The Iranian people have overwhelmingly but not unanimously crowned Reza Pahlavi as the leader of their counterrevolution. Other opposition leaders, however, still have significant support. The success of the counterrevolution and the viability of a new Iran require all legitimate factions to cooperate now and accept Pahlavi as their interim leader.
In 2022, the Iranian opposition formed a coalition at a conference held at Georgetown University. Several figures joined forces to take down the Islamic Republic, but the coalition collapsed. The key reason was that Pahlavi believed that he alone deserved to lead it. Perhaps he was right. A successful democracy requires coalition politics, but a successful revolution needs an individual leader.
A successful democracy requires coalition politics, but a successful revolution needs an individual leader.
Pahlavi has worked hard to settle this question. In 2010, diaspora members launched a new satellite network called Manoto. Its production level was higher than its competitors, and its content was mostly entertainment, with a subtext of pre-revolutionary cultural nostalgia. Immediately, it dominated Iranian homes. A year later, the network began airing documentaries celebrating Iran’s progress during the Pahlavis’ rule. Two generations after the revolution, it sought to revive the Pahlavi name. As his family’s popularity recovered, so, too, did the crown prince’s standing. By the time of the Georgetown Coalition, Pahlavi had become the most dominant figure in the opposition.
Other oppositionists claim that he sabotaged the coalition. They are right. But since then, fairly or unfairly, they have faded into obscurity, while Pahlavi spent his resources to organize a three-faceted movement: among the domestic opposition, within the regime, and in the diaspora.
Pahlavi augments his legitimacy by claiming the purity of being the only opposition figure who never compromised with the regime. Such a claim deserves a footnote, though; he did offer to cooperate with insiders to end the regime and some of his subordinates are former reformists. In contrast, internal opposition such as Mostafa Tajzadeh and Narges Mohammadi tried to work within the system. Both are in prison, but many Iranians cannot overlook their past despite the price they currently pay. Masih Alinejad is a capable journalist and activist. She has been such a thorn in the regime’s eye that the Islamic Republic tried to kidnap her on U.S. soil. Many Iranians see her previous work as a reformist journalist to be disqualifying.
Other minor diaspora figures such as Hamed Esmaeilion marginalize themselves by embracing leftist views and anti-Zionism at a time Iranians have become more right-wing and look to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu as saviors. Certainly, leftism exists in Iran, but the leftist association as enablers to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution undermines their broader allure.
A constitutional monarch could keep the country together while Iranians establish institutions to allow civil society to take root and grow.
The case for Pahlavi is stronger than the fact that he has emerged atop the scrum of a fissiparous opposition. Monarchy may be necessary to hold Iran together. Iran is ethnically diverse, even as ethnicity is fluid. Iranians are traditionally anxious about separatism. Iranians speak about “Turkmenchay” and “Golestan,” nineteenth-century treaties that saw the loss of territory to foreign powers, as shorthand for treasonous diplomacy. Here, the regime may purposely fan the flames of paranoia about separatism. The “white SIM card” scandal exposed that the regime backed separatist X accounts in the hope that the fear of disintegration would deter people from revolting.
Monarchy serves another function. Iran today lacks the necessary institutions for democracy. Without religion, civil society, political and civic education, or a living memory of democratic governance, representative government will likely devolve into ethnic tribalism. A constitutional monarch could keep the country together while Iranians establish institutions to allow civil society to take root and grow.
Pahlavi is a flawed figure, but is the only option left. His opponents fear that conceding leadership to him would repeat the 1978 mistake when the opposition deferred to Khomeini as a figure head, only to have him consolidate autocratic control and purge all those who did not mirror his theocratic vision.
Rallying around Pahlavi, however, need not mean repeating history. There are important differences. First, the Iran-Iraq War allowed Khomeini to eliminate his rivals under the guise of an existential threat to Iran. Such a threat does not exist today. Second, his partners gave him unconditional support. Even Tudeh Party chairman Noureddin Kianouri said that Communist women should wear the revolutionary chador. Pahlavi’s opponents should do the opposite. They should meet and agree on the outlines of a provisional government led by Pahlavi in exchange for conditional support to carry over while Iranians write a new constitution and elect a new government.
