The crowd cheers as Ebba Busch (KD), in front of a portrait of the Iranian monarch, shouts "javid shah" - "long live the Shah" in Persian - during a demonstration with supporters of the Shah's son, Reza Pahlavi, in mid-March.
On Monday, the king's son will visit the Swedish parliament after being invited by the Christian Democrats and the Sweden Democrats, whose members met Pahlavi at the Munich Security Conference.
Debated
According to information provided to TT, which parliament building should be used for the visit has been debated, so the gathering cannot be seen as an official parliamentary endorsement of Pahlavi.
Outside the Riksdag building, Swedish-Iranians are expected to gather; they have coordinated bus trips from Gothenburg and Malmö to show their support for Pahlavi. A short distance away, counter-protesters are expected to gather.
In the weeks since the demonstration at Norra Bantorget in Stockholm, Ebba Busch has downplayed her support for the crown prince. She told TT on Wednesday that the fact he was invited by her party group should not be seen as backing Pahlavi as Iran's leader, but as support for the Iranian people's struggle for freedom:
Then we need to support the opposition forces that exist and that want to see a free and democratic Iran. Reza Pahlavi is one of them.
But Pahlavi has not been to Iran since he was 17, when his father was overthrown in 1979 during the popular uprising that led to the Islamic Republic.
"Controversial figure"
While some see the now 65-year-old as the only possible alternative to the current regime, other Iranians recall that the Pahlavi family ruled the country as a police state, where dissidents were imprisoned and tortured.
The Green Party's foreign policy spokesperson, Jacob Risberg, is critical of the invitation:
He is a very controversial figure, and to believe he could be a unifying force for the opposition is, I think, very naive. But the big problem, above all, is that it legitimizes him as an obvious opposition leader.
Iran and its predecessor kingdoms had ruling monarchs from the 6th century BCE. The Pahlavi dynasty was the last before the 1979 revolution.
The military commander Reza Khan seized power in a coup d'état and was crowned shah (king) as Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1925. In 1933, he signed an agreement with the British oil company Anglo-Iranian to extract Iran's oil.
After World War II, when Iran was under British and Soviet occupation, Reza was forced to abdicate. His son Mohammad Reza was crowned Shah and forged close ties with the United States.
In 1951, Mohammad Mosaddegh was elected prime minister and he decided to nationalize the country's oil resources. In 1953, loyal military officers, with the help of the American CIA, carried out a coup d'état in which Mosaddegh was deposed. A new oil agreement was signed.
Repression of dissent gained momentum. The Shah gradually became an autocratic ruler. Oil brought large revenues, but economic disparities grew. In the late 1970s, resistance exploded into nationwide protests and revolution.
