Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi says he is prepared to return to Iran for the first time since 1979 for the “ultimate battle” as nationwide protests expand and President Donald Trump threatens to take action against the Iranian regime.

“I’ve trained all my life to serve my nation,” he said in an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity. “I am more than ever ready to step into Iran. I will be there with my compatriots to lead the ultimate battle.”

Pahlavi’s remarks come as demonstrations have spread across 27 of Iran’s 31 provinces, resulting in at least 35 deaths, including two children, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. The protests are the largest the regime has faced in years.

About 1,200 people have reportedly been detained in connection with the protests. The Hengaw Organization for Human Rights has documented many of the arrests, including a significant number involving Iranian Kurds, a long-persecuted minority in Iran. The regime has also reportedly attempted to suppress the protests by cutting the internet in areas around the country.

According to Pahlavi, his return would not be to resume the power his father, the former Shah, was stripped of during the Iranian Revolution, but will be to guide a political transition to a democracy.

“My role is to help my compatriots achieve that goal to bring about a peaceful end by means of a national referendum and a constitutional assembly,” he said. “I am impartial as to what the ultimate result will be as long as it’s a secular democracy.”

Born in Tehran to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Empress Farah Diba, Reza Pahlavi was officially named crown prince in 1967 at the age of seven. While he was in the United States undergoing pilot training, his father was overthrown during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, forcing the royal family into exile. Since his father’s death in 1980, Pahlavi has emerged as a prominent opponent of the Islamic Republic and an advocate for democracy in Iran.

As demonstrations entered their second week, Mr. Pahlavi has highlighted the protests and called for continued participation, claiming that he’s “never seen an opportunity as we see today in Iran.”

“Iranian people are more than ever committed to bringing an end to this regime, as the world has witnessed the last few days,” he said to Hannity. “The levels of demonstrations are unprecedented in Iran — over 100 cities, millions of people in the streets chanting ‘death to the dictator’ and ‘end to this regime.’”

On Wednesday, Mr. Pahlavi urged Iranians to take part in coordinated chants from their streets or homes at 8:00 p.m. on Thursday and Friday.

“I call on you to begin chanting exactly at this time,” he said in a video message posted to X. “Based on your response, I will announce the next calls to action.”

Pahlavi also used social media to address Iran’s armed forces, urging them to protect civilians and warning that those who continue repression or firing at civilians will be identified and punished. He encouraged the forces to register for a secure “National Collaboration Platform” to declare allegiance to the people and separate themselves from what he described as the regime’s “sinking ship.”

Pahlavi also addressed international audiences in a new op-ed for the Washington Post, published shortly after Trump’s capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. 

In the op-ed, he described the protests as a potential turning point and praised Trump’s “clear and firm support for the Iranian people,” which has included Trump threatening to take action if the regime kills peaceful protesters. 

“For protesters facing prison, torture, or death, knowing they are not alone matters,” he wrote. “For the regime, it is a reminder that intimidation no longer guarantees survival. We saw proof of that in Venezuela.”

In the op-ed, he lays out the specifics of his plan for a peaceful transition of power in Iran, aiming to move the country from decades of clerical rule to a secular democracy. Pahlavi says he created the “Iran Prosperity Project,” a network of more than 100 Iranian experts who have “developed detailed, sector-by-sector plans for an orderly transition that preserves essential services, stabilizes the economy and restores confidence at home and abroad.”

According to Pahlavi, supporting the Iranian protesters is an “investment in global stability” to counter the regime that is known for funding terrorist networks around the world.

The State Department’s Farsi language account has taken an active role in sharing videos from the ongoing protests, including a video on Wednesday evening showing an Iranian renaming a street after President Trump.

“We honor the action of an anonymous individual in Tehran who named a street after President Trump,” the account posted. “The United States respects the voice of the Iranian people and their aspirations.”

Usually, I don’t feel any desire to play devil’s advocate. I have no interest in looking for ways to defend bad people or bad ideas. That’s not to say it’s wrong to play devil’s advocate. Generally, though, it’s not my style. I prefer to be as direct as possible.

For example, if a certain group of people — say, Somalis in Minnesota — are being dragged online by hundreds of millions of people, I feel no desire whatsoever to step in and ask an annoying contrarian question, such as, “Hey, what if these people aren’t actually so bad?”

At this point, however, I feel compelled to state one thing — just one thing — that could be considered something of a defense of the hundreds of thousands of Somalis who are currently living in Minnesota and defrauding the American taxpayer. Recently, I pointed out that the average Somali has an IQ that approaches the level of mental retardation, in part because of rampant inbreeding that affects roughly half of the population.

