Prince Reza Pahlavi vows to return Germany's Freedom Prize to Iranians in Tehran

Iran’s exiled prince Reza Pahlavi accepted Germany’s Freedom Prize on behalf of the Iranian people in Frankfurt on Saturday, the first time the award has gone to a nation rather than a person, as tens of thousands of Iranians rallied in the city for the uprising at home.

The Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom presented the 2026 prize at St. Paul’s Church, the seat of Germany’s first elected national assembly in 1848. The foundation, which is affiliated with the liberal Free Democratic Party, has awarded the prize every two years since 2006 to individuals who advance civil society and liberal values. This year it chose a nation.

“Not to any group, any party or any person,” said the foundation’s chairman, Steffen Saebisch, “but to a people: the Iranian nation.”

Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah and the best-known figure in the opposition, holds the prize in trust until, in the foundation’s words, representatives freely elected by Iranians can receive it.

Pahlavi said he had agreed to take the prize only on condition that he hold it as a custodian, not an owner.

“A custodian safeguards something of great value that belongs to someone else,” he said. “When the time comes, he returns it intact and in its entirety.”

That time, he said, was nearer than Tehran would admit. “One day, and I believe that day is closer than the dying clerical regime would like to admit, I will place it in the hands of its rightful owners, the Iranian people. Not on foreign soil, but in our capital, Tehran.”

He described the country as a house whose owners had been shut out. “For 47 years, Iran has been like a house whose residents, its rightful owners, have been locked out of their own home or held captive inside it,” he said. “The keys were taken from the people in 1979. I see it as my duty to help reclaim those keys and return them to their only rightful owners, the Iranian people.”

He paid tribute to the families of those killed in the struggle for freedom.

‘A nation willing to die for the right to vote’

Pahlavi built his speech on the building. In 1848 Germany’s first elected parliament sat in St. Paul’s Church and wrote a catalogue of rights that never took effect. In 1906, he said, merchants and intellectuals in Tehran forced the creation of Iran’s first parliament and “believed exactly what the men in this church in 1848 believed: that the nation is not the property of potentates, but of the people.”

Germany’s road ran through Weimar into Nazism, he said; Iran’s constitution was buried under a theocracy. “But this building teaches a lesson that tyrants never learn. The ideas of 1848 were not defeated.”

The church was bombed to ruins in 1944 and rebuilt by 1948, among the first buildings in the city to rise again. “A people standing in ruins chose to rebuild their house of freedom first. You did not forget liberty,” he said. “Well, neither have we.”

He described himself as a bridge. “A bridge carries people from one shore to another. One does not build a home on a bridge. You cross it, and then it has done its most important job.”

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A German lawmaker, he said, had asked him this year whether Iranians were really ready for democracy. “I will admit the question stung.” His answer: “They prove it every time they march unarmed toward men with machine guns. They prove it when they organize strikes in a country with no free unions, and spread the truth in a country with no free press. A people willing to die for the right to vote is ready to exercise the right to vote.”

He asked the families of those killed in January, who were in the hall, to stand, and the audience to rise for them. “Daughters shielded by their dying fathers. Sons killed holding their mothers’ hands. That is the Islamic Republic.”

Pahlavi defended his support for military pressure on Iran’s rulers, a position that has divided the opposition. For years, he said, he had argued against both appeasement and war, for “maximum pressure on the regime, and maximum support for the Iranian people.”

January changed that. “An unarmed people cannot be asked to defeat, with bare hands, a state prepared to kill without limit,” he said. “We needed this humanitarian intervention and we do not apologize for it.” He said the targets should be the Revolutionary Guards and “the apparatus that turns its guns on our people,” and civilians and civilian infrastructure spared. “Every innocent Iranian lost in this war is a grief I carry.”

Pressure from outside could weaken the Islamic Republic, he said, “but it cannot replace it, and it must not try to choose what comes next. That belongs to the Iranian people alone.”

