There are liberal reformers, like human rights activists and Narges Mohammadi, Nobel Peace Prizeformer Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi or former Deputy Interior Minister Mostafa Tajzadeh.
But all these people are languishing in prison or under house arrest. The regime “has been very successful in suppressing dissent by imprisoning dissidents or forcing them into exile,” Slavin said.
The prince from across the seaBest known among the alternatives is Reza Pahlavi, the so-called “crown prince” who lived most of his life in exile in the United States.
He is the son of the country’s former king, or shah, whose decades-long autocratic rule was strengthened by a CIA-backed coup before being overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Pahlavi presents himself as a transitional figure to guide Iran towards democracy.
“I think the Iranian people have already demonstrated in large numbers who they want to lead this transition,” Pahlavi said at a news conference Friday.
This is a speech heard by NBC News last year as part of a small group of media organizations invited by the crown prince to Paris. “I am not seeking political power,” he told the audience, but simply to lead his country “on the path to peace and a democratic transition.”
Iranian opposition leader Reza Pahlavi speaks in Paris in June 2025. Joël Saget / AFP via Getty ImagesHe is popular among monarchists in the Iranian diaspora, many of whom were born after his father’s overthrow and do not remember SAVAK, the ruthless secret police that Pahlavi’s father used to imprison and torture his opponents.
There appears to have been a concerted effort to increase Pahlavi’s visibility online. Some protest videos analyzed by NBC News showed that the audio had been edited to add pro-Pahlavi slogans.
His image has indeed been defended by some protesters, although it is difficult to assess his true level of support inside the country due to the lack of reliable opinion polls and independent media.
“Pahlavi’s new notoriety is a natural product of the Iranian people’s hatred of the regime,” said Elliott Abrams, Trump’s special envoy to Iran during his first term and now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“When he appears on television wearing a white shirt, tie and suit, he represents the modern life that Iranians want,” he added. “That’s not to say people want a monarchy, even a constitutional one, but it clearly has a base of support and could play a role.”
One obstacle for Pahlavi may be Trump’s lukewarm assessment.
“He seems very nice, but I don’t know how he would play in his own country,” Trump told the Reuters news agency earlier this week. If the Iranians accepted it, “that would be fine with me,” he said.
Iranians treat people injured during an Israeli strike on Keshavarz Boulevard in downtown Tehran in June 2025.Asad/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty ImagesThe exiled prince has been criticized for appearing to support Israeli strikes on his country, and this month described the regime’s crackdown on protesters as “a war” – which critics said risked legitimizing the killings.
Ultimately, many Iranians believe the country’s future should be determined by its residents rather than Iranians abroad.
Out of the picture for 50 years, figures like Pahlavi “are not in a position to change the situation,” said Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute think tank.
“There are a lot of things they can do, but they don’t fight in the streets,” he said.
The initiatedIf Khamenei rules until his death, he could hand over power to his son Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, who rarely appears in public.
Mojtaba was among nine members of the supreme leader’s inner circle sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2019 and is considered to have played a role in past violent crackdowns.
However, it is unclear how much support he enjoys from senior religious leaders, many of whom are members of the Assembly of Experts, the body designated to choose the next supreme leader.
Mojtaba Khamenei in Tehran in 2019.Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesThe country’s most powerful military, political and economic force is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, although it lost its top leaders in the 12-day war with Israel last summer.
If the guard force manages to emerge from the current turmoil intact, analysts say it could close ranks to preserve its vast business interests while allowing a new supreme leader to occupy a largely ceremonial role.
“The IRGC is now more than anything else a business,” Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University, said in a telephone interview. “They want to keep what they have and preserve it. »
But other figures in the regime could have aspirations.
Ebrahim Raisi, the president killed in a helicopter crash in 2024, was widely seen as a protégé and potential successor to the supreme leader.
Ali Shamkhani, advisor to the supreme leader, parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf and Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, are often cited as names in the frame.
They “would face strong internal opposition, but they would also have many allies within the system,” said Patrick Clawson, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute think tank.
Their role in a brutal regime may not be a problem for Trump, who is content to hold summits with pariahs such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
“There’s every reason to think he would work with a new leader who might blame everything on the previous crew,” Clawson said.
Alexander Smith is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital based in London.
Babak Dehghanpisheh is an international editor for NBC News Digital based in New York.
Peter Nicholas is a senior White House reporter for NBC News.
Colin Sheley
contributed
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