That’s not a talking point. It happens to be true that the typical Somali has an IQ below 70. On the Left, they’ll claim that the IQ analysis is illegitimate because Somalia is a war-torn hellscape where everyone is malnourished, so you can’t possibly administer a valid IQ test, for some reason. But they’ll never explain why, when you look at the state of Somalia, it looks an awful lot like a country run by people with an average IQ of 68. They don’t have a functioning economy, or system of government, or anything that would indicate that they’re capable of establishing or maintaining a civilization. So what explains all of that, if not for IQ? Is it climate change? White supremacy? No one knows.

In any event, I’m not here to play devil’s advocate on that particular question. The science is settled on the issue of Somali IQ. But I do think it’s worth asking an important follow-up, which naturally follows from our previous discussion.

And that follow-up question is this: If the typical Somali is indeed very dumb, then how exactly were they able to scam taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars in Minnesota alone?

Sure, their fraud schemes weren’t exactly subtle. They spelled “learning center” as “lear-ing center.” They went slack-jawed when a YouTuber with an iPhone knocked on their front door. They had no kids inside their daycares at all — and then, when CNN showed up the next day, suddenly they had some woman standing out front, insisting that indeed, she does send her children to the daycare every day from 2:00 to 10:00 PM, which just so happen to be the precise operating hours of the daycare. None of this is particularly indicative of high IQs in the community.

But at the same time, if their IQ is really hovering around 68, you’d think they wouldn’t even get this far. When your IQ is that low, you’re not just putting up signs with obvious typos for your fraudulent business. That’s more of a 75-to-85 IQ mistake. At 68 IQ, you’re barely able to comprehend the idea of a “business” at all. At that rung of the IQ spectrum, you hear about “laundering money” and you throw your cash into the washing machine. You hear about the importance of “head hunting” and you go out and literally scalp your competition. And you certainly aren’t navigating the bureaucracy of the state of Minnesota and filing lengthy forms. or anything like that.

So who exactly helped the Somalis? We know they didn’t commit all of this fraud on their own. That’s the best “defense” I can muster for these people, and it requires us to figure out — Where did the help come from? We know Democrats, from Tim Walz on down, were complicit in the fraud. They understood that they were getting scammed — the budgets alone made that obvious — and they did nothing to stop it. But that still doesn’t address the question of who, specifically, held the hands of these Somalis as they set up these fraudulent businesses.

To figure out who did hold their hands, I went looking through various online resources for citizens in Minnesota who wanted to start their own daycare. As it turns out, Blue Cross — which administers Medicaid in Minnesota — put out one such video around four years ago.

Here’s a portion of the video from a foundation established by Blue Cross. See if you notice anything unusual.

Watch:

 

Credit: Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation

Sorry, that was the Somali language version of the video that Blue Cross uploaded. Our mistake.

Here’s the English language version, which they also provided, helpfully enough. Again, see what you notice.

Watch:

Credit: Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation

In case you’re listening to the audio podcast, I need to point out that there isn’t a single white person in the entire video that Blue Cross put out. The closest we get to a white person is the woman at the end who works as “county licensor” who will help the Somalis get their daycare so they can “preserve their culture” and their “community.”

All of this is very strange, if you think about it for a second. There’s no obvious reason why Blue Cross, which is a health insurance company that manages Medicaid claims in Minnesota, would put out an instructional video specifically for Somalis who want to start daycares for other Somalis, and no one else. There’s no apparent reason why they’d want daycares to be established that exclude white children. There’s no reason they’d want to preserve Somali “culture” — and only Somali “culture.” But that’s clearly their goal, based on this video. And there are no other videos like this, on Blue Cross’ nonprofit YouTube account. They went out of their way to target Somalis, and encourage them to start daycares. There’s no video about “white daycares” that will preserve “white culture,” as you might imagine. There are no videos about Hispanic daycares or black daycares either. They’re all about Somalis, and only Somalis. So what’s going on here? Why is Blue Cross so passionate about the establishment of nonwhite, all-Somali daycares in Minnesota?

If you’re the optimistic type, you might say, “well, they want to ensure that a low-income, low-IQ immigrant population is aware of their options, when it comes to establishing daycares and healthcare clinics. Blue Cross may simply be trying to help the Somalis out.” But if that’s the case, you have to ask: Did Blue Cross notice when Somalis began defrauding Medicaid on a massive scale? Did they notice that, in many cases, this Medicaid fraud involved daycares — which received money under Medicaid when they treated patients with alleged “disabilities,” like autism? Why did it take Chris Rufo to tell us that Medicaid claims for autism in Minnesota somehow increased from $3 million to nearly $400 million, in just a few years? Why did it take a YouTuber to point out that many of the daycares are empty? Why didn’t Blue Cross blow the whistle on the obvious fraud, which presumably they would’ve noticed very quickly, since they were processing many of the claims? Why, instead, did they put out a video encouraging Somalis to set up even more daycares?

