Key Highlights
- Pahlavi successfully spurred protesters onto the streets Thursday night in a massive escalation of the protests sweeping Iran.
- Initially sparked by the Islamic Republic’s ailing economy, the demonstrations have become a serious challenge to its theocracy, battered by years of nationwide protests and a 12-day war in June launched by Israel that saw the US bomb nuclear enrichment sites.
- What is unknown is how much real support the 65-year-old Pahlavi, who is in exile in the US, has in his homeland.
- Do protesters want a return of the Peacock Throne, as his father’s reign was known?
- Or are the protesters just looking for anything that is not Iran’s Shiite theocracy?
