Reza Pahlavi Makes His Pitch To Lead Iran

With Iran’s leadership reeling from attacks from American and Israeli troops, Reza Pahlavi is arguing that he is best positioned to take over the country in the aftermath of war.

Pahlavi, the oldest son of Iran’s last shah, is a longtime political activist living in exile in the U.S. On Sunday, he told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that he has the support and mandate necessary to helm a transitional government in Iran, after the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday.

“I have the support of millions of Iranian people,” he said on "Sunday Morning Futures." “I have the people inside the country that are joining and broadening the coalition of forces that will be at play in filling the boxes. The military will side with us, and we have a plan of action and a transition plan.”

His pitch to the White House? MIGA: Make Iran Great Again. And there’s money to be made with Pahlavi as a partner.

“Just by a change that we hope to bring to the table, that will be probably over a trillion dollars worth of impact and revenue to the American economy, just by Iran's market being opened to America and how much we stand to benefit from billions of dollars willing to be invested into Iran,” he told Bartiromo. “All that was needed was for this regime to no longer be there, and I think that is something that should be important to America and Iran both.”

Pahlavi told Bartiromo that he’s working with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — who he affectionately dubbed “Uncle Lindsey” — to present his plans to a bipartisan group in the Senate.

Pahlavi isn’t the only global opposition leader pleading with the White House to legitimize his bid for control after U.S. initiated regime change. Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado went so far as to present President Donald Trump with her Nobel Peace Prize in January in a bid to rescue her dwindling hopes of being bolstered or even installed at the top of the South American country.

But Johns Hopkins Professor Vali Nasr told ABC's "This Week" on Sunday that he is skeptical Pahlavi actually has the bandwidth to pull off a stable leadership transition.

"Right now, he does not have a ground game in Iran, if you were to say,” Nasr said. “There's no political organization alliances, he has not built a relationship with with bureaucrats, with politicians, etc, that actually would allow him to play a critical role at this moment in time and to have a plan for the day after essentially being able to take over the government."