The Call That Never Came
Reza Pahlavi, son of Iran's last shah, has spent four decades in exile preparing for a moment that may now be at hand. From his base outside Washington, the 64-year-old heir to the Peacock Throne issued instructions to his compatriots last week with the practised calm of someone who has rehearsed this scene countless times: stockpile provisions, stay indoors, await the 'final call' . He urged Iranians to continue striking, to refuse to show up for work . The revolution, he suggested, was no longer a matter of if but when.
Yet across the Middle East, the picture is considerably more complex than Pahlavi's confident communiqués suggest. The 2026 war between the United States, Israel, and Iran — a conflict that has destroyed Iran's military capabilities and killed the Islamic Republic's supreme leader — has entered a new and uncertain phase . The question is no longer simply when the bombing will stop, but what political order will emerge from the rubble. And on that question, the international community is fracturing in real time.
President Donald Trump declared days ago that regime change in Iran has already occurred . China's top diplomat, meanwhile, warned sternly against any such effort . Canada openly called for a change of government in Tehran . And in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, CIA operatives have been working quietly to arm fighters who might spark the uprising that American policymakers have long envisioned but rarely acknowledged in public .
What is unfolding is not merely the endgame of a military campaign but the opening act of something far more volatile: an attempt to reshape the political landscape of the Middle East's most populous Shia state, with all the attendant risks of chaos, sectarian violence, and great-power confrontation that such an effort entails.
The Covert Track
The arms pipeline began weeks before the first American missiles struck Iranian soil. Trump himself confirmed in a recent statement what intelligence sources had been whispering for months: the United States tried to covertly arm Iranian protesters through Kurdish intermediaries in the run-up to the war . It was a calculated gamble, an attempt to create internal pressure that might complement the external military campaign.
Now, according to sources familiar with the operation, the CIA is actively working to arm Kurdish forces with the explicit goal of sparking an uprising inside Iran . The Trump administration has been in active discussions with Iranian opposition groups and Kurdish leaders in Iraq about providing them with military support . The scope of this assistance — what weapons, how many, delivered through which channels — remains closely guarded. But the strategic intent is unmistakable: to create the conditions for an internal collapse of the Islamic Republic.
The Kurdish dimension is particularly sensitive. Iran's Kurdish minority, concentrated in the country's northwest, has long harboured separatist sentiments, and Kurdish militant groups have engaged in sporadic armed conflict with Tehran for decades. Arming them risks not only a broader civil war inside Iran but also alarming Turkey and Iraq, both of which have their own restive Kurdish populations and view separatist movements with deep suspicion.
Yet for American planners, the Kurds represent one of the few potentially effective proxies in a country where the opposition has historically struggled to transform street protests into sustained armed resistance. The 2009 Green Movement, the 2017-18 economic protests, the 2019 fuel demonstrations, the 2022 Mahsa Amini uprising — all were crushed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Basij paramilitaries. The calculation now is that with Iran's military capabilities destroyed and its leadership decapitated, the internal security apparatus might finally crack under coordinated pressure .
The Warning From Tehran
Iran's remaining security forces, however, have made clear they will not go quietly. Brigadier General Ahmadreza Radan, the national police chief, issued a stark warning to Iranian citizens: anyone who takes to the streets 'at the enemy's request' will be treated as an enemy . It is the language of a state under siege, one that sees foreign-backed regime change not as liberation but as invasion by other means.
The warning carries particular weight because it comes from a security establishment that, though battered, has not entirely collapsed. The assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on 28 February — followed swiftly by the killing of Ali Larijani, Israel's number-one target after Khamenei — decapitated the Islamic Republic's leadership . But the middle ranks of the IRGC, the intelligence services, and the regular police remain largely intact, and they have decades of experience in suppressing dissent.
'Anyone who takes to the streets at the enemy's request will be treated as an enemy.' — Brigadier General Ahmadreza Radan, Iranian Police Chief
Radan's statement also reflects a particular Iranian reading of history. The 1953 coup that toppled Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh — engineered by British and American intelligence services — remains a foundational trauma in Iranian political consciousness. The Islamic Republic has long justified its authoritarian governance as necessary to prevent a repeat of that foreign intervention. Now, with the CIA arming proxy forces and Western governments openly calling for Tehran's overthrow, the regime's darkest warnings appear to be coming true.
For ordinary Iranians, the choice presented by Radan and Pahlavi is an impossible one: risk being shot by security forces if they protest, or miss what may be a historic opportunity to throw off a government that, by some measures, has lost almost all legitimacy. A recent survey of Iranian Canadians — a diaspora community of more than 200,000 — found that 98.4 per cent believe the regime mostly does not or does not represent the will of the Iranian people . Nine in ten strongly or somewhat support regime change .
Whether those sentiments are shared by Iranians still living inside the country is harder to gauge. But the Islamic Republic's own behaviour — the frantic warnings, the visible panic in state media — suggests that Tehran believes the threat is real.
The Allied Fracture
As the covert campaign intensifies, the international consensus that held during the military phase of the war is rapidly disintegrating. Canada's position is the most explicit: Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said publicly that Canada wants a change of government in Iran . To underscore the point, Ottawa announced further sanctions against seven individuals connected with the Iranian government .
The Canadian stance is driven in part by domestic politics. The Iranian-Canadian community has been vocal in demanding not merely an end to hostilities but the complete overthrow of the Islamic Republic. For Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government, supporting regime change is both a moral position and a political necessity in key urban ridings with large Iranian populations.
