Who is Reza Pahlavi, the exiled crown prince encouraging demonstrations across Iran?

As the Islamic Republic of Iran approaches two weeks of nationwide demonstrations, the government in Tehran has acknowledged the protests while continuing a crackdown.

The death toll from clashes between protesters and government security forces had risen to 116 by early Sunday, with more than 2,600 people detained. according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). One of the most prominent advocates of continued action against the government is Reza Pahlavi, son of Iran’s former shah, who has regularly issued messages encouraging protesters.

Iran’s attorney general, Mohammad Movahedi Azad, announced on Saturday that participants in the unrest would be considered an “enemy of God.”

The current wave of protests began on December 28, following a collapse of the national currency, the rial, which currently trades for more than $1.4 million and has lost half its value since September. International sanctions have put pressure on the economy and the resulting public grievances have led to direct challenges to Iran’s theocracy.

In response, the government has mobilized security forces and state-controlled media. State television has broadcast pro-government rallies, while at the same time surveillance footage released by the government-affiliated Fars news agency showed a protester in Isfahan reportedly firing a long gun while others lit fires and threw petrol bombs at what appeared to be a government complex. Another government-affiliated news agency with close ties to Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards, Tasnim, reported that authorities had detained nearly 200 people belonging to “operational terrorist teams,” in addition to allegations that those arrested had weapons in their possession, including firearms, grenades and gasoline bombs.

A divisive figure

Amid these events, Reza Pahlavi, the 65-year-old exiled crown prince and son of the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, has once again emerged as a leading figure in Iran’s various opposition movements. In posts shared on social media, Pahlavi urged protesters into the streets on Thursday evening and Friday. He urged demonstrators to continue public street protests this weekend, carrying the country’s old lion-and-sun flag and other national symbols used in his father’s time to “claim public spaces as your own.”

Despite being born in Iran, Pahlavi has lived in exile for almost fifty years.

Born in Tehran in 1960, he was appointed crown prince of Iran until the overthrow of his father – who had inherited the throne from his own father, an army officer who seized power with British support. After successfully encouraging rising oil prices in the 1970s, economic inequality had widened during the last Shah’s reign, and his Savak intelligence service became infamous for its torture of dissidents.

That Pahlavi dynasty ended in 1979 when millions across the country took part in protests against the Shah, uniting secular leftists, trade unions, professionals, students and Muslim clerics. Reza Pahlavi had left his homeland a year earlier, in 1978, to attend flight school at a U.S. air base in Texas, then watched his father flee Iran during the dawn of what became known as the Islamic Revolution, during which time Shiite clerics established a new theocratic government. After his father’s death, a royal court in exile announced on October 31, 1980, his twentieth birthday, that Reza Pahlavi had inherited the monarchical role of shah.A leader for a future Iran?

Pahlavi’s attempts to position himself as a leader for a future Iran have led to sometimes heated debates inside and outside the country. And while demonstrators have shouted support for the Shah at some protests, it is not clear whether that is support for Pahlavi himself or a desire to return to the time before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

His public support for Israel has drawn significant criticism from ordinary Iranians and other members of opposition groups in the past, especially after the 12-day war that Israel launched in June 2025.

He has tried to gain a voice through videos on social media, and Farsi-language news outlets such as Iran International have highlighted his calls for protests. In press interviews, Pahlavi has repeatedly raised the idea of ​​a constitutional monarchy, perhaps with an elected rather than hereditary ruler, but he has also stated that it is up to Iranians to choose.