Iran Freedom Prize: Pahlavi as Trustee

Featured image: St. Paul’s Church (Paulskirche) in Frankfurt, where the Friedrich Naumann Foundation presents its Freedom Prize. Photo: Elihbeckman / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Germany’s Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom will present its 2026 Freedom Prize to “the Iranian people” on Saturday, Nov. 7, at St. Paul’s Church in Frankfurt, with exiled opposition figure Reza Pahlavi accepting the award in trust. The foundation, which runs the website freiheit.org, announced the decision on Sept. 14, and the choice of Pahlavi as trustee has drawn an open letter of protest from critics in Germany.

What the Freedom Prize 2026 is and how it will be awarded

According to the foundation’s English-language announcement, the prize is going to a collective recipient rather than a single person. The foundation said it honors Iranians who have pushed for civil rights and democracy, and is dedicated in particular to people killed, persecuted or imprisoned for that activity. It listed women, students, journalists, workers and families among those it wanted to recognize.

Pahlavi is set to hold the award “in a fiduciary capacity.” The foundation said it would keep that arrangement until the prize can be handed to what it called “the freely elected representatives of Iran.”

Steffen Saebisch, chairman of the foundation’s board, said in the release: “The Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom is deliberately awarding the Freedom Prize to the Iranian people rather than to an individual.” He added that the foundation was “pleased that Reza Pahlavi is accepting to receive the award in trust on behalf of the Iranian people.”

The event program lists a ceremony from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. local time. Speakers include Frankfurt official Nils Kößler, European Parliament defense committee chair Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann and FDP politician Bijan Djir-Sarai, who will give the laudatory speech. Pahlavi is scheduled to accept the prize and speak, and the event ends with the German folk song “Die Gedanken sind frei” (“Thoughts Are Free”). ZDF anchor Gundula Gause is listed as moderator. Admission is free, but registration is required, and the foundation said security measures limit seating in the hall. A livestream is planned.

The Friedrich Naumann Foundation and the prize’s past winners

The Friedrich Naumann Foundation is a German political foundation associated with the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) and based in Potsdam. It has given the Freedom Prize every two years since 2006. The foundation says the prize recognizes “outstanding commitment to the development of a liberal civil society.”

Past recipients, as listed on the German Wikipedia entry for the award, include former German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher (2006), Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa (2008), sociologist Necla Kelek (2010), philosopher Wolfgang Kersting (2012), South African politician Helen Zille (2014), former Swiss finance minister Kaspar Villiger (2016), former German president Joachim Gauck (2018), publisher Friede Springer (2020), Slovak president Zuzana Čaputová (2022) and Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza (2024). The 2026 award is the first in that list to go to a whole population rather than a named individual.

The venue carries weight in Germany. St. Paul’s Church hosted the Frankfurt National Assembly of 1848–49, the country’s first freely elected parliament, as the Frankfurter Rundschau noted in its coverage.

Who is Reza Pahlavi?

Reza Pahlavi, 65, is the eldest son of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, Iran’s last shah, who was overthrown in the 1979 revolution. He has lived in exile, mostly in the United States, since before the revolution and still uses the title crown prince. Iran International, a London-based Persian-language broadcaster, described him as the “exiled prince” in reporting the foundation’s announcement.

The foundation said it chose Pahlavi because he is “the best-known personality of the Iranian opposition.” It said he does not advocate a particular form of government as long as it is democratic, and that he says Iranians themselves must decide Iran’s future political order. It also cited his calls to end Iran-backed conflicts in the Middle East and for reconciliation with Israel.

The award comes during a turbulent year for Iran. The Boston Report has covered the wider unrest in its timeline of the Iran protests and Boston’s Iranian community, and the military conflict in its Iran War Tracker.

Criticism: an open letter and objections in Frankfurt

The choice of Pahlavi as trustee is disputed. The Frankfurter Rundschau reported that 71 public figures signed an open letter asking the foundation not to make Pahlavi the recipient. The signers cited the June 1967 protests in West Berlin against the shah’s state visit, when, they wrote, agents of SAVAK, the shah’s secret police, attacked demonstrators. They wrote that the arrangement gives the shah’s “son and political heir” representative legitimacy, “although he has publicly defended” that government’s repression, and that it undermines the prize’s purpose.

The same report said the letter referred to Pahlavi’s appearance at Berlin’s Federal Press Conference in April, after which a journalist from the newspaper taz was insulted and threatened online by people identified as his supporters.

The Left Party (Die Linke) group on Frankfurt’s city council also objected. Its spokesperson Mona Waissi was quoted as saying that Pahlavi’s “advocacy of the bombing of Iran by the USA and Israel is incompatible with values of peace and international law.” The Frankfurter Rundschau reported that Pahlavi had called in mid-February for U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran to weaken its government.

The foundation’s response

Saebisch answered the open letter in writing, according to the Frankfurter Rundschau. “We do not share your criticism,” he wrote, adding that the foundation knew of “no other personality from the Iranian opposition spectrum” with comparable public reach and support. He wrote that Pahlavi’s public statements are “clearly not to be understood as a continuation of the policies of his father and his government.”

The Boston Report found no public comment from Pahlavi’s office on the criticism as of Oct. 24. The ceremony is scheduled for Nov. 7.

Sources

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German Foundation Gives Freedom Prize to Iranian People, With Reza Pahlavi as Trustee