In an interview with Newsweek, Iran's exiled Prince, Reza Pahlavi said President Joe Biden’s return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal would be a “grave error” and giving into the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear blackmail”.

The son of the former Shah of Iran also said that the Biden administration’s decision to “show its hand before it even came to office has caused the regime to scurry to increase the magnitude of its threat with more and higher enrichment of a nuclear bomb's primary material."

Prince Reza Pahlavi emphasized that the Iranian people continue to suffer from corruption, incompetence, and brutal suppression, adding that if the regime really cared about the Iranian people, it would stop funding the bombs used to kill Syrian children and feed its own people.

"After 42 years of governing beliefs from the Dark Ages, the Iranian people know who is responsible for the evisceration of their standard of living and their most basic social and political freedoms," he added.

Calling the Islamic Republic "an apartheid regime”, he offered the example of South Africa and Nelson Mandela who had urged the international community to sanction the apartheid regime of South Africa, because he had realized that victory could only be achieved through struggle, including through international sanction campaigns.

In 2018, President Donald Trump unilaterally took the United States out of the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration, which many critics said was a weak agreement with sunset clauses that would not ultimately prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. President Trump then began what he called a 'maximum pressure' campaign by sanctioning Iran’s crude oil exports and key industries, along with many officials engaged in curcumventing sanctions, money laundering or supporting Iran's proxies in the region.

In the past three years, there have been several countrywide uprisings in Iran against high taxes, inflation, and corruption, all receiving brutal responses by the Islamic Republic security forces. In November of 2019, the Islamic Republic suppressed an uprising in over 100 cities with killing hundreds of protesters. Thousands were arrested and many received heavy prison sentences, and some were executed later.

President Biden in his presidential campaign promised to return to the 2015 nuclear deal. A promise that seems to get more and more difficult to keep since the European allies of the US are now against a simple return to the deal and have asked for a stricter deal that would also involve other Middle Eastern countries including Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Mr Pahlavi concluded: "I have no personal ambition, which is why many Iranians listen to and trust me. If I symbolize something to my compatriots, it is not about a return to the past, it is about the future. It is a vision for a different and better future."