Iran’s exiled prince Reza Pahlavi on Wednesday blamed the Islamic Republic for the expansion of radical Islam throughout the world, warning that the Western civilization is at risk of succumbing to Islamism.
Pahlavi, whose late father Mohammad Reza left Iran in the midst of an Islamic revolutionary fervor in 1979, has been living in the US ever since, advocating for political change in his homeland for at least two decades.
"The rise of radical Islam around the world can be traced directly back to the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran," Reza Pahlavi said at the National Conservatism conference in Washington DC. “Every day we see graphic, distressing images of the consequences this regime’s expansion has brought all the way to Europe and the West... "The problem that began in Iran must be ended in Iran."
The exiled prince’s stark warning comes a week after Iran’s presidential election, in which the so-called "moderate" Masoud Pezeshkian came out on top, surprising many inside and outside Iran and raising hopes that there may be change in the horizon.
“We are seeing the fifth column of the Islamic regime rear its ugly head in the media to try to convince you that the Islamic Republic’s new president is a reformist,” Reza Pahlavi said. “He is no such thing. He is nothing but a loyalist and lackey of this regime [who] publicly wrote to the Hezbollah secretary-general, reiterating the regime’s commitment to its proxies and their terror, just this week.”
Iran’s new administration is yet to take shape, but there are reports that Abbas Araghchi, a central figure during the negotiations that led to the 2015 nuclear deal, would become the Foreign Minister. If appointed, Araghchi may embark on a charm offensive in the remaining months of the Biden administration.
Reza Pahlavi and many other critics of the Islamic Republic see any such change as ‘cosmetic,’ pointing out the fact that turnout in the latest election was below 50 percent, and that many ordinary Iranians seem to have given up on the system and would prefer to do away with it altogether.
“We are not seeking your intervention. We are not seeking your charity,” Pahlavi told the audience at the National Conservatism conference. “I am not here to ask for your permission to get rid of the Islamic Republic. Nor am I here to ask you to do it for us… The soon to be free Iran, doesn’t seek your patronage. It seeks your partnership. It doesn’t seek your funding. It seeks your friendship.”