He set out four principles he called four freedoms: Iran’s territorial integrity; equal rights for every citizen “whatever their language, their origin or their beliefs”; a secular state that belongs to Shia and Sunni, Baha’i, Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian and the non-religious “because it belongs to none of them, exclusively”; and the right of Iranians to choose their form of government at the ballot box.

“Please notice what is not on this list,” he said. “No name, no party, no system of government is on it, because all of those choices belong to the people. I will not take it from them. Nor will I allow others to.”

To Iranians who had written that he should not be the one to hold the prize, he said: “Thank you. You were able to make your objections freely, in German newspapers and on German streets, without fear of arrest or a bullet. That is exactly the freedom I am fighting for in Tehran.” And: “My hand is open. To monarchists and republicans. To the left and the right. We do not have to agree about the past to agree about the future.”

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He asked Germany for three things. Justice: to prosecute the crimes of January as German courts in Koblenz had tried Syrian torturers, so that “every commander still deciding whether to fire on his own people” knows “the world is keeping a record.” Connection: help Iranians stay online, because “the regime’s most important weapon on January 8 was not a rifle. It was the off switch.” And no deal over Iranians’ heads: “Any arrangement that keeps this regime in power buys a short calm and pays for it with Iranian lives.”

He cited Tehran’s support for Russia in Ukraine, the foiled plot against RAF Fairford, the 1992 Mykonos restaurant killings in Berlin and the execution of the German citizen Jamshid Sharmahd, and asked Germany to protect Iranians living under its watch from the state’s agents.

He ended with the Berlin Wall, which fell 37 years ago this week. “No one in this hall in 1988 would have dared to predict it,” he said. “That is how dictatorships end: slowly, and then all at once. That day is coming to Iran.”

‘No people paid a higher price’

Saebisch paid tribute to Iranians killed, jailed or exiled for opposing the Islamic Republic, and to “the hundreds of thousands who, despite mortal danger, take to the streets,” the women defying the morality police, and those who risk their lives to send videos out of the country. “Freedom often comes late,” he said, “but it comes.”

The foundation’s decision was driven by the January massacre, when security forces killed thousands of protesters and shut down the internet.

“I think no people in the world paid a higher price for freedom in this year,” Ludwig Theodor Heuss, a member of the foundation’s board of trustees, told the Jerusalem Post before the ceremony. “The terrible thing is that these things go on. The killing goes on.”

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Frankfurt’s mayor, Nils Kößler, said the prize was “dedicated to the people who protested and were killed in the most brutal manner,” and to “those who are in the regime’s prisons, enduring torture and facing execution at this very moment.” He ended his speech in Persian: “Be omid-e azadi,” in hope of freedom.

Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who chairs the European Parliament’s security and defense committee, said the world had stopped talking about Iranians.

“The world is negotiating over the nuclear issue and now also over the closure of the Strait of Hormuz,” she said. “But hardly anyone is talking about the people in Iran anymore.”

She called for freezing the assets of the Revolutionary Guards and their officials and for sanctions on security personnel, judges and prison authorities.

“Anyone negotiating with Tehran must never, under any circumstances, leave human rights off the table.”

“The future of Iran will not be decided by us in this church, nor by Washington, Berlin or Brussels,” she said. “Only the Iranian people will decide, freely and democratically.”

The rally

The ceremony opened a day of demonstrations around the world that organizers said were in support of the national uprising in Iran.

The gatherings began in Australia and Japan, before dawn in Europe, and are expected to continue through the day in cities across Europe, the United States and Canada. The largest is in Frankfurt, where the city moved the main rally from the riverside to Ostpark because the original site was too small for the crowd expected.

Police planned for 24,000 marchers from the Römerberg square and 30,000 at the park, where a stage and loudspeaker towers had been built overnight.

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Yasmine Pahlavi said Frankfurt police had told the couple that threats from the Islamic Republic meant her husband could not appear or speak at the rally. His office said later that he still intended to join the gathering after the ceremony.

The prize came in a week when the Islamic Republic hanged two protesters, Amirhossein Maleki, 20, and Amirhossein Ebrahimi, 19, over the Isfahan protests, and days after it executed a third man in Sistan and Baluchestan. The foundation’s Heuss said more than 70 people were executed in October alone.

