Shah’s son Pahlavi speaks at a safety convention in regards to the state of affairs in Iran | EUROtoday

As of: February 14, 2026 1:39 a.m

Reza Pahlavi is the son of the final Shah of Iran. At the Munich Security Conference, he offered himself as a lobbyist for the opposition – and didn’t rule out a political management position.

Christiane Amanpour has a particular relationship with Iran. Her father was Iranian and he or she spent a big a part of her childhood in Tehran. The household belonged to the privileged circles there; it was the time of the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

That’s why it was quiet on Friday night on the Munich Security Conference when CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour requested one in all her quick and often unavoidable questions: “Do you want to be king?” The query went to the Shah’s son, inheritor to the throne Reza Pahlavi.

No clear denial

Reza Pahlavi gave a verbose reply to the straightforward query. The 65-year-old defined that he had no ambitions himself, however needed to make a contribution to creating the transition to a democratic system doable. “If the demonstrators in the streets of Iran shout my name,” he mentioned, “should I refuse?”

That wasn’t a transparent denial. To ask now about his position in a brand new, democratic Iran “would be putting the cart before the horse.”

Haven’t been within the nation for nearly half a century

Reza Pahlavi tells the place he spent the day when his father was overthrown from the Peacock Throne. “In Texas, in military training,” he says. As a 17-year-old, he skilled as a fighter pilot there and was alleged to return to Iran after a 12 months. “But it’s now been 47 years.”

Can a person who has not been in Iran for nearly half a century and whose father was one of the vital hated males within the nation – at the very least till he was changed by the mullahs – characterize the opposition?

Three years in the past, Reza Pahlavi was in Munich for the primary time on the safety convention. On the panel he sat subsequent to girls’s rights activists and socialist opposition members, all representatives of the exiled opposition. The excessive fragmentation of the opponents of the mullahs’ regime was a difficulty and there was additionally the query of whether or not the divided teams would ever be capable of agree on a consultant.

“My role is exclusively a helping one,” Pahlavi mentioned on the time in an interview with ARD. He dominated out returning to his father’s nation. “I live in Washington, have a wife and three daughters.”

A lobbyist for the Iranian opposition

Sometime after that the turning level got here. Reza Pahlavi calls the Woman-Life-Peace motion a “game changer”. Previously, his identify was solely talked about within the tightly organized monarchist circles of exiled Iranians. But steadily different members of the opposition had been capable of come to phrases with the concept issues do not work with no robust determine of identification.

At the safety convention in Munich, Pahlavi takes on the position of a lobbyist for the Iranian opposition. “They persecuted the injured in the hospital, they raped women in prison and killed an incredible number of innocent people.” So many who the Shah’s son speaks of a genocide in opposition to his personal inhabitants.

Another quick, clear query from Christiane Amanpour: “What do you think of Trump’s Iran policy?” The US President had inspired the protesters to proceed to insurgent and assist was on the way in which. It stayed that method. Nevertheless, Reza Pahlavi avoids criticizing Trump. What is now wanted is a “humanitarian intervention” with additional sanctions, and all Iranian diplomats must be expelled by the Western governments, and the Western governments ought to assist with a safe web.

Pahlavi: Religion shouldn’t play a job in politics

The Shah’s son turns into clear on one level on the finish. In the post-mullah period, faith ought to now not play a job in politics. “Religion has no place in secular law,” says Pahlavi. He repeats the sentence, nearly imploringly, that the regulation have to be impartial of any non secular affect. In his view, that is the aim that the assorted opposition teams ought to try for collectively: “secular democracy as an alternative to dictatorial rule.”

The Shah’s son expects help not solely from Washington, but additionally from the Europeans, who should determine “whether they want to be on the right side of history.”

On Saturday, 100,000 Iranians from throughout Europe need to display in Munich – the organizers give the quantity.