Here’s one theory. It relates to how insurers like Blue Cross, which help manage Medicaid claims, get paid. These are hypothetical numbers to illustrate the point. Let’s say there’s no fraud at all, and Blue Cross pays “autism treatment providers” $100 million dollars per year on claims for autism therapy, adult daycares, home health services and so on. The state of Minnesota would then reimburse Blue Cross $100 million via Medicaid, plus give them a 15% bonus for profit, as well as administrative expenses. (After all, Blue Cross isn’t going to process the claims for free. They need some incentives.) 15% of $100 million amounts to $15 million in profit for Blue Cross, in this scenario.

Now imagine there’s $300 million in Medicaid expenses billed to Blue Cross, $200 million of which are from Somali fraudsters. That means the total pie has now expanded significantly. 15% of $300 million is now $45 million in profit for Blue Cross. And in future years, Blue Cross will command a higher rate from the state for handling more claims. See where this is going? You can make the argument that more fraud means more money for Blue Cross in the long term — as long as that fraud is coming from Medicaid claims, which they’ll be reimbursed for. And daycares, again, are ground-zero for Somali fraud. That’s where they ran the “Feeding our Future” scam from. They said children were coming to the daycares and getting meals, when they weren’t. And many of these fraudulent “autism services” are also organized through daycares. Keep in mind that there’s no blood test for “autism,” or any clear diagnostic criteria whatsoever. The Somalis could simply declare that children had autism, and bam, the money started flowing. And that’s exactly what they did.

So with this in mind — is it possible that Blue Cross wasn’t encouraging Somalis to set up race-based daycares out of the goodness of their own hearts? Maybe they were doing it because, like everyone else in Minnesota, they were in on the scam. You’d hate to think that might be a possibility. But it’s clearly worth investigating. At a minimum, they’re not paying much attention to the programs they’re involved with, even as insurance claims grow exponentially. But whatever the case, they’re not the only ones doing it. The “State Leadership Initiative” brought this video to my attention. It’s from an organization called “Child Care Wayfinder” in Minnesota, which receives millions of dollars from the state in order to help Somalis establish daycares. They don’t simply help the Somalis file the forms. They also fund the daycares directly.

Watch:

People have been asking: How did the somalians know how to game the system? Who helped them?

Here are the NGOs proudly boasting how they helped defraud the taxpayer. First, Child Care Wayfinder.

“Wayfinder navigators are available to company through the licensing process” https://t.co/PyaAfZI4Ub pic.twitter.com/kaYSG1p1X3

— State Leadership Initiative (@RedStatesLead) January 6, 2026

Credit: @RedStatesLead/X.com

It’s not enough to go after the Somali daycares themselves. You have to look at who funded them, and helped create them. And you need to determine what they knew about the legitimacy of the businesses they were establishing. I’m not saying that this particular NGO is fraudulent. But in general, when you have armies of NGOs, flush with millions of taxpayer dollars, all setting up Somali daycares — many of which are indeed fraudulent — then at some point, you need to start raiding the NGOs and conducting some investigations into what they knew, or didn’t know.

Just the other day, we learned that Aimee Bock — the white woman who helped organize the massive “Feeding our Future” scam for the Somalis — was also listed as the point of contact for 47 day care centers in Minnesota. 

Credit: LibsofTikTok/TikTok.com

Aimee Bock was the ultimate middleman for Somali entrepreneurs — all of whom, strangely enough, wanted to start daycares. As a “nonprofit director,” she helped an awful lot of Somalis make an awful lot of profit. And then, when she was busted for a fraud scheme to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, the daycares dropped her. 

How many other Aimee Bocks are out there? We should find out. In other words, we can’t pretend that Somalis are the only ones scamming us with fake claims of “autism” and other disabilities. Yes, it’s righteous to arrest and deport every single one of them. Yes, Somalis are committing horrific crimes. And yes, their average IQ is extremely low. But Americans are also committing an awful lot of fraud. In some cases, they’re helping Somalis while lining their own pockets. In many other cases, they’re simply helping themselves.

Take for example the curious case of Graham Platner, who’s running for the Democrat Party’s nomination for U.S. Senate in Maine.

Platner is best known as the guy with the Nazi tattoo who supposedly didn’t realize it was a Nazi tattoo. What’s interesting about Graham Platner, though, isn’t the tattoo. It’s the fact that, as of now, he has a 100% disability rating from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which stems from his deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. Publicly, Platner has said that these benefits amount to roughly $5,000 a month, or $60,000 a year.

