The son of Iran’s ousted shah said Monday he is in regular contact with various elements of the highly-divided Iranian opposition in exile, reiterating his desire “to serve as a unifying national figure, not a partisan one.”
Reza Pahlavi was speaking during a visit to Stockholm, where he gave a speech on the premises of the country’s parliament, invited by the conservative Christian Democrats and the far-right Sweden Democrats.
Pahlavi, whose father Mohammad Reza was brought down by the 1979 Islamic revolution, has repeatedly said he was ready to lead a transition if the Islamic republic fell in the war with the United States and Israel that erupted in late February.
The Iranian opposition remains deeply fragmented, with groups drawn from ethnic minorities, liberal circles and left-wing movements opposed to him and his supporters.
Asked what he was doing to bring together the different parts of Iranian society, Pahlavi replied that he was in regular contact with them.
“I talk to them, I hold dialogue with them, I meet them,” he said, without specifying exactly with whom.
He said there was “enough room” for anyone who subscribed to the four basic principles he believed formed the foundation of a “democratic discourse.”
The four principles were Iran’s territorial integrity, a clear separation of state and religion, equality of all citizens before the law, and the establishment of a mechanism to organize free and fair elections.