The report, which the channel said was unsourced and broadcast under military censorship, did not describe the operation. It said other senior figures in the security establishment opposed it because it could cause an escalation and force the election to be postponed, but that planning went ahead until the United States learned of it and moved to stop it.

The Prime Minister's Office denied the report: "The prime minister himself clarified in real time that an attack before the Israeli elections was not on the agenda."

The account follows a run of reports in the week of the vote. On October 25, two days before the election, Channel 12 reported an "unprecedented confrontation" between Benjamin Netanyahuand the military chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, over an instruction for unspecified action involving Iran, with Zamir demanding further deliberations and signed legal authorization.

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Iran International carried that report at the time. The next day Channels 12 and 13 reported that Zamir was the only security chief to oppose the action, and the New York Times reported, citing three senior defense officials, that Netanyahu had "sought for weeks to orchestrate a new airstrike on Iran" and was blocked by Zamir.

CNN reported that Netanyahu had asked President Donald Trump to approve a joint strike before the election and that Trump refused.

Netanyahu called the October 25 report "nonsense," saying in the same interview that he had "instructed the IDF and Mossad to topple the regime" in Iran. Former prime minister Ehud Barak said on Thursday that Netanyahu had planned "a provocation" via the Mossad "behind the back of the IDF chief of staff."

Friday's report came as Qatari-mediated talks between Washington and Tehran continued. Channel 12 reported this week that Netanyahu had urged Trump to resume the war immediately after Tuesday's US midterm elections, and that Trump wanted to give the talks more time.

"We're talking to Iran," Trump told reporters on Friday. "We haven't lost a soldier in six or seven months."

Senior Iranian officials have come close to claiming credit for the Democrats' sweeping election victory, frequently pointing to US officials' acknowledgment that the war contributed to Republican losses.

Many Iranian newspapers have followed suit, dwelling on America's economic and political troubles while portraying Iran as a country growing stronger despite the war.

"Ever-Stronger Iran on the Road to Progress," one economic daily declared on its front page on Thursday. Another proclaimed "American Humiliation Continues," alongside a photograph of a seemingly dejected Trump.

The hardline daily Kayhan highlighted what it described as €127 billion in European losses resulting from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, presenting the economic damage as a measure of Tehran's success.

Largely absent from those triumphant headlines was the economic crisis that matters most to ordinary Iranians: the soaring cost of living.

The labour-focused news agency ILNA offered a starkly different picture, reporting that the estimated cost of basic household necessities had nearly doubled in seven months to 85 million tomans a month, almost six times the monthly earnings of an ordinary worker.

Labour expert Hamid Haji-Esmaeili told ILNA that inflation had become "normalised" in the thinking of Iranian officials, criticising the government's inadequate response and calling for wages to be revised midway through the year.

Pay levels set at the beginning of the Iranian calendar year no longer reflected economic realities, he argued, warning that the crisis was no longer confined to low-income workers but also affected civil servants and large sections of the middle class.

Economist Ali Ghanbari, also quoted by ILNA, described Iran as facing a "livelihood crisis", warning of a severe decline in the purchasing power of lower-income households.

Another ILNA report highlighted delayed wage payments for contract workers in Iran's southern oil-producing regions, adding to the uncertainty facing employees already struggling with inflation.

Growing calls to expand food-support programmes suggest that wages alone are no longer sufficient to protect many households from the rising cost of essential goods.

Years of inflation, currency depreciation, sanctions and inadequate investment had already eroded living standards. Two rounds of war in 2025 and 2026, and the subsequent US blockade of Iran's maritime trade, have compounded those pressures.

The government's response has come under increasing criticism, particularly over its failure to adjust wages and pensions to reflect the rapidly rising cost of living.

Pensioners have been among the most vocal groups demanding action. ILNA reported calls for authorities to restore their purchasing power immediately, as housing, healthcare and other essential expenses consumed an increasing share of their incomes.

In another report, a representative of military pensioners' organisations criticised repeated discussions about wage increases that had produced no concrete results.

