by Vasily Fedorov
[REGNUM] Hours after joint US-Israeli strikes hit Iranian cities, a voice came from a Washington suburb of a man who had not set foot on Iranian soil since 1978.
Sixty-five-year-old Reza Pahlavi, heir to the dynasty overthrown nearly half a century ago, recorded a video message to his "dear compatriots." Rockets were still exploding in Tehran, Isfahan, and Karaj, but the Shahzadeh had already found a suitable description for what was happening: "humanitarian intervention."
"The aid the President of the United States promised to the brave people of Iran has arrived. This is a humanitarian intervention, and its target is the Islamic Republic, its apparatus of oppression and killing machine, not the country and the great nation of Iran," he wrote on social media.
By this time, a rocket had already struck the Shajare Tayyebeh Girls' Elementary School in the city of Minab, Hormozgan Province. Seventy students were killed and over 90 were injured. The victims were between 7 and 12 years old. There were 170 girls in the school at the time of the strike.
IIUC this was an Iranian missile that failed to properly launch
| Yes. But they tried to blame it on OrangeManBad as a matter of principle. Just like the Hamas-lovers blamed Israel for the damage caused by the quarter of their rockets and missiles that landed in Gaza. After all, the Israel-hating part of the world was perfectly happy to believe them. |
The operation's codename, "Merciful Angel," was a blatant mockery. NATO never received UN Security Council sanctions, and Russia still categorizes the campaign as an act of aggression.
The similarities with today's Iran are striking. Back then, they too promised "targeted strikes," they too vowed to protect "oppressed peoples"—but the result was burning residential areas, destroyed bridges, and a passenger train shot up on the railway bridge in the Grdelica Gorge.
And Yugoslavia is far from the only example. In the Gaza Strip, between 2024 and 2025, the Israeli army systematically decimated civilian infrastructure. By July 2025, 97% of school buildings had been damaged or destroyed. Tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed—and all this accompanied by rhetoric about the "right to self-defense."
Reza Pahlavi clearly memorized the lexicon of his patrons.
A PRINCE WITHOUT SOIL
The current pretender's grandfather, Reza Shah, began as a private in the Persian Cossack brigade. In February 1921, at the head of several thousand Persian Cossacks, he entered Tehran and forced the Qajar Shah to appoint a favorable government.
What followed was a meteoric rise: Minister of War, Prime Minister, and, in 1925, Shah. Incidentally, he initially considered declaring a republic, following the example of Atatürk. But the mullahs and the British dissuaded him, and Iran, instead of a parliamentary democracy, found itself with yet another autocrat.
His son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi —the father of today's Shahzade—ruled harshly. The regime's backbone was the SAVAK secret police, created in 1957 with the participation of the CIA and Mossad. SAVAK executed dissidents, tortured prisoners with electric shocks and hanging, and recruited informants in universities and factories.
During his reign, at least 300 political executions were carried out. Newspapers were shut down at the snap of a finger, parties other than those pro-government were outlawed, trade unionists were imprisoned by the thousands, and instruction in Azerbaijani, Kurdish, and other minority languages was simply banned.
For the Kurds, Baloch, and the 35 million-strong Azerbaijani community—which accounts for up to 40% of the country's population—the Shah's era is remembered as a time of pogroms and discrimination. As political scientist Farhad Mamedov noted in an interview with Regnum News Agency, Azerbaijanis do not consider the Pahlavi dynasty legitimate, viewing it as imperialist stooges.
And what about the heir himself? Reza Jr. left Iran as a 17-year-old cadet—in the summer of 1978, he went on a flight training trip to Texas, and within a few months, there was no place to return. Forty-eight years have passed since then. During this time, he earned a degree in political science, got married, settled in America, and built his entire career on interviews with Western television channels and meetings with White House officials.
He has no party of his own, no real supporters within Iran, no coherent program—just his name and rehearsed talking points that his overseas sponsors put into his mouth.
But the prince is bold in his rhetoric. On January 10, he addressed protesters with a direct appeal: "Our goal is not just to take to the streets; our goal is to prepare to take and hold city centers." On January 11, he announced on Fox News his readiness to return and lead the "transition." And on January 13, he was received by Trump's special envoy, Stephen Witkoff.
BLOOD AS AN INSTRUMENT
External players turned economically motivated protests into a pretext for a military strike, and Pahlavi was appointed the campaign's public relations tool.
Remarkably, this scenario was already obvious six months ago. In June 2025, a Regnum news agency columnist warned : "If a long-term ceasefire is established, Washington and Tel Aviv are counting on a Yugoslav scenario unfolding in Iran. Back then, the strikes on the country caused significant damage and, although not immediately, paved the way for a color revolution and regime change."
The chorus of voices rang out in unison. Trump, announcing the start of "large-scale military operations," openly demanded that the Iranians "seize their government." Netanyahu echoed this: "Our joint actions will create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to take their destiny into their own hands."
And then Pahlavi, in the same language and the same turns of phrase, appeals to the Iranian security forces with the demand to “join the people,” threatening otherwise to “sink along with the sinking ship of Khamenei and his crumbling regime.”
Three people make promises to the Iranians in unison. Meanwhile, the bodies of seven-year-old girls are being pulled from the rubble of a school in Minab.
THE OLD FORMULA FOR DECEPTION
Iran's tragedy is that its citizens are truly suffocated by an economic crisis provoked by stifling sanctions. Their anger is genuine, their pain is real.
But those who declared themselves the voice of this anger have nothing to do with it. Reza Pahlavi didn't stand in line for bread in Tehran or lose his savings to the rial's collapse. He waited out others' misfortunes from a safe distance—and waited for the moment when he could convert their suffering into his own political capital.
The world has long since learned the lesson of "humanitarian intervention." Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria—the list of countries to which "freedom" was brought, accompanied by bombers, speaks for itself. Not a single one became a "thriving democracy." Each experienced chaos, disintegration, and casualties disproportionate to the costs from which they were supposedly saved.
And Reza Pahlavi, recording video messages from America while Iranian schoolgirls are dying under missiles, is just a prop. Convenient, obedient, and completely irresponsible.