Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran's last shah, said on Saturday that he is ready to rule the country “as soon as the Islamic Republic falls”, reports France Presse.
In a message posted on his social media, Reza Pahlavi, who lives in the United States, indicated that he was working to select personalities living in Iran and abroad to be part of a “transitional system.”
“Competent people have been identified and assessed, both at home and abroad, to lead the various components of the transition system,” he said, as the war initiated by the United States and Israel entered its third week on Saturday.
“Transitional system poised to take over”
“The transitional system, under my leadership, will be ready to take over the governance of the country as soon as the Islamic Republic falls and, in the shortest possible time, establish order, security, freedom and conditions necessary for the prosperity and development of Iran,” he added in his message published in Farsi and English.
Reza Pahlavi, who has not returned to Iran since the 1979 revolution that toppled the monarchy, leads one of several opposition movements based abroad.
He came to the fore on the international stage during the protest movement in Iran that peaked in January.
In his message, Reza Pahlavi stated that the process of selecting the members of the transitional body was led by Saeed Ghasseminejad, the senior adviser on Iranian issues at the American think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a staunch opponent of the Islamic Republic.
Reza Pahlavi doesn't seem to have convinced Trump
The son of the last shah has so far failed to win the support of US President Donald Trump, with whom he has never formally met and who has repeatedly expressed skepticism about his ability to rule Iran.
“They are talking about the Shah's son (…) but he hasn't been there (in Iran, no) for many years,” Donald Trump said recently.
The US president evoked the scenario of a domestic solution along the lines of Venezuela, where US forces captured President Nicolas Maduro in January, who was replaced by his former vice president, Delcy Rodriguez.
“I like the idea of a domestic solution, because it works well; I think we've already demonstrated it so far in Venezuela,” he said.
