Many Iranians who oppose the Islamic Republic are not dreaming of a return to the Shah. They are afraid of something else entirely: that yet another authoritarian system will be installed without their consent, marketed as a solution from abroad.
Iran Between Two Regimes and No Real Choice
I know a lot of people from Iran. Some still have family there. Most of them left years ago, and none of them left by choice. They left because staying became impossible, or dangerous, or simply incompatible with having a future. Some fled under the Shah’s regime, others under the Islamic Republic. Different rulers, different justifications, but the same outcome: exile as the least bad option.
We talk politics a lot. Partly because it is impossible not to when your country appears in the news week after week, usually framed as a crisis, a threat, or a problem to be solved by others. And partly because I studied political science, and they appreciate having someone to talk to who does not treat their lives as abstract examples or reduce a complex society to a slogan, a regime label, or a trending hashtag.
These conversations are rarely theoretical. They are personal, layered, and often heavy. They move effortlessly from constitutional questions to family stories, from geopolitics to memories of childhood, from hopes for change to very concrete fears about who might get hurt next.
What strikes me most in these discussions is not optimism, and not even anger, but fear. Not fear of the current regime alone, which is widely despised and experienced as suffocating and illegitimate, but fear of what might follow its collapse. Several of the people I speak with are genuinely worried that a regime change could happen without any real chance for democracy taking root. That one authoritarian system might simply be replaced by another, dressed up differently, speaking a different language, and marketed more effectively to the outside world.
They are afraid of a transition that looks good on paper, reassures foreign governments, and satisfies the desire for a quick “solution,” but leaves ordinary people once again without real agency. A change of faces, not of structures. Power reshuffled, not redistributed.
That fear is not abstract. It is shaped by history, by lived experience, and by the repeated observation that when external actors get involved, stability is often prioritized over legitimacy. That fear deserves to be taken seriously, especially by those who are tempted to speak about Iran’s future as if it were a chessboard rather than a society.
From the outside, Iran is often framed as a simple binary. Either the Islamic Republic or something else. And increasingly, that “something else” is presented as a familiar name from the past: Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah. In Western media and political circles, this is sometimes portrayed as a clean, almost elegant option. A secular figure. A known quantity. A way to reset the country without uncertainty.
For many Iranians, this framing is deeply alien.
There is a strong tendency, especially outside Iran, to romanticize the Shah era. Photos of modern Tehran in the 1970s circulate widely. Images of uncovered hair, Western fashion, glossy magazines, and booming cities are shared as visual shorthand for a country that supposedly “worked” before everything went wrong. The implicit suggestion is simple: Iran once had the right model, and could return to it if given the chance.
That narrative is seductive. And dangerously incomplete. It conveniently forgets why the Shah fell in the first place.
The Pahlavi regime was not a democracy interrupted by bad luck. It was an authoritarian system held together by repression, surveillance, and fear. The SAVAK secret police is not an abstract historical footnote for Iranians, it is lived memory, passed down through families who remember arrests, torture, disappearances, and the crushing of political opposition. Power was centralized. Wealth was concentrated. Dissent was criminalized. Stability existed, but it was enforced.
That history matters when people today invoke Reza Pahlavi as a potential unifier or transitional figure.
From exile, he presents himself as ready, even destined, to guide Iran from tyranny to a secular democracy. He speaks of an “unfinished mission,” insists he is not seeking a return to monarchy, and frames his role as that of a reconciler rather than a ruler. These are careful words, and they clearly resonate with some Iranians, including those who are exhausted by the current regime and desperate for an alternative.
But it is far from clear how broad or deep that support really is.
Reza Pahlavi has not lived in Iran since 1978. He was seventeen when his father’s regime collapsed. His political life has unfolded almost entirely in exile, largely in the United States. His visibility comes mainly through foreign media and diaspora platforms. That distance is not morally disqualifying, but it is politically significant.
For many Iranians, the Pahlavi name does not symbolize reconciliation. It symbolizes a system that failed them once already.
