For many years, Reza Pahlavi has lived in exile removed from his homeland, trying to find any signal of weak point to use in Iran’s Islamic regime that ousted his father, the final Shah.
Principally, he has been a peripheral determine, accused by critics of missing credibility and unable to kind an organised opposition to problem the theocratic leaders who seized energy in 1979. However now, with Israeli bombs raining down on the Islamic republic and the regime locked in a battle for its survival, he’s betting that his second might lastly arrive.
“That is the primary time in all these years that we see the enjoying discipline being extra even for a possibility for change,” Pahlavi informed the Monetary Instances.
Since Israel launched its warfare towards Iran on Friday, Pahlavi, the highest-profile regime opponent in exile, has seized the second to name for Iranians to “stand up” and “reclaim Iran”. In doing so, he has echoed Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal makes an attempt to stoke an rebellion in Iran, which have brought on many Iranians to suspect the Israeli prime minister is pushing for regime change.
However to this point there aren’t any indicators that both of their calls are being heeded. Iranians’ long-simmering disillusionment with their leaders is, for now, outdated by their very own quests for survival and their anger in the direction of Israeli bombs.
Vali Nasr, professor on the Johns Hopkins College of Superior Worldwide Research, mentioned the temper had turn out to be more and more anti-Israeli, “no matter whether or not you’re pro-regime, anti-regime” as a way of nationalism took maintain.
“There may be going to be a reckoning for the Islamic republic; [citizens] need it gone, however they’re not blissful being invaded, they don’t need their lives destroyed. They’re not occupied with a name to arms towards the regime proper now — that’s not their challenge.”
The regime has for years been battling public disgruntlement as anger intensified amongst an aspirant, youthful inhabitants disillusioned with a long time of oppressive rule, isolation and financial hardship. The frustration has exploded into the streets with rising frequency over the previous twenty years.
Thousands and thousands of individuals protested disputed elections in 2009 in what grew to become referred to as the “inexperienced motion”. Three years in the past, younger men and women demonstrated throughout Iranian cities, defiantly calling for an finish to supreme chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s rule following the demise of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody after she was arrested for not correctly carrying her hijab.
However on every event the regime brutally put down the protests, whereas at instances making small concessions in a bid to ease home strain.
All through, no structured inside opposition has been capable of mobilise.
Authorities sniffed out any trace of organised dissent, jailing activists, critics and former regime loyalists who had turned towards the system.
Pahlavi, who has not returned to Iran since 1978 when he left, aged 17, to review in America, has sought to use the void to say to talk for the regime’s opponents from his base within the US. Now, he mentioned, he was providing himself as a “transitional chief” of a secular, democratic various to the republic.
Many Iran specialists, nonetheless, are deeply sceptical.
Analysts say Pahlavi does have some help in Iran, as he has tapped frustrations with the regime and nostalgia for the pre-revolutionary period. However the extent of that help is debatable, and the Iranian diaspora has lengthy been blighted by inside divisions and accusations that it’s out of contact.
Pahlavi and others within the exiled opposition noticed the same second to push for regime change with the “Ladies, Life, Freedom” protests within the wake of Amini’s demise. However the diaspora rapidly fell into disarray because the main figures turned on one another, the protests have been crushed and the exiled opposition returned to the political margins.
Israel’s bombardment poses a far graver risk as we speak, however specialists mentioned the chances have been nonetheless, for now, towards a splintered opposition.
“To launch a revolution or obtain regime change with out the deployment of US troops, you want charisma, you want an organisation, you want individuals prepared to combat for you inside Iran,” mentioned Mohsen Milani, writer of Iran’s Rise and Rivalry with the US within the Center East.
“It’s essential to popularise an appropriate imaginative and prescient for the longer term, and you have to have the ability to kind a broad, nationwide coalition towards the incumbent regime. I’ve seen little or no proof of that.”
He added that Israel’s assault had widened rifts inside the opposition: “Some oppose it, whereas lots of Mr Pahlavi’s supporters have voiced help.”
“There are lots of people in Iran who additionally oppose the Islamic republic they usually have paid with their lives, with their livelihoods,” mentioned Milani, a professor on the College of South Florida. “It’s arduous for me to see how they’re simply going to go away and let someone else come and take over.”
The extra danger for Pahlavi, who met Netanyahu whereas visiting Israel in 2023, is that he shall be considered as a collaborator with Iran’s aggressor, eroding what help he has within the republic, analysts say.
The 64-year-old insisted that Iranians have been “good sufficient” to know this isn’t “Israel’s warfare with Iran”.
“The one traitor right here is admittedly Khamenei,” he mentioned.
Mehrzad Boroujerdi, a US-based Iranian-American educational, mentioned even in a situation the place Israel and the US — if it intervened — defeated Iran and sought to place Pahlavi in energy, the story wouldn’t finish there.
“Contemplating the diploma of political polarisation within the nation . . . many are going to view him as a puppet of the Israelis and the People.”
Probably the most organised opposition is the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an exiled group that enjoys help within the US from Iran hawks comparable to veteran Republican John Bolton. Through the Eighties, it backed Iraq in its warfare with Iran, and the Islamic regime typically accuses it of stoking protests and instability and collaborating with Israel.
However analysts say the militant motion, typically described as a cult, is loathed and feared in Iran, the place it’s accused of killing officers and civilians. It’s unlikely to realize any widespread help, they are saying.
“They will ship their individuals to trigger some mischief within the nation,” mentioned Boroujerdi. “However actually the principle query is: Which pressure has this nationwide muscle and organisational help and community to have the ability to do something efficient?”
Consequently, analysts say there is no such thing as a apparent various to the republic, inside or exterior Iran. However what may change the home panorama is defections from inside the regime, Boroujerdi mentioned, together with the military and the highly effective Revolutionary Guards.
“The principle level [is] . . .what is the brink of ache for the state and its supporters? At what level are we going to see a defection, for instance, from the ranks of [the guards]?” Boroujerdi mentioned. “As of this second, we don’t actually see any severe indicators of that elite defection.”
But the republic is in uncharted territory, with Israeli strikes decimating the highest ranks of its army, its intelligence community deeply infiltrated and Netanyahu not ruling out assassinating Khamenei.
Nasr mentioned Iran may have a “Yeltsin” second, in reference to Boris Yeltsin who precipitated the top of the Soviet Union and have become Russia’s first elected president.
“What individuals will gravitate in the direction of is somebody who’s going to show the lights again on, who will convey order and stabilise relations with the surface,” he mentioned. “That may rally the paperwork.”
Iranians’ greatest worry could be the fragmentation of the multi-ethnic nation of 90mn individuals, having witnessed the carnage in neighbouring Iraq within the wake of the US-led 2003 invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, in addition to the civil wars that adopted 2011’s widespread uprisings in Syria and Libya.
Milani mentioned these conflicts, in addition to Iranians’ personal expertise of the 1979 Islamic revolution, had made the center class — the principle driver of change — cautious of any push for regime change.
“They’ve turn out to be way more reluctant to take part except they’re given a level of assurance that what’s going to substitute the Islamic republic could be higher than what now we have as we speak,” he mentioned.