He warned against creating "false hope" among pensioners frustrated by promises of financial relief that have yet to translate into higher payments.

Pensioners are among Iran's more organised social groups and have staged repeated demonstrations in recent years over inadequate incomes and rising prices.

Yet the emphasis in hardline political rhetoric remains on the costs Iran has imposed on its adversaries.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz and its impact on international energy markets have been presented as evidence of Tehran's leverage over Western economies.

Such claims of success sit uneasily alongside accounts of hardship emerging from Iran's own media, where journalists operate under restrictions on reporting deemed damaging to the Islamic Republic's image.

For workers awaiting overdue wages and pensioners demanding relief, the economic pain inflicted on Iran's adversaries offers little consolation. Their immediate concern is whether they can pay next month's rent and put food on the table.

The BBC's investigation, published Friday, drew on satellite imagery examined by analysts at MAIAR, a British intelligence analysis company. The analysts identified significant excavation and new construction at two major missile facilities, Garmdareh in Karaj near Tehran and Shahroud in northern Iran. At least 12 other military installations, including missile complexes and air bases, also showed signs of repairs.

BBC Verify identified new roofing on damaged structures at a missile base near Kermanshah in western Iran and extensive reconstruction at the Parchin military complex east of Tehran.

The findings add to growing evidence that Tehran is attempting to restore its military capabilities despite the continuing US-Israeli campaign, which began in February and targeted Iran's missile factories, launch facilities, air defenses and nuclear infrastructure.

Rebuilding a damaged military arsenal

President Donald Trump has repeatedly described Iran's military capabilities as largely destroyed. The Pentagon previously said US strikes had destroyed up to 90% of Iran's drone, ballistic missile and naval industrial base.

Other assessments, however, suggest Iran has retained significant capabilities.

In September, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing US and Middle Eastern officials, that Iran had resumed assembling ballistic missiles in underground facilities using stockpiled components. Production reportedly remained below prewar levels.

Bloomberg reported in October that Western officials believed Iran had preserved enough missile and drone manufacturing capacity to replenish its arsenals. One official also said Russia was supplying missiles, although Moscow did not confirm the claim.

An October report by the US Congressional Research Service also cited an earlier Defense Intelligence Agency assessment that Iran retained thousands of missiles and attack drones despite wartime losses and was seeking Russian and Chinese equipment and materials to replace damaged capabilities.

A separate October assessment by the Foreign Policy Research Institute offered a more cautious picture. Its satellite analysis found continued underground activity at Parchin, Khojir and Shahroud, though it concluded that major aboveground missile-production facilities remained heavily damaged.

The institute said several solid-fuel production lines were still inoperable and that substantial reconstruction and equipment replacement would be necessary before large-scale manufacturing could resume.

The latest BBC findings point to further efforts to protect surviving infrastructure.

Former CIA analyst Jim Lamson told the BBC that excavation near Shahroud could be connected to missile production, with the Revolutionary Guards potentially seeking to move manufacturing operations underground to shield them from future attacks.

At Karaj, satellite imagery appeared to show a new entrance to an underground complex, according to Sam Lair of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Iranian state television has also broadcast footage it said showed dozens of missiles outside an underground facility in southern Iran, although the footage does not establish the size or operational readiness of the country's remaining arsenal.

Construction near nuclear facilities

The reconstruction effort also extends to sites near Iran's nuclear infrastructure and facilities associated with past nuclear research.

BBC Verify identified excavation and new construction outside tunnel entrances near the city of Qom, close to the Fordow underground uranium enrichment complex, which has repeatedly been targeted by US and Israeli strikes.

At Parchin, satellite imagery also showed substantial work at the Taleghan 2 facility, including concrete reinforcement around an underground structure damaged by airstrikes.

The Institute for Science and International Security reported in September that Iran was rapidly reconstructing Taleghan 2, a facility associated with past nuclear weapons-related research. Its analysis documented construction vehicles, repairs to bomb-damaged sections and additional measures intended to protect the structure from future attacks.

