Reza Pahlavi, the son of former Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, argued on Monday that the U.S. has another option to address the Iranian nuclear program and other issues with the regime, aside from diplomacy and military strikes, which have come under serious discussion by the administration in recent weeks.

Speaking at an event organized by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the National Union for Democracy in Iran, Pahlavi and others argued for a strategy of providing support for Iranian dissidents, whom he said are prepared to overthrow the regime from within. 

The event was designed to promote that policy, which supporters have dubbed “maximum support” for the Iranian people, a play on and companion to the Trump administration’s “maximum-pressure” sanctions policy.

“All I’m asking is give the Iranian people a chance to put an end to all of these concerns,” Pahlavi said. “And if we fail, you always have those options. But jumping straight from ‘diplomacy is not working’ [to] ‘let’s go bomb the hell out of them’ — once again, you’re throwing the people of Iran under the bus which will only add insult to injury.”

“I think that the Iranians have understood that the more they are in numbers, they reach that critical number where change can really happen,” Pahlavi continued. “We are getting pretty close to that number.”

He said that the weakening of the regime and its proxies provides the “perfect opportunity to finally cut the state’s head, not by an outside force doing it for us, but … by supporting a change which is a combination of external pressure and internal pressure combined to ultimately bring the regime to its knees,” Pahlavi said. “If that is successful you won’t have to worry about having military strikes. You won’t have to worry about the existential threat [to] Israel.”

Pahlavi argued further that negotiations are a “waste of time” that the regime will only use to buy time. President Donald Trump said earlier on Thursday during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office that “high-level” direct negotiations between the U.S. and Iran will begin on Saturday.

Pahlavi said that increasing defections from the regime is critical both to bringing down the regime and ensuring stability in a new government, with defectors taking places in a reconstructed post-regime government to provide stability.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), the lead sponsor of the Maximum Support Act, which aims to implement a set of policies to support the Iranian people, also spoke at the event, saying that the Iranian regime “has never been weaker,” which he attributed to Trump.

“I’m very hopeful that the success of the people of Syria should be the equivalent for the Middle East of the fall of the Berlin Wall for Europe and Central Asia, for, ultimately, the liberation of countries around the world,” Wilson said.

He argued that the U.S. “cannot meaningfully negotiate” with the Iranian regime.