Reza Pahlavi pledges to ‘make Iran great again’ at 2026 CPAC conference

Iranian absorption person calls connected Trump medication to ‘stay the course’ arsenic the US and Israel proceed to wage warfare connected Iran.

Amid questions astir the aboriginal of Iran’s government, the lad of the erstwhile shah has pitched himself to a right-wing acme successful the United States and received a raucous welcome.

Reza Pahlavi spoke astatine the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) successful Texas connected Saturday, urging US President Donald Trump not to chopped a woody with Iran and alternatively question authorities change.

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“Can you ideate Iran going from ‘Death to America’ to ‘God Bless America’?” the self-styled crown prince asked his assemblage successful Grapevine, Texas.

“President Trump is making America large again. I mean to marque Iran large again,” helium added, receiving a lasting ovation from the crowd.

His remarks came connected the one-month day of the US and Israel’s determination to motorboat a warfare against Iran. As the struggle enters its 2nd month, astatine slightest 1,937 radical successful Iran person been killed, and tens of thousands much injured, with nary extremity to the warring successful sight.

Pahlavi has go a cardinal absorption fig successful the Iranian diaspora, with a loyal basal of supporters who often transportation his image, on with Iran’s pre-revolutionary flag, astatine protests astir the world.

During his speech, immoderate successful the assemblage chanted, “Long unrecorded the king!”

Audience members wrapped successful Lion and Sun flags, symbolising Iran’s deposed monarchy, perceive to a code from Reza Pahlavi, the exiled lad of Iran’s past shah [Callaghan O’Hare/Reuters]

While immoderate successful the Iranian diaspora person expressed reservations astir the US-Israeli attacks and their effect connected the aboriginal of Iran, Pahlavi has emerged arsenic an outspoken protagonist of Trump, aligned with the administration’s astir hawkish figures.

“This authorities successful its entirety indispensable go,” helium said connected Saturday.

Analysts person warned that the Iranian authorities is not apt to illness and could look from the struggle much hardened than before. Some exiles, meanwhile, person been criticised for lending their voices to enactment the US-Israeli warfare contempt the dense toll connected Iranian civilians.

Trump has himself antecedently downplayed the anticipation that the lad of the erstwhile shah, who was expelled from Iran during the country’s 1979 revolution, could play a cardinal relation successful Iran if the existent authorities were to collapse.

Earlier this month, Trump said that Pahlavi “looks like a precise bully person“, but indicated that the shah’s lad lacks popularity successful Iran.

“It would look to maine that idiosyncratic from within, maybe, would beryllium much appropriate,” Trump had said.

Divides wrong the US close implicit the warfare successful Iran were besides successful grounds astatine CPAC. Polls suggest that, portion the warfare is wide unpopular among US voters, Republicans enactment it by ample margins.

In a Pew Research Center poll, for instance, 71 percent of Republican voters felt the US had made the close determination to onslaught Iran. Overall, among voters careless of party, 59 percent opposed the archetypal strikes.

Still, a fistful of influential voices connected the US right, specified arsenic Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, person emerged arsenic vocal critics of the war. Younger activists person besides expressed vexation with what they spot arsenic a betrayal of Trump’s committedness to debar subject adventures overseas.

“We did not privation to spot much wars. We wanted existent America First policies, and Trump was precise explicit astir that,” Benjamin Williams, a 25-year-old selling specializer for Young Americans for Liberty, told The Associated Press. “It does consciousness similar a betrayal, for sure.”