The son of Iran’s late shah said Friday he was confident that mass protests would topple the Islamic republic and urged international action, as US President Donald Trump holds off on intervening in the unrest.Reza Pahlavi, who lives in exile in the Washington area, has presented himself as leader of the opposition as the cleric-run state ruthlessly represses mass protests.”The Islamic republic will fall — not if, but when,” Pahlavi told a news conference in Washington.Since the demonstrations erupted in late December with a rallying cry of solving Iran’s severe economic woes, Pahlavi has pleaded for US intervention.Trump had repeatedly warned Iran that if it kills protesters, the United States would intervene militarily. He also encouraged Iranians to take over state institutions, saying “help is on the way.”But two weeks after he first suggested help, he has not acted. Security forces in the meantime have killed at least 3,428 protesters, according to Norway-based group Iran Human Rights, with other estimates putting the toll at more than 5,000 or possibly as high as 20,000.Trump instead has highlighted what he said was an end to the killing of protesters, as the size of demonstrations diminished in recent days.Trump wrote Friday on his Truth Social platform that Iran had called off executions of hundreds of protesters and said to the clerical state, “Thank you!”Pahlavi also took to social media Friday, with posts on X and Instagram calling for Iranians across the country to “raise your voices in anger and protest with our national slogans” at 8:00 pm on Saturday and Sunday.Pahlavi, seeking to touch a nerve with Trump, called on him not to be like Democratic predecessor Barack Obama who negotiated with Tehran.”I believe that President Trump is a man of his word and ultimately he will stand with the Iranian people as he has said,” Pahlavi said when asked if Trump had given false hope.”Iranian people are taking decisive actions on the ground. It is now time for the international community to join them fully.”Gulf Arab monarchies, despite frequent friction with Iran, have urged Trump to show caution.- ‘Surgical’ strikes -Pahlavi called for targeting the command structure of the elite Revolutionary Guards, as it is key to “instituting terror at home or terrorism abroad.””I’m calling for a surgical strike,” said Pahlavi, who controversially backed Israel’s military campaign on Iran in June.He also urged all countries to expel diplomats from Iran and to help restore internet access, which has been severely hampered.Many protesters have chanted the name of Pahlavi, whose pro-Western father fled in 1979 in the Islamic revolution.While Iran’s last Shah presented a glamorous image of the oil-rich nation to the world — replete with caviar, glittering crown jewels and a jet-setter lifestyle — domestically, repression and the brutality of his secret police force as well as a lack of economic mobility opened the door to political challenge.Asked about repression under his father, Pahlavi told reporters, “I let historians write history. I’m here to make history.”Pahlavi, 65, said he wants to be a figurehead to lead a transition to a secular democracy, with a popular referendum to choose the next system of government.He also has plenty of detractors who suspect a desire by his supporters to restore the monarchy and say changes should come from the opposition within Iran.”I reaffirm my lifelong pledge to lead the movement that will take back our country from the anti-Iranian hostile force that occupies it and kills its children,” Pahlavi said.”I will return to Iran.”Pahlavi promised that a new Iran would have better relations with the leadership’s sworn enemies — the United States and Israel — and integrate into the global economy.He said Iran would quickly normalize relations with Israel in a “Cyrus Accord,” a reference to Cyrus the Great, the celebrated Persian emperor who freed Jews from Babylonian captivity.”Iran today should have been the next South Korea of the Middle East,” he said. “Today we have become North Korea.”

