Iran’s exiled royal calls for regime change — but few are listening

For decades, Reza Pahlavi has lived in exile far from his homeland, searching for any sign of weakness to exploit in Iran’s Islamic regime that ousted his father, the last Shah.

Mostly, he has been a peripheral figure, accused by critics of lacking credibility and unable to form an organised opposition to challenge the theocratic leaders who seized power in 1979. But now, with Israeli bombs raining down on the Islamic republic and the regime locked in a battle for its survival, he is betting that his moment may finally arrive.

“This is the first time in all these years that we see the playing field being more even for an opportunity for change,” Pahlavi told the Financial Times.

Since Israel launched its war against Iran on Friday, Pahlavi, the highest-profile regime opponent in exile, has seized the moment to call for Iranians to “rise up” and “reclaim Iran”. In doing so, he has echoed Benjamin Netanyahu’s own attempts to stoke an uprising in Iran, which have caused many Iranians to suspect the Israeli prime minister is pushing for regime change.

But so far, there are no signs that either of their calls are being heeded. Iranians’ long-simmering disillusionment with their leaders is, for now, superseded by their own quests for survival and their anger towards Israeli bombs.

Vali Nasr, professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said the mood had become increasingly anti-Israeli, “regardless of whether you’re pro-regime, anti-regime” as a sense of nationalism took hold.

“There is going to be a reckoning for the Islamic republic; [citizens] want it gone, but they’re not happy being invaded, they don’t want their lives destroyed. They’re not interested in a call to arms against the regime right now — that’s not their issue.”

The regime has for years been battling public disgruntlement as anger intensified among an aspirant, youthful population disillusioned with decades of oppressive rule, isolation and economic hardship. The frustration has exploded into the streets with increasing frequency over the past two decades.

Millions of people protested disputed elections in 2009 in what became known as the “green movement”. Three years ago, young women and men demonstrated across Iranian cities, defiantly calling for an end to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s rule following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody after she was arrested for not properly wearing her hijab.

But on each occasion, the regime brutally put down the protests, while at times making small concessions in a bid to ease domestic pressure.

Throughout, no structured internal opposition has been able to mobilise.

Authorities sniffed out any hint of organised dissent, jailing activists, critics and former regime loyalists who had turned against the system.

Pahlavi, who has not returned to Iran since 1978 when he left, aged 17, to study in America, has sought to exploit the void to claim to speak for the regime’s opponents from his base in the US. Now, he said, he was offering himself as a “transitional leader” of a secular, democratic alternative to the republic.

Many Iran experts, however, are deeply sceptical.

Analysts say Pahlavi does have some support in Iran, as he has tapped frustrations with the regime and nostalgia for the pre-revolutionary era. But the extent of that support is debatable, and the Iranian diaspora has long been blighted by internal divisions and accusations that it is out of touch.

Pahlavi and others in the exiled opposition saw a similar moment to push for regime change with the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests in the wake of Amini’s death. But the diaspora quickly fell into disarray as the leading figures turned on each other, the protests were crushed and the exiled opposition returned to the political margins.

Israel’s bombardment poses a far graver threat today, but experts said the odds were still, for now, against a splintered opposition.

“To launch a revolution or achieve regime change without the deployment of US troops, you need charisma, you need an organisation, you need people willing to fight for you inside Iran,” said Mohsen Milani, author of Iran’s Rise and Rivalry with the US in the Middle East.

“You need to popularise an acceptable vision for the future, and you must be able to form a broad, national coalition against the incumbent regime. I’ve seen very little evidence of that.”

He added that Israel’s assault had widened rifts within the opposition: “Some oppose it, while many of Mr Pahlavi’s supporters have voiced support.”

“There are a lot of people in Iran who also oppose the Islamic republic and they have paid with their lives, with their livelihoods,” said Milani, a professor at the University of South Florida. “It’s hard for me to see how they’re just going to go away and let somebody else come and take over.”

The additional risk for Pahlavi, who met Netanyahu while visiting Israel in 2023, is that he will be viewed as a collaborator with Iran’s aggressor, eroding what support he has in the republic, analysts say.

The 64-year-old insisted that Iranians were “smart enough” to know this is not “Israel’s war with Iran”.

“The only traitor here is really Khamenei,” he said.

Mehrzad Boroujerdi, a US-based Iranian-American academic, said even in a scenario where Israel and the US — if it intervened — defeated Iran and sought to put Pahlavi in power, the story would not end there.

“Considering the degree of political polarisation in the country . . . many are going to view him as a puppet of the Israelis and the Americans.”

The most organised opposition is the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an exiled group that enjoys support in the US from Iran hawks such as veteran Republican John Bolton. During the 1980s, it backed Iraq in its war with Iran, and the Islamic regime often accuses it of stoking protests and instability and collaborating with Israel.

But analysts say the militant movement, often described as a cult, is loathed and feared in Iran, where it is accused of killing officials and civilians. It is unlikely to gain any popular support, they say.

“They can send their people to cause some mischief in the country,” said Boroujerdi. “But really the main question is: Which force has this nationwide muscle and organisational support and network to be able to do anything effective?”

As a result, analysts say there is no obvious alternative to the republic, inside or outside Iran. But what could change the domestic landscape is defections from within the regime, Boroujerdi said, including the army and the powerful Revolutionary Guards.

“The main point [is] . . .what is the threshold of pain for the state and its supporters? At what point are we going to see a defection, for example, from the ranks of [the guards]?” Boroujerdi said. “As of this moment, we don’t really see any serious signs of that elite defection.”

Yet the republic is in uncharted territory, with Israeli strikes decimating the top ranks of its military, its intelligence network deeply infiltrated and Netanyahu not ruling out assassinating Khamenei.

Nasr said Iran could have a “Yeltsin” moment, in reference to Boris Yeltsin who precipitated the end of the Soviet Union and became Russia’s first elected president.

“What people will gravitate towards is someone who is going to turn the lights back on, who will bring order and stabilise relations with the outside,” he said. “That would rally the bureaucracy.”

Iranians’ biggest fear would be the fragmentation of the multi-ethnic nation of 90mn people, having witnessed the carnage in neighbouring Iraq in the wake of the US-led 2003 invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, as well as the civil wars that followed 2011’s popular uprisings in Syria and Libya.

Milani said those conflicts, as well as Iranians’ own experience of the 1979 Islamic revolution, had made the middle class — the main driver of change — wary of any push for regime change.

“They have become much more reluctant to participate unless they are given a degree of assurance that what is going to replace the Islamic republic would be better than what we have today,” he said.