Reza Pahlavi, the exiled former crown prince of Iran, is positioning himself as the “transitional” leader if the Islamic Republic collapses.

“The assistance that the President of the United States had promised to the brave people of Iran has now arrived,” Pahlavi posted in a video statement. “This is a humanitarian intervention, and its target is the Islamic Republic, its apparatus of repression, and its machinery of killing—not the country and great nation of Iran.”