This week on THE ROSENBERG REPORT, an exclusive one-on-one interview with Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL – When my colleagues and I first launched THE ROSENBERG REPORT on the TBN television network on Oct. 6, 2022, I never imagined the opportunity to sit down for an exclusive, one-on-one interview with the son of the late Shah of Iran.

But God has been opening up all kinds of crazy doors, and this was just the latest.

Last week, I saw and briefly shook hands with Reza Pahlavi – the Crown Prince of Iran, who lives in exile in the United States (Maryland, to be precise) with his wife, Yasmine, and their children – at the Holocaust Memorial Day ceremonies at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

I told Pahlavi then that “I’m an Evangelical Israeli” and that I was praying for him and the people of Iran.

He was warm and gracious and thanked me, but that was it.

With a pro-democracy revolution building inside the Islamic Republic of Iran, I’d been praying for several months for the opportunity to meet Pahlavi and interview him for my show because I believe that Evangelical Christians need to better understand the ferment underway in that country, and to be praying faithfully and without ceasing for the liberation of the Iranian people.

Who better to tell the story than the Crown Prince?

But I couldn’t find a way to contact him, so I just kept praying.

MY INTERVIEW WITH THE CROWN PRINCE WAS AN ANSWER TO PRAYER

That night at Yad Vashem, I was happy just to have had the opportunity to greet him, however briefly.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to talk to him or any of his advisors and request a meeting.

However, that same night, I happened to see from a distance an acquaintance I’d once made at the U.S. State Department in Washington.

Somewhat shocked to see him, I immediately wondered if he was helping to coordinate the Crown Prince’s visit to Israel.

So, I dashed off a text message to him, just to say “hi.”

I didn’t ask for a meeting with the Crown Prince. That seemed to be asking too much.

The following day, however, I received a very kind text message back from the former State Department official. He said that he was, in fact, assisting Pahlavi, but that once the Crown Prince departed Israel, we should catch up and grab some lunch or coffee together.

I replied that I’d love that, and that I was so encouraged to see the Crown Prince in Israel.

Then, figuring I had nothing to lose, I mentioned that I would love to meet Pahlavi and interview him for THE ROSENBERG REPORT, noting that Pahlavi should actively be courting and communicating with leaders in the American Evangelical community to help us understand the real state of play in Iran and to mobilize a movement of prayer for the people of Iran.

To my shock, that evening I suddenly received an invitation to conduct just such an interview at a hotel along the beaches of Tel Aviv the following day.

As it happened, my TBN team and I had already shot and produced the episode of THE ROSENBERG REPORT that would air last Thursday night at 9 p.m. EST on TBN.

While the first part of the show was about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sinking poll numbers – and the many and growing challenges to his leadership that he is facing because of the ongoing turmoil of his judicial reform proposal – the next two segments of the show were focused on the historic nature of the Crown Prince’s nearly week-long visit to the Jewish state.

(To watch that episode please click here – please note: if you’re new to my TBN page at www.RosenbergReport.TV, you can quickly sign up to watch any or all past episodes by creating a simple and free account with your email address.)

Still, there was no way I was going to turn down the opportunity to have an exclusive interview with the Crown Prince, especially when I learned that not a single U.S. television network was doing an interview with him during his time in Israel, nor were any other Christian media outlets doing one.

After all, I had no doubt it was a huge answer to prayer.

Thus, I immediately accepted, and then scrambled to see if TBN could actually assemble a video crew to come with me, with just a few hours notice.

MEETING THE CROWN PRINCE
By God’s grace, it all came together.

On Thursday morning, April 20, my wife, Lynn, and I drove from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.

We linked up with the TBN team and soon we were shaking hands with the Crown Prince of Iran, the only Iranian leader ever to visit the Jewish state, and sitting down with him for a formal interview.

I found Pahlavi to be a warm and gracious man.

His English is impeccable.

He’s soft spoken but has a huge vision.

Having had to escape his native country during the early stages of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 when he was only 17 and a half years old, it’s clear that he longs to go back.

Not just to live, but to serve, and help liberate his people from the mullah’s reign of torture and terror once and for all.

Last night, we aired that interview in prime time on the full episode of THE ROSENBERG REPORT.

If you missed it, you can find it on www.RosenbergReport.TV – or you can click here – or you can watch the episode re-air on Saturday night at 9:30 p.m. EST on TBN.

The other way to watch it is to download the TBN app on your phone, click on the “PROGRAMS” button at the bottom, and then click on THE ROSENBERG REPORT link under the list of FEATURED PROGRAMS.

Whichever way you choose, I highly encourage you to watch this fascinating interview with Reza Pahlavi as he opens up about his vision of a free and democratic Iran.

