History is rarely kind to societies that mistake collapse for liberation. Iran today stands at precisely such a crossroads. As nationwide protests intensify—from Ilam and Luristan to Kermanshah and beyond—the question dominating Western capitals and exile circles alike is not whether the Islamic Republic can endure, but what might replace it. That question, however, is being answered far too hastily, and dangerously so. For Iran, the temptation to leap from mullaism  back to monarchism would not be a cure. It would be a relapse.

The Islamic Republic is unquestionably exhausted. Its legitimacy has eroded under the weight of economic decay, moral hypocrisy, and relentless repression. Yet regime failure does not automatically confer wisdom on its alternatives. Revolutions, as Edmund Burke warned, often destroy more than they build when guided by nostalgia rather than judgment. Iran must not repeat that mistake by confusing opposition to clerical rule with endorsement of dynastic restoration.

At the heart of this debate lies Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last Shah. To some Western policymakers, he appears convenient: English-speaking, familiar, non-clerical, and safely secular in rhetoric. But convenience is not legitimacy, and familiarity is not leadership. Reza Pahlavi is not a unifying figure for Iran; he is a symbol of exclusion, historical amnesia, and political irrelevance.

The idea that Iran can be stabilized by returning to monarchism rests on a flawed reading of history. The Pahlavi dynasty did not preside over a golden age interrupted by religious fanaticism. It governed through authoritarian centralization, forced assimilation, and brutal suppression of dissent. Reza Shah Pahlavi’s rule was marked by executions, exiles, the crushing of autonomous movements, and the imposition of a singular Persian identity on a deeply diverse society. His son, Mohammad Reza Shah, refined that model with a modern security state—the SAVAK—that turned prisons into instruments of terror.

To suggest that the heir to this legacy can now serve as a national reconciler is to ignore how trauma works in politics. Societies do not forget who erased their languages, outlawed their cultures, and ruled them without consent. For Kurds, Baluchis, Ahwazi Arabs, Azeris, Turkmens, and others, the Pahlavi name does not evoke unity; it evokes domination.

Nor did the Islamic Republic break from this tradition. It inherited and perfected it. The 1979 revolution replaced the Shah’s crown with the cleric’s turban, but the architecture of power remained strikingly familiar: a centralized state, Persian-dominated institutions, enforced linguistic uniformity, and ideological exclusion—this time under the banner of Shi’a theocracy. From monarchism to mullaism, Iran did not experience liberation; it experienced continuity under a different doctrine.

This continuity is often obscured by a myth that Iran is, at its core, a homogeneous nation-state temporarily misgoverned by extremists. It is not. Iran is a state of many nations—a nations-state—whose multinational reality has been systematically denied since at least 1935, when “Persia” was renamed “Iran” to project an artificial unity. That act was not merely symbolic. It marked the beginning of a modern imperial strategy aimed at erasing diversity in the name of cohesion.

Western governments, unfortunately, continue to fall into this conceptual trap. Iran is routinely treated as synonymous with “Persian,” while non-Persian peoples are rendered invisible or dismissed as secondary. Even within the Iranian diaspora, the slogan “We are all Iranian” is often deployed not as an inclusive vision, but as a rhetorical shield against legitimate demands for autonomy, language rights, and political self-determination.

Reza Pahlavi’s political record offers little reassurance that he would break this pattern. During the 2022–2023 Jina uprising—one of the most consequential protest movements in modern Iranian history—he failed to mobilize or meaningfully represent non-Persian constituencies. His “Vekalat Midaham” campaign, touted as a popular mandate, attracted barely 400,000 signatures at its height—a negligible figure for a country of more than 85 million. Even prominent Western figures, including former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, publicly questioned the proximity of his supporters to elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, further undermining his credibility.

More damning, however, is not his weakness but what his restoration would symbolize. A return to monarchy would signal that Iran has learned nothing from a century of authoritarian engineering. It would replace clerical absolutism with dynastic nostalgia, trading turbans for crowns while leaving the centralized machinery of repression intact. That is not transition; it is substitution.

What Iran needs instead is something far more difficult—and far more necessary: a secular democratic reimagining of the state itself. Secularism, in this context, is not an ideological preference but a survival requirement. A state that privileges any religion or ethnicity in a country as diverse as Iran is structurally destined for conflict. Democracy, likewise, cannot function without decentralization. Power must flow outward, not upward.

A viable post-Islamic Republic framework must recognize the right of Iran’s nations to meaningful self-determination—through federalism, territorial autonomy, or, where demanded, internationally mediated pathways to independence. These are not radical demands; they are the unfinished business of decolonization within a state that never reconciled its internal diversity.

The fear in Western capitals is that such an approach risks fragmentation, inviting chaos akin to post-Saddam Iraq. But history suggests the opposite lesson. Iraq collapsed not because it acknowledged the difference, but because it denied it for decades. Afghanistan failed not because it decentralized too much, but because it imposed artificial central authority on societies that never consented to it. Stability built on denial is always temporary; instability rooted in justice can be resolved.

There is also a longer imperial shadow that must be acknowledged. Britain’s insistence on preserving the territorial integrity of Persia under the 1919 Anglo-Persian Treaty—primarily to secure oil and strategic control—foreclosed any possibility of genuine self-determination for non-Persian peoples. That imposed unity, designed for imperial convenience, remains one of the region’s most enduring sources of unrest.

Iran now has a rare opportunity to break from that inheritance. But it will squander that chance if it clings to symbols of a past that failed just as catastrophically as the present. Reza Pahlavi is not Iran’s future. He is its unresolved history.

The Middle East does not need another restoration disguised as reform. It needs states that reflect realities on the ground, not fantasies in exile salons. For Iran, moving forward means rejecting both mullaism and monarchism—and choosing, at last, the harder path of secular democracy, inclusion, and justice. Anything less would be jumping not from tyranny to freedom, but from fire to frying pan.

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Source: Weekly Blitz :: Writings