Reza Pahlavi
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Reza Pahlavi is the exiled Iranian crown prince, son of the last Shah, whom John Kiriakou dismisses as an Israeli-backed fantasy candidate to rule Iran. Pahlavi has not lived in Iran since he was 16 or 17, lives comfortably, by one Kiriakou account in Potomac, Maryland, by another in McLean, Virginia, and draws his support mainly from wealthy Iranian exiles in Beverly Hills. The Israeli plan, Kiriakou says, is for the U.S. to install him and take 49% of Iran's oil in return, "a fantasy" echoing the 1953 coup. Pahlavi, he says, "wouldn't survive the walk from the plane to the terminal," and "literally nobody in Iran" wants the Pahlavis back.

Kiriakou says Pahlavi told podcaster Patrick Bet-David directly that he does not actually want to return to Iran, having lived in the US since 1979: "My kids are Americans. I have my life. It's in McLean, Virginia." He adds a further, unflattering personal detail, that Pahlavi's wife is cheating on him with her French personal trainer, which he says is documented in the French press. Kiriakou says he has received threats after calling Pahlavi "a clown" on a podcast, and repeats the assessment that Pahlavi would not survive the walk from the plane to the terminal if he returned to Iran. Mocking calls to reinstall Pahlavi as Iran's leader, Kiriakou compares him to Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile figure used to help justify the Iraq War, "except not as intelligent." He says he has faced criticism for his opposition to restoring the Iranian "so-called royal family."

Why he is hated in Iran

Kiriakou traces the hostility to Pahlavi's father, the Shah: he created SAVAK, the Iranian intelligence service notorious for mutilating dissidents, and, with CIA and MI6 help, overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh, Iran's only democratically elected prime minister, in 1953. He says the U.S. worked with the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to crush all opposition, religious and communist alike, through escalating harassment, jailing, and exile, until the 1978 revolution culminated in the Shah's February 1979 overthrow and the November 1979 storming of the U.S. embassy. He notes the Shah and the royal family fled Iran for Switzerland in February 1979 as the revolution unfolded, taking with them gold bars, gems, jewels and Picassos.

Responding to a Washington Post op-ed in which Reza Pahlavi called for Iran's "return to democracy," Kiriakou notes Iran was never a democracy under his father, whose SAVAK intelligence service tortured and executed tens of thousands, and calls Pahlavi financed by the Israelis.

The 2026 Persian-monarchist backlash

On the PBD Podcast in April 2026, John Kiriakou said his criticism of Reza Pahlavi had turned the Iranian monarchist online community sharply against him: Pahlavi, his wife and his daughter "were following me" and had all unfollowed him, and "the monarchists attacked me because I called" Pahlavi "irrelevant" and "a clown." Presented on the same episode with a clip of his own earlier claim that Bet-David had cited "94 percent" of Iranians backing regime change, Kiriakou apologised twice on tape, "you've shown me wrong, and I'm sorry that I perpetuated an untruth", after ChatGPT and Grok, queried live in the studio, produced published poll figures between about 71 and 92 percent opposing the IRGC or the Islamic Republic. He nevertheless reaffirmed his substantive judgment that Pahlavi "is not a strong leader," is "a clown" and is "irrelevant."

"A clown"

John Kiriakou has stated his assessment of Pahlavi in a single word, a clown, and elaborated that Pahlavi does not want to go back to Iran, that he is a disgrace, and that he "would not survive the walk from the plane to the terminal were he to go back to Iran." He presents this explicitly as his own position.

The remark produced one of the more sustained episodes of harassment he has described: a man who called seventy-two times in three hours, cycling through six Google Voice numbers as each was blocked, and eventually threatened him with his own home address and named the street where his son lives. The FBI found the caller in four days.

Opposition to a restoration

Kiriakou places his opposition to restoring the Iranian monarchy inside a general position against modern monarchies rather than a judgment about Iran alone, saying he is "staunchly opposed" to the Greek royal family on the same ground and has "been taking it on the chin lately" for extending the objection to "the return of the Iranian so-called royal family." Asked whether the modern world has simply moved past monarchy, he answers that he thinks so.

The first Briefing Room profile (2026)

Pahlavi was the subject of the first instalment of "The Profile", the leadership profiling segment John Kiriakou built on his old CIA job. He introduces him as the former Crown Prince and eldest son of the last Shah, "waiting in the wings, attempting to jockey to lead Iran in the event of regime change", and notes he had attended Lindsey Graham's funeral that week.

Kiriakou's own epithet is longstanding: "I not so jokingly have referred to him in podcast appearances in the past as the Clown Prince of Iran." He left Iran in 1979 at about the age of twenty and has not been back since. His support base Kiriakou identifies as Israel, the American Jewish community, and "the Southern California very wealthy uh Iranian exiles", not the exile community entire. He lives "in a multi-million dollar palace in Potomac, Maryland."

The assessment is dismissive of his standing rather than his charisma: "But he's not a player. He's never been a player." Since the bombing began he has appeared on a handful of podcasts saying what would be expected, that the regime is terrible and must be overthrown, "And then sometimes he'll say that he's the one who should lead Iran, and other times he says that he's not the one who should lead Iran."

Kiriakou's central claim he flags as one that has cost him: "The truth is he would and I've I've said this in the past and I've gotten death threats for it. I'm going to say it again. He would not survive the walk from the plane to the terminal if he were to go back to Iran. Nobody wants him in Iran. Nobody."

