Iran’s Crown Prince Visits Israel to Deliver a Message of Friendship

Israel's Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel (R) and Prince Reza Pahlavi, activist, advocate and oldest son of the last Shah of Iran, attend a ceremony marking Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day for the six million Jews killed during World War II, at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem on April 17, 2023. MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images

Iran’s exiled crown prince arrived in Israel on April 17, on a visit that reflects the warm ties his father once had with Israel with a message of “friendship from the Iranian people.”

He participated in Israel’s annual Holocaust memorial ceremony on Monday night and met with Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel.

Gamliel invited the prince of Iran to Israel, saying “the crown prince symbolizes a leadership different from that of the Ayatollah regime and leads values of peace and tolerance. We are taking the first step to rebuild the ties between the nations.”

Gamliel, who posted a picture with HRH Reza Pahlavi at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, said that Pahlavi was “the most senior Iranian personality to ever come to Israel for a public visit. We appreciate the crown prince’s expression of solidarity with the citizens of Israel in the face of the severe terrorist attacks perpetrated by Iran,” she said, according to local media The Jerusalem Post.

On April 16, Pahlavi posted on Twitter that he wants to “engage Israeli water experts on ways to address the [Islamic Republic] regime’s abuse of Iran’s natural resources and pay respects to the victims of the Holocaust on Yom HaShoah.”

After his arrival to Israel, he posted on his Telegram channel: “Yasmine and I just arrived in Israel. We are very happy to be here and are dedicated to working toward the peaceful & prosperous future that the people of our region deserve. From the children of Cyrus to the children of Israel, we will build this future together, in friendship.”

The two nations have a historic relationship that was destroyed in 1979 during the Islamic revolution by leftist forces that thrust Pahlavi’s father, Mohammad Reza Shah, out of power. Ayatollah Khomeini, the Islamic Revolution leader, came into power and declared Israel an “enemy of Islam” and cut all ties.

HRH Reza Pahlavi was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1960 as the heir to the late Mohammad Reza Shah of Iran and Empress Farah Pahlavi of Iran. He was officially named crown prince in 1967 at the time of his father’s coronation. In 1978, at the age of 17, he left Iran for jet fighter training in the United States Air Force and during the instability that followed, the government of Iran was taken over by the Islamic Republic.

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Reza Taghizadeh, a political activist who holds PhD in politics and international relations, called Pahlavi’s Israel visit “an unprecedented action and a sign of Tel Aviv’s new strategic assessment of the political equations in the region and the importance of the future role of Iran as its defense and security ally.”

“Before 1979 revolution that led to religious government gaining power in Tehran, the relations between Tehran and Tel Aviv were normal and security cooperation was also flowing between the two countries. Since then, [the Islamic Republic has] targeted the existence of Israel and disrupted the security of that country by using the territory of Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank of the Jordan River, and the Gaza Strip,” Taghizadeh wrote in an article for The Independent in Persian.