Exiled Iranian crown prince to i24NEWS: 'The time has come for final complete change of regime'
US National Security Adviser John Bolton denied that Washington was seeking a regime change in Iran
“The time has come for a final complete change of regime, which is what the Iranian people want” says the exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, saying that there was no hope for change with the current powers that be.
He stressed that the Iranian people need the support of the international community in order to remove the current regime from power.
“I think the Iranian people are already in an uprising mode, based on what we’ve seen in the past months in various forms within Iran .”
However, US National Security Adviser John Bolton denied that Washington was seeking a regime change in Iran, despite previous comment he made before taking office under Trump.
Regarding the possibility of military action against Iran, Pahlavi suggests that the US could avoid such a last resort by instead applying pressure both externally as well as internally on the Iranian regime, essentially facilitating a people’s uprising that would lead to the toppling of the government.
While the United States and Israel have taken the lead against Iran due largely to what Pahlavi calls an “existential threat” to the Jewish state, he argues that other states should also be concerned regarding the potential consequences of allowing the current regime to remain in power and sow greater instability in the region.
The European Union has naively held out hope that the current Iranian regime would change, the exiled crown prince told i24NEWS, claiming that the EU fails to realize that Iranian people want something different.
The remarks regarding the conference come amid heightened tensions with Iran that was the focus of the security summit attended by Bolton, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat and Russian Secretary of the Security Council Nikolay Patrushev.
The threat of war has loomed more heavily over Iran and the US in recent weeks with various incidents involving attacks on oil tankers in the contested strait of Hormuz, the downing of a US drone, and Trump's announcement of new sanctions on Iran's supreme leader and other top officials.
Written and edited by Jonathan Gratch, i24NEWS web editor and journalist