The following is an open letter from the author and two other Iranian professionals published on my blog at Times of Israel, explaining why it is best for the main architect of the Iran transition plan for exiled King Reza Pahlavi of Iran, Mr. Saeed Ghasseminejad, to resign from his post due to conflicts of interest:

Among Iranian exiles longing for their homeland, where the flame of Iranian liberty flickers against unfathomable tyranny in Iran, Mr. Saeed Ghasseminejad, chief architect of exiled King Reza Pahlavi of Iran’s transition plan, stands as a seeming champion of freedom. But he also works for another firm that ensnares him in a web of conflicting loyalties.

Ghasseminejad is a Senior analyst for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a conservative think tank that largely views Iran as synonymous with the vile and violent Islamic Republic, and an enemy to be weakened, tamed and even balkanized to secure Israel’s safety. Ghasseminejad provides analysis on the regime’s finances and economic situation in Iran to FDD. 

At the same time, he has been working closely for some years with King Reza Pahlavi of Iran on a program to redevelop the economy of Iran after the fall of the Islamic Republic, called the Iran Prosperity Project (IPP), and a transition plan to build a new regime in Iran of the Iranian people’s choosing.

The IPP is at least partly sponsored and funded by  an organization called the National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI). NUFDI regularly  consults with at least senior advisors in FDD’s program, notably Behnam Ben Taleblu, the FDD Iran Program’s Director, Researcher Jonathan Sayeh, and Ghasseminejad.

The IPP focuses heavily on technology platforms, crypto currency, foreign direct investment and repatriation of funding to Iran – presumably to rebuild the country after the fall of the regime.

NUFDI also advises scores of unpaid enthusiastic volunteers in the United States and beyond, to educate lawmakers about Iran foreign policy that is consonant with King Reza Pahlavi’s vision.

NUFDI Executive Director Cameron Khansarinia regularly reposts King Reza Pahlavi’s messages on X. Using monarchist imagery and messaging has attracted many volunteers, young and old, and has been very lucrative and beneficial for NUFDI.

NUFDI and FDD are currently focusing on the Maximum Support Act (HR 2614), which aims to free hundreds of millions of dollars of Iran’s frozen assets for supporting workers and providing internet access to Iranians. This bill is a high stakes and sensitive in that it seeks channels to fund Iranians on the ground while bypassing US sanctions on the Iranian regime.

With an ongoing relationship between NUFDI, FDD and the King’s plan, it is difficult to determine where one begins and the other ends.

Both NUFDI and FDD spend a lot of electronic ink and time on Capitol Hill arguing for harsher sanctions and greater security measures against the regime, something no one could argue with.

NUFDI’s pro Constitutional Monarchy messaging seems consonant with King Reza Pahlavi’s legacy. He is the last King under Iran’s Constitutional Monarchy called Mashrooteh PadShahi. Pahlavi is seeking to return to Iran to enact the definitive departure from the hellish Islamic Republic, and conduct a referendum that would consolidate and affirm his role as the new Constitutional King or enable the Iranian people to choose a new secular republic.

After the toppling, he wishes to forge the equivalent of the Abraham Accords with Israel, called the Cyrus Accords, named after the first Persian king, Cyrus the Great, who allowed Jews to rebuild the second temple in Israel when it was a part of the Persian Empire.

King Reza Pahlavi’s powerful vision is to reclaim Iran’s ancient soul from the clutches of despotism, ensuring a rebirth in prosperity and justice.

Ghasseminejad’s dual roles lend him the fragile veneer of a highly competent economics wonk that beneath the surface, has entanglements and conflicts of interest.

FDD, his employer, was founded in the crucible of 9/11’s aftermath, and provides research on security and economics in the Middle East that promotes the safety, security and image of Israel, and views Iran as a foe.

FDD has also been a proponent for the autonomy or even secession of Iran’s millennia old ethnic regions.

Ghasseminejad, therefore, treads a double path: operative within an American think tank that views Iran suspiciously and maintains its own agenda, preferring an economically and militarily weak Iran, and steward of NUFDI’s Iran Prosperity Project, a beacon of hope and plan of rebirth for the Iranian people.

This duality transforms him from sage advisor to a conflicted lobbyist — most palpable and visible in the recent “Emergency Era Booklet” prepared for NUFDI as a preliminary road map for a Pahlavi transitional government after the fall of the Islamic Republic.