His desire to establish not only peace with Israel but a “strategic partnership” with the Jewish state and the Arab states throughout the region in a peace and normalization agreement he would like to call the “Cyrus Accords.”

We talked at length about why he holds the ancient Persian leader, Cyrus the Great, in such high regard.

We also talked about the remarkable Bible prophecies that give us God’s perspective on the future of Iran in the “last days” of human history.

I don’t want to give it all away.

But here are a few excerpts from our conversation to give you a taste of what we discussed.

WHY WOULD PAHLAVI TAKE SUCH A HUGE RISK TO COME VISIT ISRAEL?

I asked Pahlavi why he was taking such a huge risk by coming to Israel when the “terror masters in Tehran” hate Israel with every fiber of their being, want to wipe us off the map, and would love to assassinate Pahlavi, as well.

“Don't look at me and why I'm here,” he told me. “Look at hundreds of thousands of young Iranians within the last two or three years gathering in front of Cyrus' tomb in pursuit of God in the Shiraz area in Iran. They’re protesting against the regime and chanting slogans about their heritage, about their sense of national identity.”

Pahlavi insisted it was worth the risk to come to Israel to send a signal to the movement of pro-democracy Iranians rising up both inside and outside the country that an entirely different path is possible.

“So, it's not just me,” talking about Cyrus the Great and wanting peace with Israel, he insisted. “It’s the voice of millions of Iranians.”

WHY IS “CYRUS THE GREAT” CONSIDERED SO GREAT?

He said that Cyrus remains great among the Persian people today, in part, because Cyrus represents a time in Persian history – long before the radical ayatollahs and mullahs – in which the Persian people were free and peaceful and prosperous and loving towards the Jewish people.

It was, after all, Cyrus who liberated the Jewish people from Babylonian slavery, allowed Jews to return to resettle in Israel, and even encouraged and financed the rebuilding of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

Pahlavi also praised Cyrus’ passion for protecting the human rights of his people, and how his example “contributed to Western civilization.”

Thomas Jefferson, he noted, “incorporated into the Declaration of Independence,” some of the principles he’d learned from Cyrus.

Jefferson was “inspired very much by what Cyrus the Great had said.”

That’s true, but not something that everyone knows about.

A TECTONIC BATTLE BETWEEN LIGHT AND DARKNESS

Pahlavi asked Christians to rediscover the greatness of Cyrus and peaceful Persian history and to contrast that with the current regime in Tehran “that has been war mongering, has been planting the seed of hatred and disdain.”

The difference, he said, “is night and day.”

The Iranian people, he told me, are engaged in a tectonic struggle between “the darkness and the evil” and “the light.”

“And part of my message to the world is that we as Iranians want to have cordial relationship with the world, and why not start with the most obvious, which is where Israel stands in terms of being threatened by a regime that calls for its disappearance.”

I asked Pahlavi if he supported U.S. President Joe Biden’s desire to re-enter the nuclear deal that he and former U.S. President Barack Obama negotiated with Tehran in 2015.

Absolutely not, he told me.

“Can they be trusted regardless of what they sign?” he said. “And how many times have they been dubious? It's just lack of trust. At the end of the day, even if you have a so-called agreement, what does it really mean and what does it achieve?”

He noted that “the last time you tried” to make a deal with the current Iranian regime, the result was that the U.S. gave the regime billions of dollars.

“Rather than spending it on [the] starving [citizens of Iran], the Iranians [government leaders] have been reinforcing their proxies, whether in Syria or in Lebanon.”

PAHLAVI ACKNOWLEDGED THAT MANY IRANIANS ARE LEAVING ISLAM AND TURNING TO JESUS CHRIST

So, what exactly is Pahlavi’s vision of Iran’s future, particularly for religious minorities like Christians and Jews?

“I think the best guarantee for all faiths is for liberty to exist and freedom of religion,” he said, “as a prerequisite to democracy.”

We need to “end to any kind of persecution.”

But the key is “to have the guarantee of the rule of law and democracy” and a “secular system that separates religion from governance.”

He noted that when the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni came to power in Iran in 1979, “the first wave of people actually who were immediately persecuted under this new ideology were Jews that had to leave Iran behind.”

Now, because of the evil of the regime, many Iranians are leaving Islam.

Some, he said, are becoming atheists and agnostics.

But he added, “how many are converting out of the faith and becoming Christians in Iran?”

Christians, Jews, Muslims and others need to work together, he said to bring an “end to a regime that has been the root cause of all the problems we've been facing, to liberate a nation that will be the guarantee of stability, and will eliminate every single problem that you see today, from radicalism to extremism to terrorism to the nuclear threat.”

Please, don’t miss this episode – and be sure to share it with others on social media.