When U.S. officials and media pundits talk about regime change in Iran, one name often comes up, that of Maryland resident Reza Pahlavi – prince in exile.
That discussion has returned to the forefront of American discourse on foreign policy during the Iran war in which Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was an early casualty. A fragile ceasefire was struck last month, but the question of Iran’s future remains.
Pahlavi, the former heir to Iran’s now-defunct throne and a staunch opponent of the incumbent Islamic Republic, has called for a transitional government with a secular democracy.
“Millions of Iranians have called on me to lead the transition to democracy,” he said to a crowd gathered for the Conservative Political Action Conference in March. “I have accepted that call, not to serve myself, but to serve my nation and my people.”
The day after the first strikes, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told NBC’s Meet the Press that the U.S. would leave the decision of who will be Iran’s new head of state up to the Iranian people.
But he added that U.S. officials had already been in contact with the son of Iran’s old monarch.
“We talked to the crown prince,” Graham said. “He’s got some ideas.”
At CPAC in Dallas, Pahlavi shared those ideas, speaking alongside high-profile conservative leaders like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., political strategist Steve Bannon and others.
“For the first time in 47 years, President Trump’s strategy has given us a real chance,” Pahlavi said. “For decades, every American president since Jimmy Carter chose to try to manage this looming threat rather than resolve it.”
Pahlavi, who did not respond to requests for comment from Capital News Service, spent those decades lobbying governments full-time to militarily oppose the Islamic Republic.
That’s why he first moved near Washington, D.C., to Great Falls, Va., in the 1980s. He did an 11-minute video message that was broadcast in Iran in 1986, promising his return.
In November that year, Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward wrote that the broadcast was made possible by the CIA as a part of a program to support Iranian dissident exiles and curb Soviet influence.
Pahlavi was also supported by other wealthy Iranians. The Post wrote in 1989 that Pahlavi raised $1 million over two months that year.
“Propaganda is not cheap these days,” he told the newspaper.
His move to Maryland wasn’t cheap either. The Potomac estate was purchased in 1996 for $1.25 million, according to Realtor.com. Pahlavi would stay there for almost three decades and continue his campaigning.
During that time, former president George W. Bush famously designated Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the “axis of evil” in 2002. Four years after that, Bush created a fund for organizations in opposition to the Iranian government.
Pahlavi strongly opposed President Barack Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 agreement brokered among Iran, the U.S. and other NATO members that restricted Iranian nuclear weapons development in exchange for lifting economic sanctions.
In an interview with Newsweek in 2019, Pahlavi called that effort a “mistake to disastrous effect for the Iranian people and the region.”
Instead, he’s praised Israeli and U.S. direct military operations against his home country. When Israel launched the 12-Day War on Iran in June 2025, he reserved his criticism for Iran’s leader, urging Iranians to rise up.
After Israel and the U.S. struck again on Feb. 28, Pahlavi posted on X, calling it a “humanitarian intervention.”
At a press conference in Berlin last month, Pahlavi maintained that military action against his home country has the support of its people.
“The targeting of the regime’s infrastructure … was absolutely something that the Iranian people actually called for,” he said. “Of course, we ache for anybody that has been collateral damage, but we are not apologizing for calling for our freedom.”
More than 3,000 Iranians have been killed in the conflict, according to a U.S.-based rights group. At least 1,700 of that total were civilians.
But Pahlavi said in Berlin that diplomacy is no longer worthwhile. “No deal will stop this. No negotiations will stop this. It is in [the Iranian government’s] DNA,” he said.
Critics of Pahlavi argue he is too reliant on foreign backing and that his association with Iran’s monarchy divides his support among the opposition within the country.
In order to bring those groups together, prominent leaders, including Pahlavi, formed a coalition that met at Georgetown University in February 2023. But Pahlavi soon left that coalition, largely due to pressure from his far-right advisors, according to Alireza Nader, a scholar of Iran and the Middle East based in Washington, D.C.
Pahlavi cemented his new direction in a solo visit to Israel two months later, where he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials.
“I still believe that Pahlavi is committed to democracy in Iran,” Nader wrote in an article on RealClearWorld, “But Pahlavi’s ultra-nationalist advisors have little respect for democracy or tolerance for the slightest opposing views.”
Pahlavi and his family have long been subject to influence from outside.
In fact, his family’s rule over Iran might have ended back in 1953, if it weren’t for intervention from the United Kingdom and the U.S.
His father, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fled Iran after riots swept the nation in response to the monarch’s attempt to dismiss Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who had led the passage of a bill in 1951 nationalizing British oil assets within Iran, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica.
A coup orchestrated by the United Kingdom and the U.S. restored the shah to power in 1953, according to Britannica. He went on to imprison, torture and kill political dissidents throughout his reign until he was ousted for good through the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Now more than ever, Pahlavi claims, the government that used the revolution to seize power might be facing its end.
“What we ask of America now is simple – stay the course,” Pahlavi said at CPAC. “Pave the way for the Iranian people to finish the job.”
Ali Khamenei was replaced a week after his death by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has ruled Iran since March 8, and the incumbent government continues to hold out despite an American blockade.
But Pahlavi left CPAC attendees with promising words.
“After all the massacres, after all [Iranians] have sacrificed, they will never agree to swap one tyrant for another,” Pahlavi said.