In the booklet, the hallowed 1906 Constitution for Iran’s Constitutional Monarchy, the Mashruteh PadShahi, a pact between Iranians and their erstwhile guardians, and the only source of legitimate power for King Reza Pahlavi, is jettisoned to the dustbin of history,  rendering the King a powerless private citizen as he navigates the perilous first days and months after the fall of the 47 year old violent, regressive theocracy.

Moreover, the NUFDI Emergency Booklet prescribes instead, to continue breathing life into the Islamic Republic’s laws after the regime’s so-called fall, reviving life into a beast, and estranging Iranians who have yearned for liberty — none more so than the beloved King Reza Pahlavi, whose throne of hope is thus undermined.

NUFDI’s booklet represents a betrayal of many Iranians’ dreams and hopes for a complete departure from the current medieval theocracy, back to the last legal social contract that provided a framework for consistent reform, including limiting or eliminating the role of the King, and even transitioning to a parliamentary republic

More ominously for the Jewish community and Israel, Ghasseminejad has also been on a global PR campaign claiming that the booklet – in essence a rebrand of the Islamic Republic and not a departure from it – would lead to the Cyrus Accords. He renewed the exiled King’s call for the Cyrus Accords, but this time, without King Cyrus.

Ghasseminejad portrays supporters of King Reza Pahlavi who disagree with the plan, as terrorists, those who are jealous because they lack access to the King’s office, those who don’t have enough information and will never be given any by him, or those who are secretly regime agents. He also publicly proclaims he is “taking dissenters’  names”. 

The booklet has caused a thunderous chorus of dismay from Pahlavi’s devoted legions, especially those who understand that his wellspring of power emerges only within the framework of the 1906 Constitution.

For Ghasseminejad and his patrons at NUFDI and FDD, both beholden to private and other funding, Iran is only one of many other programs and ledger entries on quarterly reports to funders they must attract and keep.

But for the Iranian people —the chained and tortured prisoners in Evin’s grim vaults, the silenced voices of faith’s minorities, the toiling laborers bent under oppression’s yoke, the resilient women who defy the veil’s decree— bringing home Iran’s Constitutional Monarch and his Constitution, and creating a referendum under that Constitution to affirm the Iranian people’s national will, is the razor’s edge between existence and oblivion, between the light of emancipation and the abyss of captivity.

Ghasseminejad ‘s tangled allegiances render him not merely flawed, but so thoroughly conflicted, that he would do best to resign. To preserve and shield Iran’s metamorphosis from the insidious grasp of foreign influence, Mr. Ghasseminejad must step away from the royal campaign’s fray.

Until the hour of reckoning, i. e. the regime’s fall, his presence lingers as a conflicted and sorrowful rift—a conflict that threatens to eclipse the liberation of Iran, and cast a long shadows over the path to freedom and renewal.

Jessica Emami, PhD
Research Fellow, Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy

Dr. Davood Farmani
Professor of US Constitutional Law at Constitutional Center

Dr. Shahab Elias
Physician, Supporter of Constitutional Monarchy for Iran

In the event of the dreadful Islamist regime of Iran’s inevitable fall, the Iranian diaspora some Iranians are increasingly rallying around Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi as the next Iranian leader. This makes sense, as Pahlavi is the sole heir to Iran’s arguably illegally dismantled Constitutional Monarchy, under the last democratically assembled government fought for in the Constitutional Revolution of 1906. This document created a parliament, created the separation of powers, curbed the role of the Monarch, and placed limits on the power of the Shia clergy. It also gave specific rights to equal citizenship for women and religious minorities. In the face of the Khamenei regime’s increasing barbarity and militancy, and the increase in the scope of popular revolts against the current regime in Iran, Pahlavi has increasingly come to be seen by many Iranian people as a legitimate figurehead to unify them towards accomplishing a transition to democracy.

This was my belief when I began advocating for Pahlavi’s policy of “maximum pressure” on the regime in 2023. I too, believed that transition to democracy in Iran would need maximum international pressure on the regime, so I joined an advocacy organization that made calls to Congress, attended rallies, and engaged on social media. Another reason I chose to lobby for the Crown Prince’s maximum pressure policy towards the regime was that up to that point, the only prominent Iranian voices on Capitol Hill were the Iranian regime’s lobby, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and other Islamist groups such as the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK). I worked nearly full time in this unpaid position that I took up most willingly, in order to save my compatriots from the hellish regime in Iran.

