So what’s up with the sudden, open, and perhaps nostalgic support by some Iranians for Reza Pahlavi, the would-be Shah of Iran?
A CNN report (see below) offers some insight into what’s what regarding the latest uprising and the rise in Shah-ists.
Arash Azizi says in the CNN report that Reza Pahlavi “is a divisive figure and not a unifying one.”
During the last Iranian revolution in 1979, various opposition groups sought to topple Reza Pahlavi’s father, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (26 October 1919 – 27 July 1980), including secular liberals, leftists, Marxists/communists, Bazaar guilds, and students.
Nonetheless, it was Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini (17 May 1900 – 3 June 1989) and his Shia Islamist supporters who were the most organized, dominating the revolutionary movement. Khomeini’s takeover of post-Shah Iran came with a bit of luck, timing, ideological appeal, organization, scheming, and was aided by divisions among other parties and power vacuums.
After the fall of the Shah, there was initially a moderate provisional government under Mehdi Bazargan, who was appointed Prime Minister by Khomeini. This provisional government faded away as Khomeini consolidated power, thereby establishing the Islamic Republic of Iran. (Bazargan, a moderate Muslim, opposed calling Iran an Islamic Republic. Bazargan resigned after 9 months as Prime Minister because of the hostage taking of American embassy personnel.)
Much to the chagrin of other opposition parties, including communist groups that participated and helped in the revolutionary victory, which had believed Iran would be a moderate, pluralistic democracy, Khomeini stole the revolution from them.
There were three main communist groups: the Tudeh Party (pro-Soviet communists), the Fedayeen-e Khalq (Marxist guerrillas), and the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq) (an Islamist-Marxist hybrid). These parties were useful to Khomeini and the Islamists during the revolution.
By 1980, Khomeini’s government launched a cleanup of communists using the Revolutionary Guards (who would be called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC]). Communists were declared “enemies of Islam,” accused of “waging war against God.” There were revolutionary show trials, mass arrests, torture and executions. The communist cleanup went well into the 1990s.
To the leftists, liberals out there, and particularly those who consider themselves Marxists or communists, know that Islamists are not your friends (and vice versa); Islamists would and will eliminate you given the chance. I don’t know how stupid people can be to not so easily grasp the oh so blatant differences, incompatibilities, contradictions and opposites that exist in ideological terms, beliefs and agendas between communism and Islamism.
For the leftist, socialists and communists out there making strange bedfellows with Islamists today, let the Iranian revolution and its brutal wipe out of communists in that country be a lesson to ya. But I’m sure the example and lesson will fall on deaf ears.
Now, back to Reza Pahlavi; I’ll throw this out there as an idea: if the Islamic Republic’s regime falls and a revolution succeeds, perhaps Reza could be the Shah of Iran as a symbolic monarchial head of state, just as King Charles III is the head of state of the UK, Canada, Australia, etc. I haven’t heard or read of anyone presenting and discussing this option, so I am throwing it out there. I think it would be a mix of the new and the old, a melding of old culture, history, modernity and traditional liberal democratic politics.
–RdM
CNN, Jan 9, 2026: The son of Iran’s last shah is rallying protesters. But do Iranians really want another king?
Reza Pahlavi was only 16 years old when Iran’s 1979 revolution toppled his father’s 40-year rule. The eldest son of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, he was the first in the line to inherit the oil-rich thousand-year-old empire.
Now at the age of 65, nearly half a century after the unravelling of his birthright, his wait may finally be coming to an end.
“This is the last battle. Pahlavi will return!” was one of the standout chants from nationwide protests that gripped Iran on Thursday night after the exiled former crown prince exhorted his compatriots to hit the streets.
“Javid Shah (long live the king)!” cried the protesters. “Reza Shah, God bless your soul!”
Thursday’s protests were the culmination of days of demonstrations that began in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar against economic grievances but have quickly taken on an anti-regime focus. Pahlavi, who is based in the US, has sought to position himself as a de facto leader.
