When protestors took to the streets across Iran, Reza Pahlavi – the son of the last Shah and exiled crown prince – knew what to do. He took to the airways, particularly of Donald Trump’s favourite, Fox News, and he sung the US President’s praises.
Iranians, he said, loved Trump. The people know how different he is to Barack Obama and Joe Biden. They’re inspired by him. Pahlavi said that the people of Iran are spontaneously naming streets after Trump.
That flattery duly delivered, Pahlavi got to the core of his message: Donald Trump should help topple the Iranian regime, and then once that is done, Pahlavi himself, as the son of the deposed Shah, would be available to offer his services administering an interim government.
In reality, 65-year-old Pahlavi has lived in Washington DC for most of his life, and has not been in Iran for almost 50 years. Given he fled as a teenager, he has no experience ruling or administering a nation and his claim to legitimacy relies on reinstating the tyrannical rule of the deposed Shah.
But Pahlavi knows the Trump playbook, and that is what matters. Trump doesn’t like to trouble himself with practicalities, with the law or with the realities on the ground. If he likes the look of someone, they get the job. Why bother with elections when Trump can decide what is best for everyone?
There have been some early signs Pahlavi called the situation correctly. Trump had repeatedly posted onto social media that the US would come to the aid of the Iranian protestors, and would even support them militarily – though he has subsequently walked back some of those claims, even as demonstrators are killed in their hundreds.
Pahlavi himself managed to secure a meeting last weekend with Steve Witkoff, the business executive Trump seems to trust with securing peace in Gaza, Ukraine, and now Iran, too. His claims on Fox News might not be convincing to experts on Iran, but they don’t matter – they sound good to Trump.
The reality is that Pahlavi is far from the first would-be world leader to pick up on the Trump cheat codes. Flatter the American beyond all that is reasonable, credit him with huge achievements elsewhere, tell him how beloved he is, and hint that there will be hugely profitable business opportunities for America (and perhaps his friends and family) should he do what you want.
If any world leader can be credited with discovering his playbook, it is surely Vladimir Putin, who, despite on paper being the USA’s number one adversary, has cultivated a friendly relationship with its President.
By playing into Trump’s narrative over “Russiagate” and impeachment, flattering him assiduously, and otherwise following the playbook, Putin has peeled Trump away from his Nato allies, and even from his own intelligence agencies. More than once, Trump has quoted Putin over US intelligence, in public. Putin makes Trump look easily played.
Other world leaders have tried much the same approach. Keir Starmer laid on the flattery when he visited Washington DC, presenting Trump with a hand-written invitation from the King for an unprecedented second State Visit. After his first humiliating showdown in the Oval Office, Volodymyr Zelensky made a point of wearing a suit on his return visit, and offered Trump financial deals.
María Corina Machado, having been awarded the Nobel Prize that Trump so openly coveted, tried to smother the President with flattery, eventually even going so far as to offer him her award.
But all three show the limits of flattering Trump – it works until it doesn’t. Eventually, he loses interest, forgets about the nice things that got said, or gets flattered by someone else to do something different. Unless you have his ear almost all the time, you can’t keep him on course.
Flattering Trump has delivered in the short-term for everyone, but so far neither Starmer, nor Zelensky, nor Machado have got what they want out of it. Reza Pahlavi may similarly find himself on the discard pile.
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Ultimately, one man who can successfully play Trump is Putin, and that’s because what he most needs from the US President is…nothing. For so long as Trump fails to act, fails to support Ukraine, continues to divide his own country, Putin is winning. Provided flattery keeps him from acting, Putin does fine.
Everyone else needs something from Trump, or at least from America, a country many of them had relied upon as their crucial ally on security since World War II. Flattering Trump can do many things, but so far it hasn’t delivered on that.
Trump does not seem like a difficult man to play – but so far, only Putin can hit the right notes.
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