Pahlavi has sought to encourage foreign financial support for workers who will disrupt the state by going on strike. He also called for more Starlink internet terminals to be shipped into Iran, in defiance of a ban, to make it harder for the regime to stop dissidents from communicating and coordinating their opposition. Amid the latest internet shutdowns, Starlink has provided the opposition movements with a vital lifeline.
As the protests gathered pace last week, Pahlavi stepped up his own stream of social media posts and videos, which gain many millions of views, encouraging people onto the streets. He started by calling for demonstrations to begin at 8 p.m. local time, then urged protesters to start earlier and occupy city centers for longer. His supporters say these appeals are helping steer the protest movement.
The security forces have brutally crushed many of these gatherings. The Norway-based Iranian Human Rights group puts the number of dead at 648, while estimating that more than 10,000 people have been arrested.
It’s almost impossible to know how widely Pahlavi’s message is permeating nationwide, but footage inside Iran suggests the exiled prince’s words are gaining some traction with demonstrators, with increasing images of the pre-revolutionary Lion and Sun flag appearing at protests, and crowds chanting “javid shah” — the eternal shah.
Defectors
Understandably, given his family history, Pahlavi has made a study of revolutions and draws on the collapse of the Soviet Union to understand how the Islamic Republic can be overthrown. In Romania and Czechoslovakia, he said, what was required to end Communism was ultimately “maximum defections” among people inside the ruling elites, military and security services who did not want to “go down with the sinking ship.”
“I don’t think there will ever be a successful civil disobedience movement without the tacit collaboration or non-intervention of the military,” he said during an interview last February.