PARIS — Iran’s exiled crown prince says a revolution in his homeland can be led not from the streets of Tehran, but in an 18th-century conference center in the heart of Paris.

It’s a pitch that is inspiring hope, wariness and outright hostility among Iranians, even as President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between their country and Israel. Trump had just days ago pondered the idea of regime change — the overthrow of Iran’s ruling theocracy — something seen here in the French capital as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

[...]

Prince Pahlavi had left the country a year before his father was overthrown, and started training to be a jet fighter pilot at Reese Air Force Base in Lubbock, Texas. He never returned.

Today he remains the most recognizable Iranian opposition figure, dressed here in a light-blue tie and thick-rimmed spectacles that emphasize bushy, black eyebrows. But his family’s history, and his support for the Israeli airstrikes against his own homeland, mean he is divisive, both among Iran’s diaspora and its domestic population of 90 million

“His main strength is a nostalgia for the prerevolutionary time, not just among the old people of Iran, but also among Gen Z, who have this image of a secular Iran,” said Clément Therme, an Iran scholar with affiliations at Paris’ Sciences Po university and the French Institute of International Relations, among others.

But while Pahlavi has become a talisman for many in the diaspora, he has had “limited contact” with opposition groups inside the country, Therme said. “So it will be difficult for him to represent” them.

Nevertheless, his backers sense an opportunity.

[...]

> Read the article on NBC News website