Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah and a prominent opposition figure in exile, said Sunday that he will step forward to lead Iran’s transition following the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, Pahlavi wrote that many Iranians “— often even after facing bullets — have called on me to lead this transition. I am in awe of their courage, and I have answered their call.”
He outlined a plan he said would be transparent: “a new constitution drafted and ratified by referendum, followed by free elections under international oversight. When Iranians vote, the transitional government dissolves.” Pahlavi added that a democratic Iran would “transform the Middle East, turning one of the world’s most persistent sources of upheaval into a pillar of regional stability.”
Pahlavi emphasized that a transition must avoid the turmoil that followed the Iraq war. “There will be no dissolution of institutions, no power vacuum, no chaos,” he wrote.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Khamenei had been killed after the United States and Israel launched wide-ranging strikes on Iran on Saturday; Iranian state media confirmed Khamenei’s death early Sunday. The Israeli military said the weekend’s strikes targeted locations where senior Iranian leaders were meeting and killed top officials, including the defense minister and the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Pahlavi’s father, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, ruled Iran from 1941 until the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Reza Pahlavi was designated crown prince by his father and has lived in exile in the United States for decades.