Some remember, or have been taught to remember, the Shah’s rule as humiliating, unequal, and violent. Others distrust Pahlavi because of perceived proximity to Western power, especially the United States. His visit to Israel and meetings with Israeli leadership have further complicated perceptions, reinforcing fears that Iran’s future might once again be negotiated over the heads of its people, in foreign capitals, according to foreign priorities.
This is where nostalgia becomes a trap.
The danger is not that people remember the past differently. The danger is that the past is selectively edited into a marketing image. A modern skyline without its prisons. Miniskirts without secret police. Stability without coercion. The promise that history can simply be rewound and resumed at a more convenient frame.
For many of the people I speak to, the Shah is not a lost golden age waiting to be restored. He is part of the same unresolved wound. Different from the Islamic Republic, yes. But not its opposite. Another system that spoke the language of modernization while denying political agency to its citizens.
Replacing one authoritarian narrative with another, even a more polished one, does not create democracy. It only postpones it.
That is why the fear I hear in these conversations is so persistent. Not fear of change itself, but fear of a change that is imposed, symbolic, or externally choreographed. Fear that Iran might once again be offered a “solution” that looks orderly from abroad, but leaves the underlying structures of power untouched.
False nostalgia does not prepare a society for a democratic future. It anesthetizes it.
Two regimes, one shared failure
This is where Western commentary so often stops listening.
Rejecting the Islamic Republic does not imply longing for the monarchy. Hatred of clerical rule does not erase the trauma of dynastic authoritarianism. These are not interchangeable systems where the failures of one somehow absolve the other. For many Iranians, they are experienced as two chapters of the same story: power concentrated at the top, dissent managed from above, legitimacy imposed rather than earned.
My Iranian friends are unambiguous about this. They do not want a theocracy. But they also do not want a return to a system where authority is inherited, criticism is controlled, and political power flows from lineage instead of consent. For them, the choice is not between past and present. It is between oppression and dignity.
That distinction matters, because outside Iran the debate is often framed as if rejecting the current regime automatically requires rehabilitating the previous one. It does not. Both systems failed in the same fundamental way: neither trusted citizens with real political agency.
This is why the idea of reinstalling a familiar figure, however well spoken or symbolically appealing, triggers skepticism rather than hope.
History offers little comfort here. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Iran itself in 1953 all point to the same conclusion. When leadership is selected for its usefulness to external powers rather than its legitimacy at home, the result is instability, resentment, and long term failure. Even a well intentioned leader becomes compromised the moment they are perceived as externally endorsed.
Several of the people I speak with express this in simple terms: the moment a future government is seen as chosen elsewhere, it has already lost. Trust cannot be imported. Sovereignty cannot be outsourced. And democracy cannot survive the perception that it arrived pre approved.
This fear should not be mistaken for passivity. It is not resignation, and it is not a lack of courage. It is the caution of people who have seen transitions fail before, and who understand the cost when political experiments collapse onto ordinary lives.
There is also a widening gap between diaspora discourse and lived reality inside Iran. Exile changes perspective. Distance reduces risk. Social media rewards certainty over nuance. None of this makes diaspora voices illegitimate, but it does make them incomplete. People who no longer live under the regime can afford simplified answers. Those who still do cannot.
And they are the ones who will pay the price if another imposed system fails.
When I listen carefully to what people actually want, it is striking how ordinary it sounds. Rule of law. Economic stability. Personal freedom. The ability to speak without fear. A state that does not regulate private life. A future not chained to old symbols, old families, or old bargains struck without them.
They are not asking for a king. They are not asking for clerics. They are asking for democracy, and for the dignity of being treated as citizens.
What worries me most is not Iran itself, but the familiar reflex outside it. The urge to identify a manageable solution, attach a recognizable face to it, declare the problem addressed, and move on. Stability over legitimacy. Order over justice. Control over agency. The same mistake, repeated with different names.
Iran does not need a rerun of its past, nor a cosmetic replacement of power. It needs the space to build something new, however fragile and uncertain that may be. Democracy is not tidy. It cannot be installed like software. And it cannot be restored like a brand.
The people I talk to understand that change carries risk. But they also understand that being rescued by someone else’s version of history is not freedom. That is why they are afraid.