After September 11th, Rudy Giuliani was America’s mayor. He even won Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for his leadership in the wake of the attacks. Today, he may be Mujahadeen-e-Khalq’s (MEK) Mayor.
Mr. Giuliani is adamant that Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah “has next to no support inside the country.” Why does he have such strong convictions about the leadership of a Persian country on the opposite side of the world? Perhaps it is because of a lobbying effort by the MEK to sway the US government in their direction in the event of regime change in Iran. Giuliani is among the many former lawmakers that MEK has obtained to advocate for their cause in Iran.
Pahlavi himself has long dubbed himself the new Shah of Iran and made himself into the most well-known opposition figure to the Islamic Republic. He has spent the entirety of his adult life in the United States and cozied up to the Trump administration. At CPAC 2026, he egged on the Trump administration’s actions in Iran and notably did not push back on the president’s threats that “a whole civilization will die tonight” amidst negotiations with Iran.
There appears to be a race inside the Iranian diaspora over the fate of Iran’s government should the Islamic Republic fall. Yet few seem to ask whether it is good for America. Diaspora lobbies buy the support of prominent politicians and market themselves as allies of key lawmakers in an attempt to sway America towards their faction in their home country or towards waging the wars of their choice.
How did we reach the moment where America has become international waters––a place where the rest of the world’s conflicts are resolved on our borders?
The dilemma is not contained to just the Iranian diaspora here in America but other lobbies as well who seek to use American foreign policy for their own ends. Take the Cuban diaspora in Florida, for example.
The United States has maintained a near-total embargo on the island of Cuba since 1960 in the wake of its communist revolution. That embargo seems to have little effect on changing the regime in Cuba and more of an effect in helping to impoverish Cubans. It isn’t the destitute, trying to feed themselves day to day, who rise up in revolution.
But the embargo stays, because the Cuban diaspora in Florida wants it to stay in place. There is a reason that Florida Republicans remain the most hawkish on Cuba.
Marco Rubio remains a shining example of a diaspora community member that has directed foreign policy towards his community’s interest. Despite the Rubio family leaving Cuba before the revolution, he has a long history of marketing himself as one of the many Cuban expatriates who suffered under the Castro regime.
His career was molded through support from actual expatriates like the Cuban Sugar family, the Fanjuls. By November 2016, they had donated $500,000 to Rubio’s campaigns and marketed the memoir that helped win him his election. The Fanjuls lost much of their former sugar empire in the collectivization policies of the Castro government and funded attempts at overthrowing the regime.
Rubio now leads in Latin America policy. The removal of Nicolas Maduro, under the auspices of an arrest warrant, was likely because Rubio knows the road to Havana runs through Caracas––which provided the oil needed to keep the lights on for the Cuban regime.
And most obviously is the Israel lobby’s work, pushing for a war with Iran. Prominent donors, like Adelson’s, have long played kingmaker in the Republican Party––whether that is Marco Rubio or Donald Trump. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself came to the United States five times before “Operation Epic Fury” began, to lobby for further attacks on Iran.
At every turn, US foreign policy seems to be pushed and prodded by diaspora and foreign interest groups. The mechanism by which it occurs is far less interesting and important than the question of why it occurs.
Since the end of the Second World War, when America emerged as the world’s police and defender of “social democracy,” it did so as the most powerful country in the world. The American empire has made itself the most valuable military to manipulate in the world.
With 750 bases in over 80 countries, the US military is the most powerful asset in the world to settle your conflict of choice. If you are a diaspora Iranian, what else could you ask for than the US aircraft carriers and tomahawk cruise missiles for “liberating” your country?
As the size and scope of US action abroad grows, the stakes grow for how it is used. Diaspora groups compete with one another, attempt to buy politicians for their cause, and up the ante further for US action. It becomes a self-feeding cycle wherein US action increases its scope, which brings further foreign interest groups into the battle over US foreign policy.
The US’s involvement in the Middle East since the early 1970s had made it a force to be swung around. The Carter and Reagan administrations funded the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Operation Ajax helped to consolidate power for the Shah in 1953. It supported the Iraqi government against the government of Iran, at the same time selling weapons to the Iranian government––what we now know as the Iran-Contra affair. That support for Saddam Hussein’s government did not stop it from playing bait-and-switch with him just before the Gulf War.
If you were the Israelis, observing the sheer industrial power of the US war machine, would you do anything less than try to sway it in your favor? Would you hesitate to use it as a weapon against your regional enemies: Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, and now Iran?
The solution, the means by which to make US foreign policy serve Americans, is to rein in the scope and size of that policy. Reducing the stakes of US action abroad, letting other countries pick up the tab of their own defense, will remove the reasons that diaspora groups and lobbies will try to sway US foreign policy.
Removing the gun from the table will stop the mad dash for it. America’s foreign policy should not be captive to diaspora lobbies. If—and that is a big if—American policy is meant to serve Americans, then the diaspora and foreign lobbies must play a lesser role––that is only achieved by getting out of their business and not being the tool they want to use.
The average American does not view foreign policy as one of their most important issues, leaving it relegated to the realm of “experts” and special interest groups. Foreign affairs will serve the average American far better at a smaller, more regional scale. Until then, the organized minority will benefit at the expense of the disorganized minority.
