Iran’s exiled prince has blamed the West’s lenient policies toward Tehran for escalating tensions amid a simmering proxy war.

The proxies continue to operate in the region as a result of “an absence of strong leadership in the West and a weakness that is attempting some kind of appeasement of the Islamic regime in Iran,” Reza Pahlavi said in an interview with Jewish News Syndicate.

Referring to Iran’s involvement in radicalism, terrorism and the nuclear threat, he warned against the regional and global consequences of allowing the regime to continue to exist.

“The enemy, the Islamic regime in Iran, is committed to the max to do their evil deeds. The only way to counter that is to be united, to work together and to solve the problem,” Pahlavi remarked.

Citing Hamas’ October 7 onslaught on Israel, Iran’s exiled prince stressed that the international community needs to confront directly “the eye of the octopus,” referring to the Iranian regime.

“Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis are the tentacles of this regime that have been operating for more than four decades internationally, beyond our own region. The only way to put an end to all of this is to eliminate the source of the problems,” he went on to say.

Though Iran has avoided any direct military involvement in the Israel-Hamas conflict, the regime has used its proxy groups to attack Israeli and American targets in the Middle East.

Pahlavi called the IRGC “the de facto paramilitary mafia” which exerts its control over all aspects in Iran, urging Europe to designate it as a terrorist organization.

“That is very important because this cripples the regime and its tentacles even more,” he noted.