As a US battle group steamed to the Gulf in November 2002, competing Iraqi exiles, some championed by American insiders, jockeyed for position in the hopes of taking charge once George W Bush toppled Saddam Hussein. Bloomberg dubbed them “Iraq’s unruly opposition”.
The most notorious Iraqi exile, failed former banker Ahmad Chalabi, boasted to his neoconservative allies that his return to Baghdad would be welcomed by cheering throngs. Among his competition was a former doctor named Ayad Allawi, who was backed by Britain’s MI6 and the Central Intelligence Agency in his bid for support to rule Iraq.
Now it is Iranian rather than Iraqi exile factions who are tugging at the sleeves of American officials, jostling for the White House blessing to lead a future government of Iran following Donald Trump’s massive military operation.
One camp of Maga world figures has thrown its weight behind Maryam Rajavi, the Paris-based leader of the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, what some call a cultlike organization that was once aligned with Saddam. Although it’s reported to be unpopular in Iran, the group has forged strong ties in Washington, often using the MEK’s political face, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, to lobby.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former personal attorney, and one-time CIA director Mike Pompeo are among Rajavi’s most vocal supporters. Soon after US strikes began, Giuliani insisted that the MEK was poised to replace the regime. “They have a shadow government ready to go.”
Rajavi tried to stake a claim fast, announcing a “provisional government” the day the US bombing started.
Seven days later another figure, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah of Iran, stepped in to contend that he will be in charge. “The Iranian people have called on me,” he said in a social media video, “to lead the transition after the regime is gone. I have accepted that responsibility.”
The backers of Pahlavi are facing off against the MEK. They call Pahlavi the crown prince, and think with his pedigree he could well unite Iranians behind him.
Pahlavi told Fox & Friends last week that he’s prepared to return after years in exile: “It’s important to be among my compatriots to fight the final battle.”
Videos posted from Tehran show chants invoking his name at January protests, with some people calling for the return of the monarchy.
Both Pahlavi and Rajavi tout their political credentials and promises of grassroots support, but neither leader has the ties to Washington, or its security establishment, that the 2002 Iraqi candidates once enjoyed.
And while Trump’s former associates and fringe talk show hosts continue to prop up the dissident campaigns, there is little indication that the hype will translate to real political power.
Many also fear that, inside Iran, both Pahlavi and Rajavi are implausible leaders if Trump were to anoint them.
“There really is no good option,” Mark Fowler, former deputy chief of the CIA’s Iran taskforce, told the Guardian.
‘Highly ineffective’
After the death of his father in 1980, Reza Pahlavi, just 20, proclaimed himself the heir to the peacock throne. United Press International (UPI) described the aspiring prince as a “shy young man” with an “irrepressible smile”.
Pahlavi’s supporters carried posters with his portrait to demonstrations. Some still do, 45 years later, although they’ve updated the photos as he aged.
Pahlavi is not, at first glance, in step with your average Iranian. For one, he has forged ties with Israel, traveling there in 2023 where he was greeted by Benjamin Netanyahu. His father was the second Muslim leader to recognize Israel after its founding.
That same year Pahlavi accepted the Log Cabin Republicans’ LGBTQ+ Outspoken award. “I am proud to stand up for the rights of the Iranian LGBTQ community,” he tweeted, breaking from Iran’s leaders, who have sentenced members of same-sex couples to death.
Lately, Pahlavi has pushed hard to form ties with the White House.
In January on Fox News he directed flattery to Trump: “Mr President, you have already established your legacy as a man committed to peace and fighting evil forces. There is a reason people in Iran are naming streets after your name. They know you’re the total opposite to Barack Obama or Joe Biden.”
Washington insiders voiced support for his vision in Iran, penning a letter to Mike Waltz, US ambassador to the UN, just two days before the US strikes.
“We are united in following the four principles as announced by Prince Reza Pahlavi,” the letter said. A final bullet point endorsed his vision for “Iranian people’s right to determine the future democratic form of their government”.
The advisory council to the Institute for the Voices of Liberty, which sent the letter, included Phil Waldron, a retired army colonel who helped Trump promote narratives about foreign interference in the 2020 elections.
Pahlavi’s efforts, post bombing, have not borne fruit.
When asked last week if Pahlavi could be a US pick to run Iran, Trump said Pahlavi was a “very nice person” but that “we haven’t been thinking too much about that. It would seem to me that somebody from within might – maybe would be more appropriate.”
A group of Russian pranksters recently lured Pahlavi on to a Zoom call under false pretenses, posing as representatives of Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor. A man who introduced himself as Adolf and sported an ostentatiously Hitler-like mustache, told Pahlavi that Germany was preparing to bomb Iran as part of the joint US-Israeli campaign.
