Over the weekend, White House envoy Steve Witkoff held a secret meeting with exiled former Iranian crown prince Reza Pahlavi to discuss the ongoing protests across Iran, a senior U.S. official told Axios. The discussions mark the first high-level contact between the Trump administration and the Iranian opposition since demonstrations began 15 days ago, as Pahlavi positions himself as a potential “transitional” leader should the current regime fall.
The meeting comes amid reports of widespread repression. According to a U.S. official, Israel has shared an assessment indicating that at least 5,000 protesters may have been killed, though figures vary widely. “The Iranians are conducting massive repression,” the official said. Meanwhile, President Trump publicly urged the Iranian people to “keep protesting” and “take over” government institutions, promising that “help is on its way.”
Pahlavi, the son of the Shah who was deposed in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, leads a faction of the Iranian opposition from exile in the U.S. Over the past two weeks, he has appeared on American television networks calling on the Trump administration to intervene in support of the protesters. While Trump initially did not publicly endorse him—declining to do so in an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show—administration officials said they were surprised by the organic support Pahlavi has received on the streets, with demonstrators chanting his name in multiple cities.
Analysts see Pahlavi as a unifying figure for nationalist sentiment among younger Iranians, contrasting with the Islamist ideology of the regime. Karim Sadjadpour, a senior analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, told Axios that many protesters, born after the 1979 revolution, are nostalgic for a period of economic growth, social freedom, and international prestige they never experienced. “Reza Pahlavi is the leader who for many Iranians best embodies that patriotism and that forward-looking nostalgia to Make Iran Great Again,” Sadjadpour said.
Raz Zimmt, director of the Iran program at the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies, cautioned that while Pahlavi’s name is frequently invoked during protests, it is unclear how broadly he is supported across Iranian society. Even so, he noted, many may be willing to accept him as a temporary leader rather than remain under the current regime.
Public opinion polling in recent years, including as recently as November 2025, suggests that roughly one-third of Iranians support Pahlavi, with another third strongly opposed, according to Dutch pollster Ammar Maleki—figures higher than for any other opposition figure.
The White House national security team reportedly met on Tuesday morning to discuss potential responses to the unrest. President Trump did not attend, but the administration appears closely monitoring both the protests and Pahlavi’s rising prominence, signaling a cautious engagement with Iran’s opposition movement for the first time during the current wave of demonstrations.