A protester in Paris on January 4 holds a placard of Iranian opposition figure and son of the last Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, during a demonstration against the Iranian regime’s crackdown. Blanca Cruz/AFP/Getty Images
Support for the deposed monarchy is taboo in Iran, a criminal offense, and a sentiment long frowned upon by a society that staged a popular uprising to overthrow the Shah’s dictatorship.
It is unclear what might be driving the renewed excitement for the royal family and its titular head in exile, analysts say. Do Iranians genuinely support the restoration of the monarchy or are they just fed up with their repressive theocracy?
“Reza Pahlavi has indubitably increased his clout and has turned himself into a frontrunner in Iranian opposition politics,” said Arash Azizi, an academic and author of the book “What Iranians Want.”
“But he also suffers from many problems. He is a divisive figure and not a unifying one.”
For decades, the Islamic Republic has neutered its domestic opposition, imprisoning its critics including former presidents. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the ultimate authority in Iran, circumscribes the powers of elected officials and views his mandate as the guardian of the regime, stamping out challenges to its rule.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting in Tehran, January 3. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/Wana News Agency/Reuters
This has empowered the external opposition, growing out of Iran’s large diaspora and pulling figures such as Pahlavi out of relative obscurity. Pahlavi first burst into the spotlight after Iran in 2020 accidentally shot down a commercial flight after it took off from Tehran bound for Ukraine. The incident galvanized the external opposition prompting them to coalesce into a council that had Pahlavi as a prominent member.
Disagreements between the patchwork of Iranian dissidents led to the council’s early demise. But Pahlavi endured as the most well-known face of the opposition. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been his most high-profile backer. It’s an alliance that has polarized Iranians (Israeli strikes pummeled parts of Iran during a 12-day war between the two countries last June).
US President Donald Trump’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro also may have energized an opposition hoping for a quick decapitation of the regime. Social media footage showed a protester changing a street name to “Trump Street.”
But analysts say those hopes may have been misplaced. Trump “is weighing his options and has no desire to lend credibility to someone before they’ve proved they can win,” said Azizi.
“Pahlavi personally doesn’t have qualities that appeal to Trump. He is rather bookish and lacks the kind of personal charisma that could appeal to someone like Trump,” said Azizi. “He will have a hard time winning over Trump.”
Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last Shah of Iran, poses after an interview with Reuters in Paris, France, on June 23, 2025. Abdul Saboor/Reuters
Pahlavi has been non-committal about stepping into the fray. He has said he is willing to lead Iran in a transition in case protesters succeed in ousting the regime in these demonstrations, the fifth anti-regime protests in nearly a decade. But he is sparse on the details of his plans and his critics say his inexperience may soon turn against him.
“He talks of being a transitional leader and having a transitional assembly, but who is going to be in the transitional government, who is going to run in the assembly, who are your candidates,” said Vali Nasr, an Iran expert and professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
“It’s one thing to look at crowds and say it would be great if Iran goes back to the Shah’s period but in terms of real mechanisms, how would he do that?”
The rallying around Pahlavi is the surest sign, analysts say, that Iran’s Islamic Republic appears to have hit a dead-end. Its economy has buckled under years of corruption and sanctions, and it has struggled to shake off its pariah status despite the efforts of a slew of reformist governments. Young people have chafed under conservative rule and the stifling of political freedoms. And if the regime tries to violently quash the uprising, as it has done previously, then it risks drawing Trump’s wrath.
“Iranians aren’t opting for (Pahlavi) because he is present in the community but because they are despondent,” said Nasr.
Pahlavi capitalizes on that nostalgia for a pre-Islamic Republic era. “Many older Iranians remember the day I was born and what a national frenzy there was,” he told The Wall Street Journal this week. “But now at the age of 65 … the young Iranians call me father. And that’s the best thing.”