Why the bombing helped the regime

The reasoning behind that is about the war rather than the man. "if there's one thing that the Israeli and American bombing of Iran has done is that it's united the Iranian people. You can't you can't attack a country murder its religious leader murder most of its senior governmental leadership murder all of its military leaders murder all of its nuclear scientists and say, 'We're here to help.'" He puts the offer in the mouth of the occupier: having blown up a school on the first night and killed some hundred and sixty schoolgirls, "we're the good guys and we're here to help you and we want to take this stooge this clown from Potomac, Maryland and impose him on you so that he can be a dictator like his father was."

On the father, Kiriakou is blunt about why the dynasty fell: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi "was overthrown in the first place is because he was a bloodthirsty murderous dictator. And people were tired of being murdered by the SAVAK, the secret police."

He also rejects Pahlavi's Reuters claim that the regime is at its weakest in forty-seven years, on historical grounds: after the Shah fell, Iran cycled through presidents who "would just get blown up or shot or arrested or disappeared", Kiriakou recalls a New York Times editorial cartoon of the period in which Ayatollah Khomeini tells a man "I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is, I'm naming you president of Iran. The bad news is, I'm naming you president of Iran." "That was when the regime was weak. Not today. This war has forced the Iranian populace together."

The endgame question

Pressing the point that the war had no stated objective, Kiriakou put the only candidate answer in the form of a question: "no American has been told what the endgame is. What is victory in this conflict, to install Reza Pahlavi, this buffoon, this Zionist clown, as the new Shah of Iran? Come on. Even he doesn't want to go to Iran."

The reason he considers the plan void is what preceded it: "you really believe that there's going to be a pro-Israel leadership in Tehran after you blew up a girls' school and killed everybody inside and blew up the electrical grid and the water desalination plants and the oil refineries. You think they're going to run to you and love you? Not a chance." Absent a million troops and a twenty-year occupation, he says, "I don't know what victory looks like... We've never been told."

The Reuters interview, and the rebuttal

In the August 2026 profile Kiriakou played Pahlavi's own answers back before assessing them. Asked directly about reports that he had received funding from Israel and Saudi Arabia, Pahlavi called them "absolutely false", said he had not been the recipient of "any governmental or public fund", and that every dime came from private donations, while adding that he hoped for "more benefactors that'll give us bigger checks."

On Pahlavi's claim that regime change is close because the Islamic Republic "is at its weakest it's ever been since 47 years", Kiriakou's answer is flat, "That's just wrong. He's just wrong", and his evidence is the period Pahlavi has forgotten. After the Shah's overthrow Iran ran through a rapid cycle of presidents who "would just get blown up or shot or arrested or disappeared"; that, he says, "was when the regime was weak. Not today." The war has had the opposite of the intended effect: it "has forced the Iranian populace together to rally."

He restates the prediction that has cost him most, and flags the cost: "I've said this in the past and I've gotten death threats for it. I'm going to say it again. He would not survive the walk from the plane to the terminal if he were to go back to Iran. Nobody wants him in Iran. Nobody."

The residence and the backing are given as the measure of his distance from the country. Pahlavi left Iran at about the age of twenty in 1979 and has not returned; he is supported by Israel, by parts of the American Jewish community and by wealthy Iranian exiles in southern California; and he lives "in a multi-million dollar palace in Potomac, Maryland, a close-in suburb of Washington DC." Kiriakou's verdict on his standing is unchanged: "he's not a player."

The lesson he says was not learned

Kiriakou places the whole project inside the Iraq precedent. "You would think that we would have learned a lesson with the Iraq war", but "we have so convinced ourselves that we're the good guys" that the possibility of being seen as invaders and occupiers rather than liberators cannot be entertained. His examples are losses: "We couldn't defeat the Taliban. They didn't even have shoes and they beat us", and Iraq "is still in a state of chaos." The explanation he offers for the persistence of the belief is that "people don't have any understanding of history."

He says the bombing campaign achieved the opposite of regime change by uniting Iranians behind the government, you cannot murder a country's religious leader, its senior political and military leadership and its nuclear scientists, bomb a school on the first night, and then present yourself as a liberator arriving with a candidate in hand.

Who the monarchists actually poll

In an April 2026 exchange Kiriakou set out why he discounts the polling circulated by Reza Pahlavi's supporters. Told that everybody wants the Shah back, his answer rested on the manner of the monarchy's end: "I find that very hard to believe considering how brutal the Shah was and the fact that he was overthrown by his own people." He drew the distinction deliberately, "it wasn't like he was couped out by any foreign power. Quite the contrary."

His objection to the numbers themselves is about the sample rather than the result: the Persian monarchists, he says, "do polls of like the exiles", a population he treats as unrepresentative of opinion inside Iran. In the same conversation he described the monarchist reaction to his own assessments as unrestrained, and noted that his remarks about Pahlavi had made him a target online.

The letter Kiriakou wrote to the Shah

Long before he had any professional view of Iran, Kiriakou wrote to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in exile, at fourteen or fifteen, to complain about the way the United States had handled him after the revolution, specifically the reversal of the decision to admit him for cancer treatment, after which "the Shah was unceremoniously thrown out and ended up in Panama, and then, later, the Bahamas." The reply agreed with him and enclosed a signed photograph.

See also

- Israel's cell-phone assassinations in Iran
- Iran Nuclear Assessment
- Iran Strike Factions (2026)