US immigration agents now remind many Americans of the Gestapo — and not just the left-wing activists who have taken to the streets to protest violent raids commanded by President Donald Trump.Avid Trump supporter and podcaster Joe Rogan, whose massive audience heard him repeat Republican talking points in the run-up to the 2024 election, fueled debate this week by airing those concerns.”Are we really gonna be the Gestapo, ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?” Rogan asked millions of listeners.”You don’t want militarized people in the streets just roaming around, snatching up people — many of which turn out to be US citizens that just don’t have their papers on them,” he said.A growing number of Americans agree with that sentiment. In every national poll, a majority condemns the actions of the immigration officer who shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good, a US citizen, in Minneapolis on January 7.A Quinnipiac survey found that 57 percent of voters condemn ICE’s methods, with 94 percent of Democratic voters and 64 percent of independents against Republicans, by contrast, support them at 84 percent.Another poll from Economist/YouGov found that, for the first time, 46 percent of respondents support abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), exceeding the 43 percent who oppose getting rid of it.- ‘Swing voter’ -“The most useful way to think about Joe Rogan is as America’s most famous swing voter,” left-wing commentator Ben Burgis posted on X this week.Rogan wasn’t the pliant conservative megaphone White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt may have had in mind when she reaffirmed the Trump administration’s hard line of the ICE officer’s innocence.ICE agents “are simply trying to enforce the law and the Democratic Party has demeaned these individuals,” Leavitt told reporters Thursday.”They’ve even referred to them as Nazis and as the Gestapo, and that is absolutely leading to the violence we’re seeing in the streets,” she added. Beyond differences on policy or polemics, the methods used by the masked and sometimes heavily armed federal agents run counter to deeply rooted principles within American political and legal culture, Steven Schwinn, a law professor at University of Illinois, Chicago, told AFP.During chaotic raids in Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis —  all Democratic strongholds across the country — Schwinn points to the identity checks and stops that have outraged Rogan, because such stops were only authorized with “reasonable suspicion,” a standard used by law enforcement to stop people in the United States.- ‘Absolute immunity’ -When ICE agents demand peaceful protesters produce their papers, or when they target people solely on the basis of their perceived ethnicity, “a lot of folks associate that with dictatorial and authoritarian regimes,” Schwinn said. “What is happening with ICE is unprecedented,” Schwinn added, both in the scale of the deployment — federal agents now number 22,000 nationwide, compared with 10,000 a year ago, according to the Department of Homeland Security — and in the protection they seem to enjoy from the White House.Senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller has said all ICE officers have “federal immunity” to conduct their raids, adding “anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony.” Vice President JD Vance agreed, saying the agent who shot and killed Good in Minnesota “is protected by absolute immunity.”Legal experts and local officials, including prosecutors, have denounced those views.And according to Axios, the Trump administration has conducted its own polling and found support for immigration police is eroding, even among right-leaning voters.An anonymous senior advisor told the site Friday that the president “wants mass deportations. What he doesn’t want is what people are seeing. He doesn’t like the way it looks. It looks bad, so he’s expressed some discomfort at that.”

President Donald Trump’s administration is finalizing its repeal of a foundational scientific determination that underpins the US government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, with an announcement expected in the coming weeks.The Environmental Protection Agency proposed reversing the 2009 Endangerment Finding last July. After a public comment period that drew more than half a million submissions, the proposed final rule was sent to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget for review on January 7, records show.Here’s what to know.- What it is -The 2009 finding concluded that six greenhouse gases — including carbon dioxide and methane — endanger public health and welfare by driving climate change.That determination flowed from a 2007 Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, which ruled that greenhouse gases qualify as pollutants under the Clean Air Act and directed the EPA to determine whether they pose a danger to public health and welfare.Although then president George W. Bush’s administration delayed acting on the ruling, the EPA under president Barack Obama concluded that six greenhouse gases met the legal threshold for regulation.While the finding initially applied only to a section of the Clean Air Act governing vehicle emissions, it was later incorporated into other regulations, including limits on carbon dioxide from power plants and methane from oil and gas operations.As a result, repealing the finding would immediately affect vehicle emissions rules, while placing a broader suite of climate regulations in legal jeopardy.”If finalized, it would be the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States of America,” EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said Friday at Ford’s Ohio Assembly Plant where he and other officials touted policies they said would lower vehicle prices. – The Trump administration’s arguments -The administration’s draft proposal rests on both legal and scientific arguments.Procedurally, it argues that greenhouse gases should not be treated as pollutants in the traditional sense because their effects on human health are indirect and global rather than local. Regulating them within US borders, it contends, cannot meaningfully resolve a worldwide problem.On the scientific front, the administration has sought to downplay the scale and impacts of human-caused climate change. It commissioned a Department of Energy working group filled with skeptics of human-caused climate change to produce a report challenging the scientific consensus.That report was widely criticized for misattribution and for misstating the conclusions of the studies it cited. Environmental groups sued the Energy Department, alleging the panel was convened behind closed doors in violation of federal rules. Energy Secretary Chris Wright later disbanded the group.- What happens next -Environmental organizations are expected to move quickly to challenge the rule in court.Challengers point out that despite the current conservative-dominated Supreme Court’s willingness to overturn precedent, the Endangerment Finding has survived multiple challenges and the underlying case Massachusetts v. EPA remains in effect.”Their efforts to undo the Endangerment Finding are the latest evidence that President Trump is trying to remake the Environmental Protection Agency into the Polluter Protection Agency,” Manish Bapna of the Natural Resources Defense Council said. “If the EPA follows through and tries to repeal the Endangerment Finding, we will see them in court.”

