Politics Needs Prestige: Reza Pahlavi and the Battle for Iran’s Future

Regime change poses two different questions. Who can break the existing structure of power? And who can give a country the confidence to build something in its place?

The debate surrounding Reza Pahlavi, son of Iran’s last shah, reveals how easily these questions become confused. Military and geopolitical thinking can broadly be understood through two competing schools. One prioritises insiders: personalities physically present in the country, with institutional connections and the ability to influence events from within. The other looks for figures beyond the immediate struggle between factions, capable of symbolising a new era to both the population and the international community.

The first seeks access to power. The second seeks the authority to make a different future imaginable. A successful transition may need both.

Reports concerning former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad illustrate the insider approach in its most striking form. In May, reporting attributed to The New York Times suggested that an early American-Israeli regime-change plan envisaged a leadership role for him. Subsequent allegations concerning Israeli contacts were rejected by Ahmadinejad’s office. This remains a disputed reported operation, not an established account of an agreed succession. Nevertheless, it reveals the strategic appeal of the insider option.

Ahmadinejad unquestionably belonged to the system. Whatever his later disputes with its leadership, he understood its institutions, networks and methods. To a strategist concerned with breaking the machinery of power, such knowledge can appear more immediately useful than international recognition.

But access is not legitimacy. A disgruntled servant of a regime does not automatically become the architect of its democratic replacement. Changing the person at the top can leave the underlying political culture intact.

The opposite difficulty confronts personalities in exile. They can mobilise international attention, communicate with their compatriots and offer a political horizon. They cannot simply command institutions they do not control. Their return may depend on an opening created by people inside the country.

Yet dismissing them for that reason misunderstands the political value of hope. People need more than evidence that the present order can be challenged. They need some reason to believe that what follows could be better.

Nor is it reasonable to demand a fully visible, nationally organised domestic opposition from a system that makes opposition dangerous. Where political activity can bring imprisonment or death, the absence of an openly operating alternative leadership is partly the product of repression itself. To use that absence as proof that no credible alternative exists rewards the regime for suppressing its competitors.

Pahlavi’s distinctive asset is his name and the historical continuity it represents. To supporters, it connects Iran with a national identity larger and older than the Islamic Republic. It gives an international audience an immediately recognisable figure around whom discussion of a different future can begin.

That inheritance is also contested. The monarchy’s authoritarian legacy cannot be erased, and a famous surname is no substitute for democratic consent. Pahlavi cannot be presumed to represent every Iranian. But recognition and legitimacy are different stages of the same political challenge: a figure can deserve a hearing without being granted a throne.

Iran’s future will require more than the departure of its rulers. It will require functioning institutions, security, investment and a credible framework for reconstruction. Restoring reliable oil production and exports could contribute to easing international energy pressures, although that would depend on infrastructure, sanctions, shipping security and the wider market.

The day after must therefore be part of the strategy from the beginning. Prestige matters when it helps turn uncertainty into confidence—provided it is matched by competence, inclusion and accountability.

Belgium’s argument over Pahlavi has brought these questions into unusually sharp focus. Georges-Louis Bouchez’s MR and the N-VA favour engaging with him, while Les Engagés, Vooruit and CD&V oppose the proposed official parliamentary reception.

Supporters include MR municipal councillor Melissa Amirkhizy and N-VA parliamentarian Darya Safai. Defence Minister Theo Francken has separately invited Pahlavi to the Royal Military Academy, an invitation Pahlavi has publicly acknowledged.

Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot argues for hearing other opposition voices and avoiding the appearance of endorsing a single person or movement. That is a defensible concern. Receiving Pahlavi should not require excluding anyone else.

The more troubling argument comes from CD&V’s Els Van Hoof: that Belgium should avoid needlessly provoking the Iranian regime. Her reference to Olivier Vandecasteele’s imprisonment gives that concern real human weight. Protecting citizens is a serious responsibility.

But allowing that concern to determine which opposition figures may be heard creates a profound contradiction.

If fear of provoking Tehran becomes the test of who may enter a Belgian institution, Tehran acquires an indirect veto over Belgium’s political life.

The strongest argument against this approach is not that every opposition figure who attracts less hostility must be irrelevant. Different movements threaten a regime in different ways. It is that being less objectionable to the regime cannot become a qualification for representing an alternative to it.

An opposition selected for its ability to leave those in power comfortable is an opposition selected for the wrong purpose.

Van Hoof’s previous reception of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, albeit in the administrative rather than official parliamentary premises, also demonstrates that engagement with an opposition movement need not mean recognising it as Iran’s government-in-waiting. The same distinction can apply to Pahlavi.

Belgium can listen without anointing. It can welcome without endorsing a constitutional settlement. And it can hear other Iranian voices without treating Pahlavi’s visibility as a reason to exclude him.

The essential question is whether European institutions will exercise their own judgement or allow the anticipated anger of an authoritarian regime to establish the boundaries of legitimate conversation.

Pahlavi’s name cannot rebuild Iran by itself. But the capacity to embody a future beyond the present regime is a political asset, not an embarrassment to be managed away.

Iran’s future belongs to Iranians. Tehran’s rulers should not be allowed to decide which alternatives the rest of the world is permitted to hear.