Exiled heir to crown emerging as Iranian opposition leader

January 13, 2026

Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran, at the National Press Club in Jan. 2025 (A. Kotok)

Reza Pahlavi, the Iranian crown prince living in exile in the U.S., is receiving more media and official attention as discontent grows and spreads in Iran. I photographed Pahlavi at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. about a year ago.

Iran is in the midst of daily street demonstrations against the fundamentalist regime and police crackdowns throughout the country for the past two weeks, sparked initially by a sharp drop in the value of the country's currency and corresponding jump in consumer prices. Authorities have tried to quell the disorder with repressive police tactics, as well as a countrywide Internet shutdown and communications disruptions with the outside world. Deaths during this time are believed to number in the thousands, although precise numbers are unknown.

Barak Ravid in Axios reports today that Pahlavi met with White House envoy Steve Witkoff this past weekend. Plus, Pahlavi is the subject of a New York Times profile and author of a Washington Post op-ed in the past seven days.

In the op-ed, Pahlavi says ...

In recent days, protests have escalated in nearly all provinces and over 100 cities across Iran. Protesters are chanting my name alongside calls for freedom and national unity. I do not interpret this as an invitation to claim power. I bear it as a profound responsibility. It reflects a recognition — inside Iran — that our nation needs a unifying figure to help guide a transition away from tyranny and toward a democratic future chosen by the people themselves.

Pahlavi says he is not seeking power for himself, as much as offering to serve as a transition to democracy. “My role,” he says in the Washington Post op-ed “is to bring together Iran’s diverse democratic forces — monarchists and republicans, secular and religious, activists and professionals, civilians and members of the armed forces who want to see Iran stable and sovereign again — around the common principles of Iran’s territorial integrity, the protection of individual liberties and equality of all citizens and the separation of church and state.”

I photographed Reza Pahlavi at a National Press Club Newsmaker event in Jan. 2025. In his interview with Associated Press journalist Mike Balsamo, president of NPC, Pahlavi made a similar offer, but also spoke about extending the so-called Abraham accords between Israel and several Arab countries to include Iran, which he calls the “Cyrus accords”.

Exclusive photos of Pahlavi, son of the late deposed Shah of Iran, are available from the TechNewsLit portfolio at the Alamy photo agency.