President Donald Trump expressed uncertainty Wednesday on whether Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi could eventually lead the country. In an Oval Office interview with Reuters, he said that while Pahlavi ‘seems very nice,’ Trump wasn’t sure the Iranian population would accept the crown prince as the country’s leader. The conversation happened moments after Trump appeared to pump the brakes on an American military intervention, something the president has been threatening for weeks as the Islamic regime has brutally cracked down on widespread protests. ‘He seems very nice, butI don’t know how he’d play within his own country,’ the president said of Pahlavi. ‘And we really aren’t up to that point yet. I don’t know whether or not his country would accept his leadership, and certainly if they would, that would be fine with me,’ Trump added.
The fragility of power
Trump said it was possible that the government of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei could fall amid the demonstrations, though added that, in truth, ‘any regime can fall.’ ‘Whether or not it falls or not, it’s going to be an interesting period of time,’ Trump added. Pahlavi was born in Tehran – the son of U.S.-backed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi – who Iranians overthrew in 1979, with the current Islamic Republic taking the monarchy’s place. But with that came decades of repressive government, on display this week as news leaked out amid purposeful internet blackouts that at least 2,400 demonstrators were killed and another 18,000 were arrested by the regime. The 65-year-old Pahlavi, who lives in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, has played a vocal role in the protests from abroad, but on the ground, there appears to be little organized support for the country to again be ruled by the monarchy.
A softening stance
Trump said last week that he has no plans to meet with Pahlavi amid the turmoil in Iran. The president received criticism earlier Wednesday from anti-regime voices online, who used the term ‘TACO’ – ‘Trump always chickens out’ – against him, when he seemed to buy the word of the Iranians that killings and executions had stopped. On January 2 – as Trump was preparing to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro – the president said the U.S. was ‘locked and loaded’ and would take military action against the Iranian regime if protesters were murdered. But on Wednesday, as Trump signed a law about whole milk in schools, he softened his tone. ‘We’ve been told that the killing in Iran is stopping, and it’s stopped and stopping, and there’s no plan for executions or an execution,’ Trump said. He added, however, that if he finds that’s not the case, he would be ‘very upset.’
Pragmatism over protest
The president has been trepidatious about backing regime change. In Venezuela, instead of turning to the opposition, which the U.S. said had won the 2024 election against Maduro, the U.S. government has currently partnered with Maduro’s No. 2, Delcy Rodriguez, who’s become the country’s acting president. Trump told Reuters that he had had a ‘fascinating talk’ with Rodriguez earlier in the day, adding ‘she’s been very good to deal with.’
He’s expected to meet with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado at the White House on Thursday, who had initially planned to offer upher Nobel Peace Prize to the U.S. leader. Since then, the Norwegian group that gives out the annual prize stated that the prize can’t be transferred or shared. Trump had vocally lobbied for the prize last year. ‘She’s a very nice woman,’ Trump said of Machado. ‘I’ve seen her on television. I think we’re just going to talk basics.’
On Iran, too, Trump has green-lit particular strikes, but hasn’t done enough to amount to regime change. In June, Trump ordered B-2 bombers to participate in Operation Midnight Hammer, a mission to take out Iran’s main three nuclear sites, Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. In the early days of 2020, during the president’s first term, he also authorized a drone strike to kill Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani, outside the Baghdad airport.