Now, wait a minute, you might say. How can someone who’s “100% disabled,” to the point that they receive a substantial amount of cash every year from the taxpayer, possibly serve as a U.S. Senator? And for that matter, how does he continue to work as an oyster farmer and harbor master, if he’s 100% disabled? In response, you might point out that, under our current laws, it’s possible to receive $60,000 a year with “100 percent disability,” while also working full-time in an extremely demanding profession. And that’s probably true; I’m not an expert in disability law. But even I can tell you, with absolute confidence, that it shouldn’t be true. If you’re capable of becoming a U.S. Senator, and if you’re capable of working on a boat for a living, then you do not need $60,000 from the taxpayer on account of your disability. Period. It doesn’t matter if you’re a veteran. It doesn’t matter if you’re a good person or a bad person. It’s a matter of common sense.

But Graham Platner, of course, is just one example of a much, much larger trend. Disability fraud in this country is rampant. And it’s extremely expensive, particularly when it comes to the VA. Something like 7% of our taxes go to VA benefits. How much of that is unnecessary spending on men like Graham Platner? How much money are we sending to fraudsters at the VA, instead of actual American service members who could use the money for their own, legitimate medical care? 

Admittedly, from a political perspective, it’s not as easy to go after fraudsters in the VA compared to, say, Somalis in Minnesota who can’t even speak English. But it’s arguably a lot more important to do so, especially since it’s a more common and more expensive problem — and again, it’s wasting resources that should be used to treat (and assist) veterans who actually need it. But apparently the VA basically operates on an honor system, where if you say you’re disabled, the money starts flowing.

Watch:

Married couple is making $142,000 per year and is on disability

The woman is making $4,700 per month from disability payments

Her husband is making $3,600 twice a month and says he will soon go on disability too and start collecting money

“This disability is forever” pic.twitter.com/W73OHbFqV0

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) June 7, 2025

Credit: @WallStreetApes/X.com

Zoom out beyond the VA, and the hundreds of billions of dollars we spend there, and the problem becomes substantially worse.  So here’s a trivia question for you: How many food stamp recipients, if you had to guess, don’t have any children? You might think the number is fairly low, since under the law, if you’re an able-bodied adult without any dependents, it’s much harder to get food stamps. As an able-bodied adult, you can’t get SNAP benefits easily, unless you meet all kinds of work requirements.

But here’s the amazing thing: 66% of SNAP recipients don’t have any children in their household. That’s roughly 26 million people (since, incredibly enough, more than 40 million people are on food stamps). Now, we’ve already discussed, on this show, how absurd it is that 40 million people in this country need food stamps in the first place. It’s an obvious farce. Most of them are obese. But the really interesting issue is that 26 million people are still getting food stamps, without kids. That shouldn’t be possible. The laws are supposed to prevent food stamps from flowing to tens of millions of able-bodied Americans with no dependents to feed.

The trick, as you might have guessed, is that tens of millions of people are pretending that they’re not, in fact, “able-bodied.” In other words, we supposedly have around 20 million “disabled” people in this country, who are so disabled that they need us to buy their food (and also pay for their disability benefits on top of that, of course). The scale of the fraud is staggering. People claim they have PTSD, or a bad back, or whatever. They have no problem finding a doctor to sign off on this. And then they just stop working. Or, as in that Graham Platner’s case, they might choose to keep working in order to double dip — it makes no difference. 

We are talking about an amount of fraud that dwarfs what’s happening in Minnesota, which is already outrageously high. And it’s no mystery why this is happening. At the highest levels of government and academia, it’s become fashionable to make disability “normal,” as part of a larger plot to normalize communism. This is a recent speech at Harvard’s public health school for example:

Credit: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health/YouTube.com

They want to make something that, by definition, is abnormal — most people are not “disabled” — and turn it into something we see all the time. And the plan is working.

This is from the Harvard Crimson.

Roughly a fifth of undergraduate students at Harvard received disability accommodations last year — an increase of more than 15 percentage points over the past decade, according to data published annually by the National Center for Education Statistics. The rise — from roughly three percent in 2014 to 21 percent in 2024 — brings the share of undergraduate students receiving accommodations at Harvard in line with the national average, which has consistently hovered around 20 percent.

Yes, the national average is now 20%. 20% of undergraduate students are supposedly “disabled.” And then, when these students go out into the real world, many of them claim to be “disabled” once again — so that you have to pay their bills. They’re victims, and they’re dependent on the system. It’s almost like, all along, the Left has done everything in its power to normalize dependency and empower the government at the same time.

As Mamdani put it, they want to destroy the “rugged individual” and make him dependent on the collective. They want a generation of professional victims. And disability fraud is one way they’re doing it.

We need to see far, far more action on this than we currently are. Yes, swarm Minnesota with ICE and DHS and the FBI. Deport the Somalis. Shut down the daycares. But when you’re done with that, work your way up. Go after the NGOs. Go after anyone — Somali or not — who’s defrauding the taxpayer by pretending to work, or pretending to be disabled, or pretending to be starving.

We aren’t talking about insignificant amounts of money here. We’re talking about a very large percentage of the tax dollars we’re forced to pay every year.  We’re talking about returning to Americans what is owed to us.