IT TAKES A PARTICULAR kind of audacity to sip espresso in exile while urging the sons of the revolution to bleed once more for a crown they never asked to wear. It takes a special breed of delusion to believe that memory is soft enough to forget torture chambers, censorship, and the scent of oil traded for submission. But most of all, it takes a monarchist; or worse, a monarchist in mourning.
Reza Pahlavi, the exiled heir to the Peacock Throne, is not a leader. He is a relic: a museum piece whose polished boots have never touched the dust of revolution. Yet from think tanks in D.C. to panels in Paris, he casts himself as the voice of the Iranian people — those same people who tore down his father’s statues and turned palaces into public museums. When Khawaja Asif, Pakistan’s Defence Minister, called him a “bloody parasitical imperial whore,” it wasn’t personal. It was historical.
To Western ears, Asif’s remark may sound indecorous, unbecoming of a senior statesman. But that is because the West is still seduced by exile royalty: princes without portfolios who promise liberalism, free markets, and pliant alliances in exchange for a return to relevance. What Asif detonated with his words was that illusion—the fantasy—that imperial ghosts can masquerade as democratic messiahs.
the West is still seduced by exile royalty: princes without portfolios who promise liberalism, free markets, and pliant alliances in exchange for a return to relevance.
Reza Pahlavi is not merely the son of a deposed monarch. He is the final ambassador of a dying idea — that foreign powers can manufacture consent abroad by propping up familiar faces in foreign suits. The Shah, his father, was installed with CIA fingerprints still wet on the edges of his throne. In 1953, the democratic government of Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by MI6 and the CIA, precisely because it dared to nationalise Iranian oil. The Shah returned, not as a saviour, but as a client king. He ruled with Savak, his secret police, whose methods made nightmares a matter of routine. And Reza, in exile, has not once condemned the machine that raised him — he has only promised to restart it with a cleaner face.
“If Iranian people are energised and motivated according to you,” Asif taunted on X, “show some balls and go back and lead them.” That sentence deserves to be etched into the marble of this geopolitical moment. It is not a diplomatic faux pas. It is a refusal to be complicit in a lie. It is a soldier calling out a charlatan. And it is a Muslim-majority nuclear state, fatigued by interventionist theatre, telling the world it won’t play supporting cast anymore.
For decades, Pakistan has walked an uneasy line between Tehran and Riyadh, between appeasing Gulf monarchies and respecting its Shia neighbour. The legacy of sectarian politics, border skirmishes in Balochistan, and the spectre of Saudi largesse has long kept Islamabad cautious. But caution, like monarchy, has its limits. And when Iran is under siege — not only from Israeli jets and sabotage squads but from coordinated disinformation campaigns and royal nostalgia projects — silence becomes complicity.
those who bathe in imperial perfume do not get to speak for the oppressed.
What Khawaja Asif has done is break that silence. And not just with bluster, but with moral clarity. In a world that rewards PR-trained exiles and punishes real resistance, he chose profanity over platitude. And in doing so, he said what much of the global south quietly thinks: those who bathe in imperial perfume do not get to speak for the oppressed.
Pahlavi is not the first royal to attempt a comeback in exile. The pages of history are filled with them — from the Bourbons of France to the Romanovs of Russia. All dream of returning, few ever do, and most, when they try, leave rubble in their wake. For every Shah waiting in Maryland, there is a foreign government waiting to fund him, a news cycle waiting to inflate him, and a lobby group waiting to launder his past. This is not politics. This is theatre — and in Pakistan’s eyes, the curtains must fall.
The phrase “bloody parasitical imperial whore” is uncomfortable. It should be.
At the heart of this moment lies the larger war unfolding between Iran and Israel — a conflict waged not only in skies and servers but in symbols and proxies. Iranian nuclear scientists are assassinated in daylight. Missile factories are sabotaged. Sanctions are weaponised into economic strangulation. And amid all this, exiled royals are paraded on Western television screens, calling for “liberation.” Liberation by whom? And for whom?
Pakistan has no illusions about Iran’s flaws. It has clashed with Tehran over cross-border militancy, ideological exportation, and regional influence. But in this instance, Iran is the besieged, not the aggressor. And Pakistan knows, better than most, that sovereignty is not a luxury, but a shield. A fragile one. And one that exiles like Pahlavi would happily pierce, if it meant reclaiming a throne built on bones.
amid all this, exiled royals are paraded on Western television screens, calling for “liberation.” Liberation by whom? And for whom?
The phrase “bloody parasitical imperial whore” is uncomfortable. It should be. It is not meant to glide smoothly across news tickers or fit neatly into policy briefs. It is a verbal Molotov — and like all such weapons, it forces a choice: between the lie that empire redeems itself through its exiles, and the truth that freedom, when imported by force, arrives as occupation.
It is not often that South Asia speaks in such blunt moral registers. The region has been trained — or perhaps tamed — into politesse. But Khawaja Asif’s outburst was not a lapse. It was a reckoning. It was Pakistan remembering what it means to reject thrones, to question palaces, and to see in the suffering of a neighbour not a weakness to exploit, but a history to defend.
There will be calls for apologies. There will be editorials in Western papers, lamenting “irresponsible language” and “damaged diplomacy.” But they will miss the point entirely. Because when a region bleeds, when missiles fall, and when the ghosts of old kings knock once more — it is not etiquette that matters. It is honesty. And Pakistan, this time, has chosen to be honest.
