Iran and the danger of mistaking exhaustion for nostalgia
As history, from Tehran to Dhaka, repeatedly shows, the danger is not merely who rules, but how long, how unchecked, and how insulated they become from the people in whose name they govern
The slogans echoing through Iran's streets today sound deceptively simple. They speak of bread, dignity, inflation and above all, corruption. They curse clerical rule. And increasingly, they invoke a name that once symbolised everything many Iranians rose up against in 1979: Pahlavi.
To outside observers, the re-emergence of monarchist chants can feel like a sudden ideological pivot. To many Iranians, it feels far less like a return to belief than a symptom of profound political exhaustion. One Iranian analyst put it starkly, "What is heard in the slogans today is not a call to return to the crown; it is an escape from a dead end."
Iran is once again in revolt not because it has discovered a new political consensus, but because the old ones have collapsed. The Islamic Republic, after nearly five decades in power, is facing a crisis that is no longer merely economic or diplomatic. It is a crisis of legitimacy.
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The protests that erupted from Tehran's bazaars over prices and shortages quickly became something deeper.
As academic Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi observes, while inflation above 40% and food inflation surpassing 70% have pushed people to the brink, "there is an economic dimension to this, but it is also a profoundly political one."
Years of repression, mismanagement and ideological rigidity have hollowed out trust between state and society.
This is not Iran's first mass uprising. From the Green Movement of 2009 to the Women, Life, Freedom protests after the killing of Mahsa Jina Amini in 2022, Iranians have repeatedly tested the regime's tolerance for dissent.
Each time, the response has been violence, arrests, executions and silence. The UN estimated that more than 550 people were killed in the 2022 protests alone. Yet, as Sadeghi-Boroujerdi notes, even that brutality did not fully extinguish resistance. Mandatory hijab rules, once rigidly enforced, now appear increasingly unenforceable in practice.
What has changed today is not the presence of anger, but the absence of hope.
One Iranian described the current moment as "an era of no manifesto politics". There is no unifying document, no agreed roadmap, no charismatic leader able to articulate a shared future. Protesters agree on what they reject — corruption, repression, inflation — but not on what should replace the system that produced them.
Into this vacuum has stepped Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran's last shah.
For his supporters, the crowds chanting "Javid Shah" represent a referendum on his leadership. For his critics, they are a dangerous misreading of desperation as consent. Even Pahlavi's defenders struggle to articulate what his rule would practically look like beyond a vague promise of transition. As Vali Nasr has asked pointedly, "Who is going to be in the transitional government, who is going to run in the assembly, who are your candidates?"
The history that makes this question unavoidable is often selectively remembered. The monarchy that fell in 1979 was not overthrown by a fringe. It collapsed under the weight of its own authoritarianism, inequality and foreign dependence.
Mohammad Reza Shah's aggressive modernisation enriched elites, sidelined political participation and relied heavily on repression. When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile, he did so on a wave of popular mobilisation, having cast himself as the moral antidote to a discredited regime.
Power, however, rarely remains what it promises to be.
Iran is once again in revolt not because it has discovered a new political consensus, but because the old ones have collapsed. The Islamic Republic, after nearly five decades in power, is facing a crisis that is no longer merely economic or diplomatic. It is a crisis of legitimacy.
Khomeini's revolution, born in opposition to dictatorship, produced another — this time sanctified by religion. Over time, elected institutions were hollowed out, dissent criminalised and authority concentrated in the office of the supreme leader.
Today, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei presides over a system that views survival itself as a mandate. Former presidents, reformists included, have been marginalised or silenced.
This trajectory is not uniquely Iranian. History is replete with leaders who begin as liberators and end as jailers.
Bangladesh offers a particularly instructive example. Sheikh Hasina returned to power with democratic legitimacy and broad popular support, framed as a corrective to military rule and political instability. Over time, however, prolonged tenure produced a familiar pattern: shrinking political space, neutered opposition, compromised institutions and an increasingly personalised state. What began as continuity hardened into control.
The lesson is not that all leaders are doomed to become authoritarian, but that unchecked power — especially when insulated from accountability — tends to decay. Longevity in office often replaces persuasion with coercion, and legitimacy with habit.
This is precisely why the renewed flirtation with monarchy in Iran is so fraught. Monarchies are not inherently democratic simply because they are old. Nor does nostalgia substitute for institutions. As the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company warned, "the reproduction of old and authoritarian forms of power" offers no real liberation. "The path to liberation of workers does not lie through a leader carved above the people nor by relying on foreign powers."
Foreign powers, inevitably, hover at the edges of this moment. The United States, under Donald Trump, has so far resisted openly endorsing Pahlavi. The caution is notable. Trump did not rush to crown Venezuela's María Corina Machado, and he appears equally wary of being drawn into Iran's internal struggle. As one analyst noted, the fear is not moral hesitation but entanglement — the risk of backing a figure who cannot command broad legitimacy and presiding instead over chaos or civil war.
Trump's ambiguity has fed speculation about alternative strategies: covert talks, elite splits, mediated deals via Oman. Yet there is little evidence that Iran's supreme leader is prepared to trade nuclear ambitions — which he frames as symbols of sovereignty — for regime survival.
The silence of Iran's political establishment is telling. Former presidents have neither endorsed the state's narrative nor the protests. Discontent runs deep, but courage at the top remains scarce.
In this vacuum, the idea of restoring the monarchy functions less as a plan than as a protest slogan. As one internal analysis put it: "The monarchist slogan is not a declaration of love for Pahlavi; it is a declaration of disgust for the Islamic Republic." When the future offers nothing visible, societies often look backward, not out of conviction, but compulsion.
The Iranian Writers' Association has cautioned against this temptation. "Freedom certainly will not fall from the sky with bombs and missiles from predatory powers," it warned, urging Iranians to reject both "imaginary pasts" and "fake reformers". Their warning speaks to a broader truth: externally imposed solutions, whether military or symbolic, rarely produce sustainable freedom.
Iran today is not choosing between monarchy and theocracy. It is struggling to imagine a system that can be both accountable and durable. Ahmad Naghibzadeh's suggestion that Iran may eventually have to resolve the relationship between religion and state "in favour of the state" echoes Europe's long, painful history — a reminder that secular governance was not achieved through nostalgia, but conflict, negotiation and institutional design.
The chants in Iran's streets should therefore be heard with care. They are not blueprints. They are alarms. They signal a society pushed beyond endurance, grasping for any language that can express rejection when no credible alternative has been allowed to grow.
Whether Iran's future lies in reform, rupture or something entirely unforeseen remains uncertain. What is clearer is that returning to monarchy would not resolve the underlying problem that brought Iranians to this point: the concentration of power without accountability. Replace clerics with a crown, and the structure remains intact.
As history, from Tehran to Dhaka, repeatedly shows, the danger is not merely who rules, but how long, how unchecked, and how insulated they become from the people in whose name they govern.
