Reza Pahlavi tells CPAC remnants of ‘snake’ Iranian regime cannot be allowed to rule: ‘Venom is in its DNA’

Exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi warned a crowd at CPAC Saturday not to leave any faction of Iran’s current regime in power.

“You cannot reform a snake. Venom is in its DNA,” Pahlavi, 65, told cheering supporters at the annual conservative gathering held in Grapevine, Texas this year.

The son of the shah of Iran, who was overthrown during the 1979 revolution that brought the Islamic Republic to power, Pahlavi said the people of Iran “will never agree to swap one tyrant for another.”

He spoke as the joint US-Israeli war on Iran — that launched with a Feb. 28 strike that took out former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of the country’s top leaders — entered its fifth week.

President Trump, who extended a deadline for Tehran to re-open the Strait of Hormuz or risk massive bombing of its power plants, has said negotiations are underway with the Iranians on finding a way to end the conflict.

At the outset of the war, Trump urged Iranians to “take over your government.”

He has also ridiculed Iran’s new hardline supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamanei, who has not been seen in public since coming to power after his father’s killing — with the president labeling him a “lightweight.”

Trump has also said that he wants a hand in picking Tehran’s next leader. The State Department has placed a $10 million bounty on the younger Khamenei and other senior regime officials.

Pahlavi, who lives in the US, told the enthusiastic CPAC crowd that “another anti-American tyrant will not serve American interests either.” He said if such a faction of the repressive regime were to linger it would “buy time” and “pretend to negotiate” before returning to its “jihadist ways of threatening America.”

“Life can never go back to normal,” he said.

There is a sea of blood between the people and the regime. After all the massacres, after all they have sacrificed, they will never agree to swap one tyrant for another.”

Pahlavi, who called on the Iranian people to rise up during street protests that broke out in late December, called for a “clean break” Saturday, saying he is willing to lead a “transition to democracy.”

“The final blow will be delivered by the people of Iran themselves,” he said.