Iranian Assets Must Serve the Iranian People

A Crisis Management and Change Leadership Perspective

When frozen or restricted Iranian assets are discussed in Western capitals, the conversation defaults to the technical: sanctions architecture, legal penalties, negotiation leverage, and regional compensation. But anyone with serious experience in change leadership knows that framing a crisis through the wrong lens is one of the most dangerous mistakes leaders can make. It shapes everything that follows: the decisions, the priorities, the stakeholders you include, and ultimately the outcomes you produce.

Frozen assets are the Iranian people’s money.

Diagnosing the Crisis Before Prescribing the Solution

In crisis management, one of the cardinal rules is to resist the pressure to jump to solutions before you have accurately diagnosed the problem. Poorly diagnosed crises produce solutions that address symptoms while the underlying issue deepens.

The Western narrative treats the Iranian crisis as a regional security problem: a rogue regime, destabilizing proxies, nuclear ambitions. That diagnosis leads to a predictable set of tools: sanctions and then deals. Those tools have been applied for over four decades. They have not resolved the crisis.

A proper crisis diagnosis must ask: What is the root cause? And who is the primary victim? The answers change the approach entirely. The primary victims of this crisis are the Iranian people, and the root cause of all issues in the region is the regime’s existence.

The Change Leadership Dimension: Who Owns the Transition?

In change leadership, one of the most consequential questions is: who owns the change, and who must live with its results?

When a transition is designed around those who hold power, rather than those who must live through and after the change, it fails. Real transformation requires centering the people who bear the costs, and who need the new system to function. The Islamic regime does not own Iran’s future. It occupies Iran’s institutions. The Iranian people own the future, and they will be the ones who must navigate the transition, restore economic function, and help the country achieve stability after the regime’s fall. This directly shapes what we should do with the assets in question.

What Crisis Management Teaches Us About Transition Resources

Every serious crisis recovery requires three things to succeed: legitimacy, sequencing, and resources. Remove any one of these, and the recovery fails.

Legitimacy means that the people affected by the crisis must trust that the response serves them. Any policy that is seen as rewarding the regime or redirecting national resources to serve other states’ interests will deepen the issues. Sequencing means recognizing that the first months after a regime’s fall are crucial. Resources mean that the post-regime transition is not free. Communication infrastructure must be maintained or restored. Public sector workers must be paid. Emergency services must continue. International support must be coordinated. Reconstruction must begin. These are requirements.

This is precisely why an initiative like the Iran Prosperity Project under Prince Reza Pahlavi’s leadership is not an optional exercise. It is essential work. In change leadership, we know that the transformation starts long before the visible moment of change. The planning, resourcing, and sequencing that happen before the transition ensure success.

Two Operational Priorities

Applying a crisis-management mindset to the question of Iranian assets yields two clear operational priorities.

The first is enabling the conditions for change itself. The authoritarian control is inseparable from information control. The regime can shut down the internet and isolate citizens from each other and from the outside world. In a crisis, communication is not a luxury. It is core infrastructure. Therefore, part of these assets should support direct empowerment of Iranian citizens: secure communication platforms, independent internet access, satellite connectivity such as Starlink and equivalent systems, and digital resilience tools. This is the crisis management equivalent of restoring power and communication lines after a disaster, and it is a prerequisite for everything else.

The second priority is a protected transition and reconstruction fund. In change leadership, we know that resources available at the moment of transition determine what choices are possible.

A protected Iranian people’s transition fund, with transparent governance that is described in the Iran Prosperity Project, addresses these directly. It would be a resource reserve for the Iranian people, activated at the moment of change and applied to the sequenced priorities of stabilization and reconstruction.

Trust: The Asset That Cannot Be Recovered After It Is Lost

In both crisis management and change leadership, trust is the most critical and most fragile resource. It is built through consistent alignment between stated values and observed actions. It is destroyed by the perception of betrayal.

If Western governments return frozen Iranian assets to the Islamic regime through a negotiated deal, that will damage trust in Western intentions at precisely the moment when trust will be most needed. If those same assets are redirected entirely to other states as compensation for the regime’s regional actions, a different but equally damaging message is sent: that Iranians bear the financial consequences of a government they did not choose, did not support, and actively resist.

Both paths are trust-destroying. Both are also strategically counterproductive.

The path that is both ethically correct and strategically sound is to treat these assets as the property of the Iranian nation, to preserve them, protect them, and deploy them for the Iranian people’s transition, stabilization, and reconstruction.

The Leadership Principle

There is a principle in change leadership that applies directly here: transformation is not an event. It is a process that begins well before the visible moment of change, and it succeeds or fails based on what was prepared in advance.

The West has had decades of engagement with the Iran crisis. The question is whether that engagement has been invested in genuinely understanding the Iranian people’s needs and preparing for the transition they will require, or whether it has been invested primarily in unsuccessfully managing the regime’s behavior for geopolitical convenience.

The answer to that question will be demonstrated not in declarations, but in decisions. And one of the clearest decisions available right now is this: protect Iranian assets for the Iranian people. Do not return them to the regime. Do not trade them away. Do not treat them as compensation owed to other states for the regime’s conduct.

Use them to support the change Iranians are seeking: Regime Change. Use them to fund the transition they will need after the regime falls.

In crisis management, we say that the worst time to plan for recovery is after the crisis has already arrived. The planning must happen now. The resources must be protected now. The frameworks must be prepared now.

The assets that belong to the Iranian nation should be part of making that readiness real.

– Alan Bostakian, PhD