Reza Pahlavi can take inspiration from Taiwanese presidents to visit Arab states

Taiwanese leaders often book flights that transit through San Francisco or New York, where U.S. officials meet them in airport reception halls.

By Michael Rubin, Middle East Forum

Iran is a political and diplomatic minefield, and former Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, through no fault of his own, is standing in its midst.

Pahlavi’s role in a post-Islamic Republic Iran remains controversial among Iranians both inside the country and in the diaspora.

What no one can dispute, however, is that among all the Islamic Republic’s Iranian opponents, Pahlavi has the greatest name recognition and support inside the country.

While Kurds and Baluch remain generally suspicious of Pahlavi, most Iranians simply look at the period before the Islamic Revolution with rose-colored glasses.

The Iranian rial had purchasing power. Iran’s economy was expanding rapidly. Islamist thugs did not harass women, let alone murder them for showing too much hair.

Under the shah, Iran was anything but democratic but, then again, the theocracy that followed it was not, either.

Pahlavi is a smart man, a consummate gentleman who, on a personal level, at least, is liberal and democratic.

He has recognized his father’s faults and seeks not to replicate them. He long has positioned himself as a coalition builder, helping to unite fissiparous factions.

Such a commitment to engaging others fell by the wayside in recent years because of the strategic missteps of a new set of advisors who preferred to punish dissent with trolling and harassment rather than win arguments on their merit.

Pahlavi’s problems have been three-fold.

The first is management of his organization, though a recent reshuffle and a new well-regarded chief of staff suggest an understanding of the problem and a commitment to rectify it.

Second is Iranian resentment inside the country to his siding openly with the United States and Israel as the war drags on.

While Pahlavi has not wanted to antagonize President Donald Trump, this is still an unforced error; Pahlavi might have walked a tightrope and publicly lamented that the situation has escalated without endorsing the bombing of his countrymen.

In essence, he might have done what many Gulf Arab leaders did: Privately encourage Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end Iran’s nuclear program and its mechanisms of terror.

The third problem is Pahlavi’s self-imposed limit on his campaigning. The shah has mostly campaigned in the United States or Western Europe and, prior to the war, he made a high profile trip to Israel.

This makes sense: Many Iranians fled Iran in 1979 as the shah’s regime fell; they settled in cities like Los Angeles, London, Paris, Stockholm, and Berlin.

What Pahlavi misses are the Arabs. Saudis and Emiratis are going to be crucial to the future of Iran.

At the same time, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed are reticent about the would-be crown prince and seemingly avoid any meeting that others in the region could misinterpret as endorsement.

To break the impasse, Reza Pahlavi and his advisors should take a page from successive Taiwanese presidents.

Under pressure from the People’s Republic of China, many countries refuse to issue visas to Taiwan’s elected leader. That unfortunately at times also includes the United States.

To bypass that problem, Taiwanese leaders often book flights that transit through San Francisco or New York, where U.S. officials meet them in airport reception halls.

Pahlavi might do similarly: He could credibly book a flight to Australia. Both Victoria and New South Wales are home to sizeable Iranian diaspora communities and he could arrange for a meeting during transit.

This becomes less a state endorsement than a useful tête-à-tête to discuss ongoing issues. It would save face for both the former crown prince and Gulf Arab leaders who wish to maintain plausible deniability.

Most importantly, though, it would break the barrier that so far has kept Reza Pahlavi out of the Arab world.