Separately, the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported increased construction activity at Pickaxe Mountain, an underground complex near the Natanz nuclear facility.

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Satellite imagery showed reinforced entrances, road improvements and activity suggesting work inside the mountain. The researchers said the available evidence could not establish whether centrifuges had been transferred there or whether uranium enrichment was taking place.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has been unable to inspect Iran's bombed nuclear installations since June 2025, leaving major uncertainties about the condition of its enrichment infrastructure and nuclear material.

The combination of new underground construction, repairs to military installations and reported weapons assembly suggests a continuing effort to restore capabilities targeted throughout the war, although the extent of Iran's recovery remains uncertain.

Military rebuilding and economic pressures

Mark Cancian, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the BBC that the construction appeared intended to strengthen Iran's defenses against future attacks.

“It also indicates a priority on rebuilding military capability rather than rehabilitating the economy,” he said.

For a military campaign intended to cripple Iran's missile and nuclear capabilities, the continuing reconstruction raises questions about how lasting its results will be. Months of bombardment have inflicted extensive damage, yet Tehran continues to direct resources toward rebuilding military infrastructure, increasingly underground, while its economy deteriorates and ordinary Iranians struggle with rising costs and declining living standards.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Vance identified ending the war and reassessing relations with Israel among the priorities of voters who supported Donald Trump in 2024 but switched to Democrats in Tuesday's midterm elections.

Iran's parliament speaker and chief negotiator, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, quoted Vance's post to challenge the Trump administration's approach to the war and its relationship with Israel.

Iranian media have since offered differing interpretations of Vance's intentions and his influence over US policy.

The analytical website Vana News said the vice president's remarks highlighted differences in how senior US officials assessed the costs and future of the war, but cautioned against interpreting them as evidence of an irreconcilable rift.

“Differences in perspective do not necessarily mean a breakdown in political cooperation or an irreconcilable conflict between the president and his deputy,” Vana News wrote, adding that it remained unclear whether such differences would affect Washington's policy decisions.

‘Self-interest’

Mohsen Zahedi-Movahed, a retired diplomat and international affairs analyst, was more emphatic.

“Vance's admission that the war was the first reason voters were angry with Republicans is extremely important. How will Trump respond? The divide they wanted to create among Iranian leaders has now come back to haunt them!” he wrote on X.

Ali Nasri, a pro-government commentator, argued that Vance's apparent differences with Trump over Israel predated the Republican election defeat.

“[Vance realised] that his own political future and the survival of the entire America First movement depend on distancing himself from Israel and ending the war with Iran,” Nasri wrote on X. “We paid a heavy price to reach this position of strength,” he added.

‘Prelude to war’

But Parisa Nasr, a hardline journalist, warned against interpreting Vance's remarks as an encouraging sign, describing them as “another episode in Vance's double game.”

She accused Vance of pursuing an electoral and geopolitical manoeuvre designed to appeal to American voters while encouraging Iranian officials who favour an agreement with Washington.

Nasr also linked the remarks to mediation efforts by Qatar and Pakistan, warning that Tehran could be drawn into an agreement that would leave it vulnerable to renewed conflict.

“Even if it leads to an immediate asymmetric agreement, it is a prelude to the next war and poses a very serious danger,” she wrote.

Diplomacy continues

Asked on Wednesday whether he agreed that the war had contributed to the Republicans' defeat, Trump said it was “largely true” but defended his decision to attack Iran, insisting that military action was necessary to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

The debate over Vance's intentions comes against the backdrop of a letter he sent in late October to Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, to which Tehran has not formally responded.

According to US media reports, Vance called for the immediate start of comprehensive negotiations, including on Iran's nuclear programme, and expressed his readiness to lead the American delegation in talks with Iranian officials.

Rezaei said on October 31 that he had read the letter, delivered through Qatar, but had not yet responded. He described its tone as different from previous communications from Washington, calling it “a good sign” that demonstrated Iran had consolidated its power.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei struck a more cautious note on November 2, saying Tehran would judge Washington by its actions rather than the tone of its letters.