But Canada's openness on regime change has exposed a deeper division among Western allies. Sir Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, publicly criticised President Trump over the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran . Starmer's objection was not to the war's objectives but to its execution and, implicitly, to the maximalist goals now being pursued. Britain, scarred by the Iraq debacle and wary of Middle Eastern adventurism, has made clear it will not participate in any effort to impose a government on Tehran.
The sharpest warning, however, came from Beijing. China's top diplomat, Wang Yi, cautioned explicitly against seeking government change in Iran amid the ongoing US-Israeli offensive . China also urged an immediate stop to military operations in the Middle East . Wang's intervention reflects not only Beijing's economic interests in Iran — China is Tehran's largest trading partner — but also a broader ideological concern. For an authoritarian state that has spent years resisting Western pressure over Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, the principle of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs is sacrosanct.
The Chinese position also hints at a larger geopolitical contest. If the United States succeeds in toppling the Islamic Republic and installing a friendly government in Tehran, it would represent a dramatic expansion of American influence in a region where China has been steadily building economic and diplomatic footholds. Beijing's warning is a signal that it will not stand idly by while Washington redraws the Middle Eastern map.
Trump's Endgame
President Trump, characteristically, has declared victory before the war is fully won. In recent statements, he insisted that regime change in Iran has already occurred . He pointed to what he described as Iran's complete military defeat: its capabilities destroyed, its leadership dead, its nuclear programme dismantled . According to Trump, Iran has agreed not to have any nuclear weapons in the future , and the United States is now negotiating with Tehran to end hostilities .
The picture Trump painted is one of a vanquished enemy suing for peace, a government so thoroughly defeated that its successor is already being discussed. Yet Trump's declaration raises as many questions as it answers. If regime change has already occurred, who is the United States negotiating with? If the Islamic Republic has collapsed, what entity has agreed to forswear nuclear weapons? And if the war is over, why is the CIA still arming Kurdish militias?
The likeliest explanation is that Trump is engaging in strategic ambiguity, attempting to shape perceptions in a way that makes the Islamic Republic's fall seem inevitable. By declaring that regime change has already happened, Trump may be trying to demoralise Iranian security forces, embolden opposition groups, and reassure a war-weary American public that the campaign is nearing its end.
But there is a risk in such declarations. If the Islamic Republic does not, in fact, collapse — if the IRGC regroups, if the opposition remains fragmented, if the covert arms pipeline fails to ignite a sustained uprising — then Trump's premature victory lap will look like yet another Middle Eastern miscalculation. The parallels to George W. Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' moment in Iraq are unavoidable.
The Opposition's Dilemma
For Iranian opposition figures like Reza Pahlavi, the current moment is both opportunity and peril. Pahlavi has spent his adult life in exile, cultivating relationships with Western governments, building networks among the diaspora, and positioning himself as a potential leader of a post-Islamic Republic Iran. His recent calls for Iranians to prepare for the 'final call' suggest he believes that moment has arrived .
Yet Pahlavi faces a fundamental credibility problem. He has not lived in Iran since 1979. He has no organisational base inside the country. And his association with the Pahlavi dynasty — his father's regime was overthrown precisely because it was seen as autocratic and subservient to Western interests — makes him a polarising figure even among Iranians who despise the Islamic Republic.
Moreover, the Iranian opposition is deeply fragmented. Monarchists like Pahlavi compete with secular republicans, leftist groups, ethnic minority movements, and moderate Islamists who want reform rather than revolution. There is no Iranian equivalent of the Polish Solidarity movement or the South African ANC — no unified front that could credibly claim to represent the opposition and govern in the event of the regime's collapse.
This fragmentation is precisely what worries international observers. The fall of the Islamic Republic without a coherent alternative could produce not a democratic transition but a Somalia-style collapse: warlordism, sectarian violence, the fracturing of the state along ethnic lines. Iran is a multi-ethnic country — Persian, Azeri, Kurdish, Arab, Baloch — and the Islamic Republic, for all its brutality, has held that mosaic together. Its disintegration could unleash forces that no external power could easily control.
What Comes Next
The immediate future will likely be determined by two variables: the resilience of Iran's internal security forces and the effectiveness of the covert campaign to arm opposition groups. If the IRGC and Basij can maintain control in key cities — particularly Tehran, Isfahan, and Mashhad — then the Islamic Republic may survive in some attenuated form, perhaps eventually negotiating a transition on its own terms. If, however, the security forces fracture and armed uprisings spread, the state could collapse within weeks.
In that scenario, the international community would face a choice it has not seriously prepared for: whether to intervene directly to prevent chaos, or to stand back and allow Iranians to determine their own future, with all the attendant risks. The Libya precedent looms large. NATO's 2011 intervention toppled Muammar Gaddafi but left behind a failed state and a humanitarian catastrophe. The lesson, for many policymakers, is that regime change is the easy part; building a stable successor government is exponentially harder.
China's warning against regime change reflects this concern. Beijing is signalling that it will not accept an outcome imposed by Washington and that it is prepared to support whatever government emerges in Tehran — even a diminished Islamic Republic — if it can maintain stability and keep Western influence in check . The risk of a proxy conflict between great powers, played out on Iranian soil, is growing.
For now, the war after the war continues in the shadows: CIA operatives moving weapons through mountain passes, opposition figures recording encrypted messages from exile, security forces preparing for street battles they hope will never come. Reza Pahlavi's 'final call' may yet sound, or it may remain forever in the conditional tense, a revolution perpetually deferred.
What is certain is that the military phase of the 2026 Iran war, for all its destruction, will prove to have been the simpler part. The question of what comes next — and who gets to decide — will shape the Middle East for decades. And on that question, the world's powers have revealed themselves to be profoundly divided, each pursuing its own vision of Iran's future, each convinced that history is on its side.