On the evening of Sunday, 25 October 2026, Prince Reza Pahlavi praised in a message the return of María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader, to her country. The media office of Prince Reza Pahlavi published the main sentence of the message as follows: “The return of María Corina Machado to Venezuela is an inspiration to all those who are fighting for democracy around the world.”
According to the Prince's media office, the message stresses the solidarity between the nation of Iran and the nation of Venezuela and sketches a future in which a free Iran and a free Venezuela will be firm and lasting friends to each other.
María Corina Machado returns after ten months
María Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, returned to Venezuela on Sunday, 25 October, after about ten months away from the country, and told her supporters in a short message on social media that she stands by them. She appeared among her supporters in the state of Lara in western Venezuela. Machado had left Venezuela in December 2025 with the help of an American rescue team.
Her return comes after the removal of Nicolás Maduro in a US military operation and the installation of an interim government. Machado is calling for a date to be set for the presidential election, and Edmundo González, the opposition candidate in Venezuela's 2024 election, confirmed her arrival on the country's soil.
A bond between two freedom movements
Prince Reza Pahlavi and María Corina Machado met in Washington in January 2026, a few days after Maduro's fall, and discussed the future of Iran and Venezuela. Both had called the Islamic Republic and the Maduro government two authoritarian allies that threaten the security of the region and the world. Prince Reza Pahlavi had also previously described Machado as a tireless defender of democracy and dignity in Venezuela.
The message comes in days when Prince Reza Pahlavi, in an op-ed in the newspaper Le Figaro, had asked France's presidential candidates to stand with the people of Iran, and activists inside Iran, in a message to the body awarding the 2026 Freedom Prize, called him the voice of the people of Iran.
Prince Reza Pahlavi called María Corina Machado's return the promise of a future in which a free Iran and a free Venezuela will be lasting friends.
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