a series of actions that will bring that element of how we fill the void," he says.
Support for the crown prince in Iran?
In a wave of uprisings in Iran since 2017, groups of young Iranians can be seen chanting in videos, in support of what some see as a bygone era.
They use slogans like, "O king of Iran! Come back to Iran" and "Reza Shah! Bless your soul!".
It is unclear how much support the Pahlavis have inside Iran, since many monarchists fled (or were killed) after the 1979 Revolution.
However, what is clear is that most young Iranians haven't tasted certain social freedoms that existed under the Shah's rule – a world where women could wear miniskirts and platform heels (reminiscent of the 1970s western culture) – and freely attend public gatherings with men.
They only know of life under the Islamic Republic, where wearing a hijab (head covering) from puberty is mandatory and where a couple dancing together in public results in 10 years' jail.
Despite that, not all Iranians look back on the pre-revolution days with rose-coloured glasses.
While the story of Iran's economic development under the Shah is well-documented, he was also criticised for restricting political freedom. One of the most controversial aspects of his reign was using secret police to stifle dissent.
Nevertheless, there is a cohort of die-hard Pahlavi family supporters both in Iran, as well as outside it, who think the exiled crown prince may have a role to play should the latest uprising in Iran result in the Islamic regime being toppled.
Calls for a 'democratic government'
In early February Netherlands-based pollster, Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in IRAN (GAMAAN), released a survey called "Iranians' Attitudes Toward the 2022 Nationwide Protests".
Conducted between December 21–31, the opinion survey included about 158,000 respondents inside Iran, and more than 42,000 Iranians in the diaspora.
GAMAAN's director, Ammar Maleki, notes they use unconventional survey methods since one cannot conduct an open survey about religion inside a brutal theocracy that is executing citizens for protesting.
Accepting the restrictions GAMAAN faced in polling Iranians, it found that more than 80 per cent of those surveyed in a question on a referendum said they reject the Islamic Republic and want a democratic government.
The survey asked those who answered "No to the Islamic Republic" or "I do not know" a follow-up question about their preferred democratic and secular alternative regime type (the choice was between a presidential republic, a parliamentary republic, or a constitutional monarchy).
It found that 28.5 per cent of those inside Iran and 32 per cent of those outside Iran prefer a presidential republic.
The survey also asked those who support the protests about the formation of a so-called solidarity council (or opposition coalition) comprising prominent activists of various political orientations.
It found 85 per cent of the Iranians residing in the country who agree with the protests, also agree with the formation of such a council, and Reza Pahlavi was chosen as the top candidate out of a list of 34 individuals (who GAMAAN says represent diverse political orientations).
"It becomes even more important to be able to say that I'm not here just pretending to represent my compatriots — in fact, Iranians are speaking by lending their support in such campaigns that we can and are, in fact, advocating on their behalf," Pahlavi says.
A 'deviation' from the main game?
Iranian journalist and activist Homa Sarshar was a columnist for Iranian newspapers during the Shah's reign. She moved to Los Angeles in 1978 and is among those who have been speaking out against Iran's human rights abuses and calling for regime change.
She says Pahlavi has been consistent in his messaging, and it's clear there's some level of support for him inside Iran. But she says calls by others to give him a power-of-attorney role was "confusing" and unnecessary.
"I got a little bit suspicious of why [the call for such a role for Pahlavi] at this time, when everything was going so smoothly," she says, noting the plan was always to have a coalition, rather than a single person, help in a transition.
She says it is "a deviation" from the main game which is to have a coalition with representatives "from all walks of life — women, men, people from different ethnicity, people from different beliefs, different religions, different ideas".
Sam Loni, a London-based Oxford University researcher in economics and public policy, and an advocate for human rights in Iran, says that history shows that transitional periods generate political conditions that are "highly conducive to power grabs and can easily result in the emergence of tyranny".
"When the stakes are this high, we should not grant any individual unrestrained authority, even if we fully trust them and believe them to be morally virtuous, as power can change the best of people," Loni says.
"A more safe, effective, and democratic approach would be to form a coalition."
But Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at Washington-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which has been advocating for regime change and calling on the Biden administration to abandon talks on a nuclear deal, says one person can speak as a representative of those wider voices.
He says ultimately, whatever system comes after the Islamic Republic will come from within Iran. But he suggests that Pahlavi can amplify their plight.
"There have been numerous slogans from 2017 to present that mentioned the dynasty that his [Reza Pahalvi's] family was a part of, and that, call for him in some ways to return," he says.
"Ironically, it comes at a time when many politicians in the West seem to be least interested in monarchy in the Middle East, or in this instance, tend to have an allergy from the Cold War-era to his family's [the Pahlavi] name."
A 'strike fund' for Iranian workers
Regardless of who assists in a transition should the regime collapse, Pahlavi says sanctions imposed against the regime by countries around the world are not enough.
He says ensuring Iranians have internet access – which the regime continually cuts off — is "vital".
Iranians have been trying to use VPNs (virtual private networks) to avoid the regime's strict censorship. But there's been calls for outside satellite internet providers to step in and help so the protesters can circumvent the country's computer networks.
"Another thing that the world can start doing which will aid the campaign of resistance — and ultimately, the collapse of this regime — is what I think is the ultimate level of pressure from within, which are sustained labour strikes to paralyse the regime," he says.
He suggests freezing the assets of the regime and redirecting it to a strike fund that would compensate Iranian workers who want to go on strike but cannot afford to.
"You can decrease the level of sacrifice and deaths and cost of change to Iranians, if you show solidarity with them, if you show that you are taking steps to aid them."
He also notes pressure is growing on the United States, EU, Britain, Australia and other countries to blacklist the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – the military arm of Iran's government – as a terrorist organisation.
A 'grip on power at all costs'
To date, almost 20,000 have been arrested and more than 500 killed, according to estimates from Human Rights Activists News Agency, a US-based not-for-profit dedicated to reporting on Iran's human rights abuses.
Iran's government claims to have released most of them but human rights groups have not verified that.
The New York-based Center for Human Rights Group (CHRI) recently reported an increasing number of doctors and medical workers have been arrested, detained, tortured and killed by Islamic Republic forces for treating wounded protesters.
Amnesty International campaigner Nikita White notes that Iranian authorities are using state-sanctioned executions "as a tool of repression to stop people from taking to the streets and stop them from protesting" and have decided to "maintain their grip on power at all costs".
She says Amnesty is concerned that at least 14 people have been sentenced to death or are on trial – following "forced confessions" and "sham trials" — and face charges which carry the death penalty.
"Ever since the protests began, the Iranian authorities have responded with violence, they have killed protesters on the streets, they have arrested thousands of protesters, they have tortured people — and none of this has stopped the protests," White says.
"And what we see when these methods don't work is that they escalate the violence."
Pahlavi says there is no longer any hope the regime can be reformed.
"It is no longer whether Mr Khatami [Mohammad Khatami, an Iranian reformist politician who served as the president of Iran from 1997 to 2005] is more moderate than Mr. Ahmadinejad [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardcore nationalist, who served as president from 2005 to 2013].
"They [Iranians] call for a total end of this regime. They call and chant, 'Death to the dictator'. People want liberty and this regime will never, ever have the will nor the mechanisms to make that possible."
