Exclusive | Iran’s exiled crown prince reveals Biden betrayal — and why Trump’s ‘pressure’ is best chance of regime change

Iran’s exiled would-be leader has slammed former President Joe Biden’s reversal of President Trump’s sanctions on the regime in Tehran and called on the US to step up its pressure on the Islamist leadership.

In an exclusive sit-down with The Post, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi — the eldest son of the former Shah of Iran, the last leader before the Islamic Revolution in 1979 saw him swept from power — said the Iranian people were “friends” of Americans, despite their regime’s funding of terror in the Middle East and further afield.

Pahlavi, 64, who fled Iran in his teens, insisted the current Islamic Republic — which he branded a “warmongering regime that has been the basic root cause of regional instability and exporting radicalism and terrorism” — is weaker today than at any point in its almost five decades in power.

“The Iranian people are trying to send this clear message to the outside world that if you want a true partner in peace, it is us who represent the alternative, not this regime which has taken our country hostage in the first place 46 years ago and continues to do that,” Pahlavi said.

Pahlavi’s late father, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was forced from power by nationwide protests after public anger grew against his own repressive monarchy and extravagant lifestyle.

But his son, who was subsequently educated in the States, accused the Islamists who have held the reins of power in Tehran since his father’s overthrow of holding back his country.

“Iran, had it not been for this revolution, would have been at least equivalent of a South Korea in the Middle East,” he said. “Instead, we have become North Korea.”

He is now calling for Trump to put the “maximum pressure” on the regime, possibly through crackdowns on its nuclear program or exporting of terrorism, and reverse the appeasement of Biden, who undermined progress made during Trump’s first term.

“This regime, in its DNA, is simply incompatible with the free world as we know it. Expecting them to change their behavior is a waste of time,” he said.

“We’ve seen … under the first administration of President Trump, that maximum pressure did pay some dividends,” he said. “It isolated the regime more. It curtailed their means to be able to finance and fuel their war machine.

“Unfortunately, that was reversed under the Biden administration, where over $200 billion worth of oil sales that Iran should not have… only helped them to further expand and support their proxies, whether it’s the Houthis or it is Hezbollah or Hamas,” he went on.

He was speaking as police in the UK arrested a fourth Iranian national over a foiled suspected bomb plot on the Israeli embassy in London.

Tehran has denied any involvement in the alleged planned attack, but Pahlavi pointed to the incident as a further example of the terror and disorder exported by the regime.

“Every time a fire has been lit, you have dispatched your fire trucks to put out a fire here and there,” he said. “The problem is that nobody has gone after the arsonists in the first place.”

He compared the current regime of Ayatollah Khamenei to that of an “octopus” whose tentacles spread unrest across the Middle East and beyond.

“Now if you look at the tentacles of this octopus, it’s been all over the place, but the eye is in Tehran,” he said.

Trump has called for harsher sanctions on Iran but has steered clear of suggesting American boots on the ground, something Pahlavi understands would be extremely unpopular with a US public heavily fatigued from conflict in the Middle East.

He said there could not be be a repeat of the “fiasco” of Afghanistan and Iraq in the aftermath of 9/11.

“Change in Iran doesn’t resemble any of those scenarios, which by the way were terribly mishandled, which gave regime change a bad name, but it’s not wrong in concept,” he said.

Asked what a regime change in Iran could look like, Pahlavi said, “There’s this rationale that says,’ Well, option one is diplomacy, but if option one doesn’t work, then option B is striking their facilities or dismantling them.’

“What happened to, ‘Let’s get the Iranian people a chance to remedy the problem before you have to resort to those measures if you cannot achieve a diplomatic outcome?’ That has been the missing element.”

Pahlavi called for an approach similar to those which eventually brought about an end to the Soviet Union and ended apartheid in South Africa.

“President Ronald Reagan and [British Prime Minister] Margaret Thatcher played a critical role that brought an end to the Soviet Union,” he said. “So the expectation of my fellow compatriots from the outside free world in particular, was, ‘Well, you know, we aspire to the very same values that you enjoy, whether it’s in England or in France or in Canada or in the United States.’ “

Friends of America

Pahlavi insisted that the Iranian people have caught onto the lies told to them about America and the West by the Iranian regime.

At recent protests, anti-regime demonstrators have chanted for the return of Pahlavi, as well as denounce the rhetoric coming from the Islamists.

Pahlavi pointed to slogans chanted by protesters such as, “They lie to us that the enemy is America. Our enemy is right here.”

“The message is meant for Western governments, saying, ‘Look, we are imprisoned here. Why don’t you look at us, the Iranian people, as your true partners and an alternative to this regime?’ ” he said.

“President Trump, in his first term and his policies of maximum pressure, made him perhaps the most popular American president since the Islamic Revolution,” he said. “Why? Because the Iranians felt that this is something that weakens the regime, which is in their advantage.”

And while the regime continues to call for “death to America” and “death to Israel,” this is not a view shared by ordinary Iranians, Pahlavi insisted.

“When 9/11 happened, the only country in the Middle East where on the streets of the major cities, instead of celebrating the attack, they had candlelight vigils and support and sympathy with the victims was Iran and Iran alone,” he said.

Pahlavi said he puts his faith in the youth of Iran to finally bring an end to the barbarous regime.

“The Gen Z of Iran today … are in line with Western values,” he said. “Not a warmongering regime that wants to create martyrs out of them.”