White House special envoy Steve Witkoff held a non-public meeting with Iran's crown prince in exile, Reza Pahlavi. The talks took place against the backdrop of large-scale protests that have been ongoing in the Islamic Republic for the past 15 days, and became the first contact of this level between the Donald Trump administration and the Iranian opposition. This was reported by Axios, writes UNN.
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Reza Pahlavi, son of the Shah overthrown in 1979, now positions himself as a "transitional leader" in the event of the fall of the current government in Tehran. According to sources in the US administration, Washington has revised its attitude towards Pahlavi after protesters in many Iranian cities began organically chanting his name.
Pahlavi is on the rise. They are chanting his name at demonstrations in many cities, and it seems to be happening organically.
Karim Sadjadpour, a senior analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, explains this popularity by the "prospective nostalgia" of young people for pre-revolutionary times, when the country was socially free and economically stable.
While the White House National Security Team is considering response options, Secretary of State Marco Rubio emphasizes the use of non-kinetic methods to support the demonstrators.