Will Iran See a ‘Return of the King?’

Regime change in Iran is not the intention of the United States and Israel’s campaigns against Iran.

The purpose of those campaigns is simply to ensure this terrorist-supporting, vicious theocracy does not develop or use a nuclear weapon.

So far, those efforts have been successful.

However, life for the people of Iran will never improve while the mullahs hold sway in Tehran. Further, Iran will never join the community of modern nations, will never be a free and prosperous nation, as long as these mindless theocrats hold power.

So, what should the United States and Israel do?

To directly bring about regime change, NOTHING. But to create a vacuum of leadership, “a bed of political ashes from which a new Iran might arise?” That may be doable, and if it happens, one sure-fire sign will be when the exiled Crown Prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, son of the last Shah of Iran, returns from exile. He has been speaking on the suffering his country has endured under the mullahs, and now he is warning the U.S. and Israel against offering the mullahs any way out:

Europe and the United States should not give a lifeline to the Iranian leadership under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei through talks when his rule is ‘closer every day’ to ending, the son of Iran’s ousted shah told AFP on Monday.

Reza Pahlavi, formerly crown prince and now a key opposition figure, said in an interview in Paris that foreign powers had to seize the chance of what he termed Iran’s ‘Berlin Wall moment’ with its leaders weakened by days of Israeli air strikes.

‘I can hardly imagine that a regime that is now severely diminished in its capabilities and has been practically humiliated is in the mood for more talks,’ he said.

The crown prince also drew an interesting historical comparison:

‘This regime is collapsing… You can facilitate that by standing this time with them (the Iranian people), not throwing this regime another lifeline to survive,’ said Pahlavi, 64.

‘The end of the regime is near… this is our Berlin Wall moment,’ the US-based Pahlavi added, referring to the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall that symbolized the downfall of dictatorships in eastern Europe.

If he is right—and he may very well be—Iran may see a return of the king. But there is a caveat.

Iran under the kingship of the younger Reza Pahlevi would certainly be an improvement over Iran under the mullahs. But the crown prince, if Iran does see a Berlin Wall moment, should return to Iran and use what influence he has not to seize control, but to bring Iran into the modern era. His father, the late Shah, had his faults, but Iran under his rule was a better place than Iran under the mullahs; and Pahlevi the Younger, after his years in the West, could surely lead Iran down a better path.

At any rate, he is out there, he is waiting, and he seems to have his eye on the main chance. If there is a sudden vacuum of leadership in Tehran, he may very well finally go home and drag Iran onto a better path. That opportunity will come, of course, only if the mullahs are eliminated by design or by accident, and by parties as yet unnamed.