“The more we have as part of this coalition vis a vis the regime, the better,” Pahlavi responded, endorsing hostilities that have already killed more than 1,000 Iranians, including more than 160 children.
Justin Forsyth, a representative for Pahlavi, emailed the Guardian that Pahlavi is uniquely placed to lead Iran’s transition to democracy.
“He has the backing of millions across all provinces. He has largely united the main opposition, and elements in the army and security forces will defect and follow him,” Forsyth said. “Tens of thousands have defected already. This is a key part of his plan.”
Forsyth said: “The Guardian and others in the media have historically hugely underestimated his mass support in the country.”
Former US officials who have worked on Iran issues say Pahlavi doesn’t have much ground game in Iran.
“We found him to be highly ineffective,” said Fowler, the former CIA operator.
Fowler said working with exiles isn’t easy, because some are eager to tell US officials what they believe the officials want to hear. “When you are dealing with this type of opposition figure, it’s tricky. You’ve got guys who drop honey in your ear.”
‘The MEK I would reject out of hand’
While Pahlavi has his champions, it is the MEK and its leader, Rajavi, that have clamored the loudest for Washington’s recognition.
Founded in the 1960s as a Marxist and Islamist group, the MEK fought the shah, Pahlavi’s father, and his American supporters. Its members even launched an assassination attack in 1975 against American officers, spraying them with submachine gun fire.
In 1997 the US state department designated them a terrorist organization, explaining: “During the 1970s the MEK staged terrorist attacks inside Iran and killed several US military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran.”
The MEK has said the attackers were from a Marxist breakaway faction.
After the revolution, they fought in support of Saddam Hussein in his war against the Iranian regime, operating out of a fortified base 50 miles (80km) north of Baghdad.
Counterintuitively, the US invasion of Iraq became the group’s ticket to success in Washington after US troops began protecting MEK’s base against the Iraqis who had turned against them.
“The Americans like myself – the military – got close with them,” said retired Col Wes Martin, who had command of the base that housed the MEK in Iraq. “We were working with them.” Martin, who supports the MEK, says he is convinced it was not the terrorist group it was portrayed to be.
Soon, back in Washington, the MEK launched an extraordinarily successful lobbying effort, mainly to lift its terrorist designation. After shelling out $1.5m to three top lobbying firms in 2012, then secretary of state Hillary Clinton complied.
Among their promoters were former FBI director Louis Freeh, former attorney general Michael Mukasey, and John Bolton, who would go on to become Trump’s national security adviser.
Alan Dershowitz, who represented Trump during his Senate impeachment trial for instigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection, has also served as a key legal adviser to Rajavi’s group.
Rajavi’s ties to Washington are raising her profile now. “Iran’s democratic opposition is ready to step up and lead,” Pompeo tweeted hours after Trump launched attacks on Iran.
Two days after the war started, Giuliani, who has been a Rajavi supporter for years, aired video of the MEK leader on the show he broadcasts on X.
He derided the shah’s son. “Pahlavi has next to no support inside the country,” Giuliani posted.
Pro-Trump media has also been promoting the MEK since Saturday’s strikes. Matt Gaetz, a former member of Congress and Trump’s failed nominee for US attorney general, hosted MEK supporter Ali Safavi on his One America News Network show last week.
Safavi claimed to Gaetz that MEK members had already taken over an Iranian government building. “The standing order was, if Khamenei dies, you are free to do whatever is needed to mobilize the population,” he said.
In an eight-page letter responding to questions for this story, Ali Safavi, an MEK official, wrote that the group was the target of longstanding false allegations that originated with Iran’s regime and that “the Guardian has repeatedly recycled some of these claims” in prior stories. “If the MEK truly lacks support inside or outside Iran,” he wrote, “why has the clerical regime devoted its entire military, intelligence, and propaganda apparatus to destroying and discrediting it?”
He said the killings of Americans had been conducted by a “Marxist splinter group”. Safavi characterized Pahlavi as “the son of a dictator who ruled Iran for 37 years through a one-party system, executions and the imprisonment of all democratic opposition forces, before ultimately fleeing the country as millions of Iranians chanted ‘death to the shah’”.
Fowler, the former CIA official, says the group shouldn’t be a partner in any endeavor to rebuild Iran.
“They killed Americans. The MEK I would reject out of hand,” Fowler said. “They are pretty good at convincing people ‘we’ve changed,’” said Fowler. “They are not exactly like Chalabi but they know the right things to say.”
The White House did not respond to detailed questions for this story, but instead cited Trump’s comments to Politico on Thursday, in which he said he’ll help pick Iran’s next leader.
“We’ll work with the people and the regime to make sure that somebody gets there that can nicely build Iran but without nuclear weapons,” Trump said.