Like many others, I also held hopes that the Crown Prince would presumptuously work to restore Iran’s prosperous status quo ante. But the dark plans of the Crown Prince’s campaign would not be known to me or anyone else until the summer of 2025.

My hopes came crashing down in June 2025 when out of the blue, the Pahlavi campaign released a transition plan glibly called the “Emergency Booklet” – as if Iran could be reconstituted and reimagined in a booklet. The plan, still endorsed by Pahlavi, formally abandons his role as Crown Prince or King, voids the Constitution of 1906, and places all three branches of government, the military, and the media, in the hands of a secret council. The identity and numbers of this council shall “remain secret until after the regime falls due to security concerns”. Not only does this document close the door to any hopes to restoring order to Iran, but it also opens the door to a planned period of dark tyranny worse than anything anyone could have fathomed.

The document declares Pahlavi in his private capacity to be the “leader of the national uprising” and the selector of a secret council. But the “booklet” also declares that he can be dismissed by an absolute majority of the council. Even if I could trust one private citizen to run all of Iran outside of any legal framework but a small “booklet”, this arrangement is much like a circular firing squad, and immediately engenders distrust between the council and Pahlavi himself.

After the shocking document was released, Pahlavi’s core supporters reacted so negatively to the “booklet” that the campaign quickly promised revisions which were due by September 2025. We couldn’t imagine how such an irredeemable document could be revised, but waited eagerly nevertheless. But the promised revisions, understandably, never came. Why? Because the plan all along was to use the “booklet” when the proper crisis arose. Today, as the regime faces its most existential crisis, with US warships at its doorstep, a burgeoning economic crisis, a beleaguered Iranian population in revolt, and the regime slaughtering and executing Iranians on a scale rivaling Stalin, the Pahlavi campaign spokespersons are vigorously selling Pahlavi’s image as a great liberator, and a figurehead of freedom and democracy. They appear daily, and everywhere, on social media, on network news channels in the US and abroad, and to lawmakers and the public.

Many people shocked by the escalating violence of the Iranian regime, have fallen into the trap of accepting Pahlavi’s prescription because he is the most visible and superficially palatable alternative, and because they may not know about the booklet. The campaign keeps it under wraps. Pahlavi, after all, wears a suit and tie and talks about separation of church and state, and democracy for Iran. But this view still fails to consider that the “booklet” had always augured crisis in order to bypass the multiple deliberative processes of creating new constituent government, and has now placed absolute power in the hands of private citizen Pahlavi and his secret council.

Another indication of rule-by-crisis in the “booklet” is its proposal for a “referendum” within only three months of regime change in which the people are supposed to choose between “monarchy or republic”. First, why would the Crown Prince abandon the monarchy per the “booklet”, only to stage a referendum for another monarchy? This contradiction makes me believe the booklet’s call for a referendum is as sincere as the agreement to revise the “booklet”. Second, a referendum is the inappropriate vehicle for choosing the form of government. This choice is usually relegated to deliberative assemblies of experts and legal scholars. Third, with full control of the military, all branches of government, and the media, it would not be difficult to control the results of a Putin or Khomeini style referendum. The referendum’s purported “choice” and its appearance so quickly after regime change virtually telegraphs the insincerity of the Pahlavi campaign to relinquish any power whatsoever to the Iranian people.

One would think that the massive number of objections to the booklet would have been enough to trigger a course correction by the Pahlavi campaign, to pursue a deliberative process to create a blueprint for future democracy. But the non response to critics of the booklet has been steadfast and constant. When it comes to discussing constructive criticism or requests for meetings, the campaign has been a brick wall. Its manager, Amir Etemadi, has a claim to fame for blocking any Iranian on the X platform who gives him anything other tan praise.

Where does this leave Iranians who wish to help free their compatriots from the grips of the diabolical regime without falling for the tyranny stipulated in the little “booklet”? The best course of action at this time is for the Iranian diaspora and others concerned, especially the US and Israeli Jewish communities, to contact their representatives in the West and object to any plan that promotes Pahlavi and his secret council, until an appropriate deliberative process with representation from across the Iranian community could occur. Iranians must not trust one man and his secret council.

NB: The promised revisions have been released today, on the day the United States and Israel attacked Iran and killed several top regime leadership members.