US President Donald Trump on Friday gave a key role in post-war Gaza to former British prime minister Tony Blair and appointed a US officer to lead a nascent security force.Trump named members of a board to help supervise Gaza that was dominated by Americans, as he promotes a controversial vision of economic development in a territory that lies in rubble after two-plus years of relentless Israeli bombardment.The step came after a Palestinian committee of technocrats meant to govern Gaza held its first meeting in Cairo which was attended by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who plays a key role on the Middle East.Trump has already declared himself the chair of a “Board of Peace” and on Friday announced its full membership that will include Blair as well as senior Americans — Kushner, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s business partner turned globe-trotting negotiator.Blair is a controversial figure in the Middle East because of his role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Trump himself said last year that he wanted to make sure Blair was an “acceptable choice to everybody.”Blair spent years focused on the Israeli-Palestinian issue as representative of the “Middle East Quartet” — the United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia — after leaving Downing Street in 2007.The White House said the Board of Peace will take on issues such as “governance capacity-building, regional relations, reconstruction, investment attraction, large-scale funding and capital mobilization.”Trump, a real-estate developer, has previously mused about turning devastated Gaza into a Riviera-style area of resorts, although he has backed away from calls to forcibly displace the population.The other members of the board are World Bank President Ajay Banga, an Indian-born American businessman; billionaire US financier Marc Rowan; and Robert Gabriel, a loyal Trump aide who serves on the National Security Council.- Israel strikes -Israel’s military said Friday it had again hit the Gaza Strip in response to a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire declared in October.The strikes come despite Washington announcing that the Gaza plan had gone on to a second phrase — from implementing the ceasefire to disarming Hamas, whose October, 2023 attack on Israel prompted the massive Israeli offensive.Trump on Friday named US Major General Jasper Jeffers to head the International Stabilization Force, which will be tasked with providing security in Gaza and training a new police force to succeed Hamas.Jeffers, from special operations in US Central Command, in late 2024 was put in charge of monitoring a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, which has continued periodic strikes aimed at Hezbollah militants.The United States has been searching the world for countries to contribute to the force, with Indonesia an early volunteer.But diplomats expect challenges in seeing countries send troops so long as Hamas does not agree to disarm fully.- Committee begins work -Gaza native and former Palestinian Authority deputy minister Ali Shaath was earlier tapped to head the governing committee.The committee’s meeting in Cairo also included Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov, who was given a role of high representative liaising between the new governing body and Trump’s Board of Peace. Committee members are scheduled to meet again Saturday, one of them told AFP on condition of anonymity.”We hope to go to Gaza next week or the week after; our work is there, and we need to be there,” he said.Trump also named a second “executive board” that appears designed to have a more advisory role.Blair, Witkoff and Mladenov will serve on it as well as Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.Israel has refused a Turkish role in the security force, owing to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s fiery denunciations of Israel’s actions in Gaza. The board will also include senior figures from mediators Egypt and Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, which normalized ties with Israel in 2020.Trump also named to the board Sigrid Kaag, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, despite his administration’s efforts to sideline the world body.