Exiled Iranian royal Reza Pahlavi urged Iran’s armed forces to move against the Islamic Republic and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in a statement circulated Tuesday, April 7, 2026, as President Donald Trump’s deadline for Tehran to reach a deal to end the war approached.
Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah and a prominent exiled opposition figure, issued an appeal Tuesday, April 7, calling on Iran’s armed forces to “step forward” against the Islamic Republic and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as a deadline set by U.S. President Donald Trump neared.
In the statement, which was amplified online by Iran International English and later quoted by The Daily Wire, Pahlavi portrayed the military as inheritors of a long tradition of Iranian commanders and named historical and modern figures including Ariobarzanes, Surena, Bahram Chobin, Babak Khorramdin, Ya’qub Leyth, and Mazyar, as well as Imperial Iranian Armed Forces generals Amir Hossein Rabii, Mehdi Rahimi, and Reza Naji—along with other senior officers executed in the early months after the 1979 انقلاب.
Pahlavi also criticized what he described as the presence inside Iran of “foreign agents and criminals affiliated with the Islamic Republic,” naming Iraq’s Hashd al-Shaabi and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, as well as Afghan and Pakistani militants. In the statement, he accused the Islamic Republic and the IRGC of having “slaughtered tens of thousands” of Iranians.
Addressing Iran’s public, Pahlavi urged citizens to press the military to intervene, saying people should “demand that the army fulfill its national role” and “stand together with the nation and save Iran.”
Trump’s deadline and threats of intensified U.S. action have been widely reported in recent days by major outlets, though details of the timetable and the scope of threatened strikes have shifted as the administration issued updates and extensions.
