Could the Shah Return? Reza Pahlavi and the Fight to Replace Iran's Islamic Republic

“Long live the Shah.” It is not a chant most observers ever expected to hear again. Yet across cities in Europe and North America, more than a million Iranians have taken to the streets shouting exactly that, in the wake of crackdowns in early January that killed as many as 36,500 protesters. At universities that once served as the launchpad for the 1979 revolution, students are now raising the old imperial flag.

The man they are calling for is Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah their parents overthrew, who has lived in exile since he was seventeen years old. Until recently, almost no one seriously believed that a restoration of the monarchy was in the cards. That assumption is now visibly cracking.

But there is a vast distance between a chant in a courtyard and the work of governing a country of more than 90 million people. Enthusiasm in the diaspora, polling that flatters an exiled prince, and bombing campaigns that degrade the regime’s military are one thing; building a functioning state out of the rubble of the Islamic Republic is another entirely.

Key Takeaways

After Operation Epic Fury killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of senior officials, the question of who governs Iran is firmly back on the table for the first time since 1979.
Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last Shah, polls as the front-runner among opposition figures, with roughly one-third of Iranians in support and nearly two-thirds viewing the historical monarchy more favourably than the Islamic Republic.
Pahlavi is not proposing a return to his father’s style of rule. He frames himself as a transitional leader, pledging a binding national referendum between a secular republic and a constitutional monarchy.
His Iran Prosperity Project lays out a 180-day transition that explicitly tries to avoid the mistakes of post-invasion Iraq, folding professional soldiers into a single depoliticized army rather than disbanding the security state overnight.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps remains the decisive obstacle: roughly 190,000 personnel in semi-autonomous provincial corps, the Basij paramilitary, and control of up to half of Iran’s economy.
Iran’s near-40 percent minority population and its ethnic fault lines pose a parallel risk of fragmentation that no amount of foreign air power can resolve.

This is the central tension of the moment: the structural barriers standing between Reza Pahlavi and real power are among the most daunting any opposition figure has faced, even as those barriers grow weaker by the day.

Forty Years in the Making

For most of the Islamic Republic’s history, the United States did not exactly accept that it was here to stay, but no American leader ever managed to build a credible plan for what would come after. Reagan tilted toward Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war while simultaneously running secret arms deals through Israel, ostensibly to cultivate what he believed were more moderate factions who might reshape the country after Khomeini. As is well documented, this was not a roaring success.

That failure set the tone for nearly three decades of bipartisan consensus. Clinton, Bush, and Obama did not agree on everything regarding Tehran, but each operated from the same underlying premise: the Islamic Republic was a permanent feature of the Middle East, and the most realistic path forward was managing it. Sometimes management had to be aggressive, sometimes more diplomatic, but the regime could not simply be replaced. European capitals largely agreed.

The Logic That Held for Decades

This was the logic undergirding the 2015 nuclear agreement: bring Iran into the international community through economic integration, empower the more moderate factions, and gradually allow market forces to reshape the regime from within. Then-President Hassan Rouhani was supposed to represent a new, more pragmatic generation of Iranian leadership.

All of this rested on the assumption that the Islamic Republic, by then approaching 40 years old, was here to stay for the long haul. There had been serious unrest before, including the 2009 Green Movement that many believed would threaten the regime’s core. Yet it had survived everything. Across both American parties, multiple administrations, and the wider Atlantic alliance, a restoration of the old monarchy was deemed completely unrealistic.

The longer the Islamic Republic held power, the more entrenched it became, and a full-scale revolution on the scale of 1979 was never treated seriously.

The Break Under Trump

That framework did not survive contact with the Trump presidency. From the outset it was clear that Washington was no longer a subscriber to the engagement-first consensus that had defined its historic approach. Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018 marked a clean break, and the “maximum pressure” campaign that followed was designed to force Tehran back to the table on far less favourable terms.

And yet, even as the resulting sanctions sent the Iranian rial into free fall, the conversation in Washington never seriously turned to the monarchy. The Pahlavi dynasty was largely seen as history. Diaspora protests waving the Lion and Sun flags still paid tribute to it, much the way some in the South Vietnamese diaspora still do with the yellow and red flag, but it was never treated as a realistic political goal.

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What shattered that framework entirely was Operation Epic Fury. Khamenei was killed in the opening strikes, dozens of senior leaders went with him, and for the first time since 1979 the question of who will govern Iran was wide open again.

What Israel and Washington Actually Want

Israel has gone the furthest and been the least transparent about its aims. Netanyahu has called on the Iranian people, in Farsi, to overthrow the current government, and at least one Israeli minister has endorsed Pahlavi as the man for the job. Both this operation and the one the previous summer, “Roaring Lion” and “Rising Lion” respectively, are named after the lion on the old imperial flag for a reason, and Netanyahu has explicitly made the case for regime change.

Washington has been more ambiguous. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Congress that “no one knows” who would take over if Khamenei were removed from power. Trump himself has poured cold water on the idea of a Pahlavi return, though envoy Steve Witkoff met secretly with the exiled prince, indicating they are at least weighing him as an option.

The CIA has reportedly floated arming Kurdish separatists in western Iran, a deeply controversial idea given fears it could trigger a descent into sectarian violence of the kind seen in Iraq and Syria. But whatever Washington’s reservations, the remarkable fact is that a crown prince who has not set foot in Iran in half a century is even part of this conversation, and the energy behind it is not coming from the White House.

The Heir Apparent

There is something historically extraordinary happening here. In modern political history, the total number of deposed royal families called back to power nearly half a century after being overthrown is precisely zero. That is, until you get to Iran, where it is not even the original monarch being summoned back, but his son, who would lead the next government.

What the younger Pahlavi is calling for, though, is far from what many people picture when they hear the word “Shah.” He is not proposing a return to his father’s style of rule. He is pushing for a temporary leadership role followed by a binding national referendum in which Iranians themselves choose between a secular republic and a constitutional monarchy. Separation of religion and state, full equality for women, and an independent judiciary are baked into either option.

In a 60 Minutes interview days after the strikes, Pahlavi described himself as a transitional leader, not a future king or president.

Inside Iran, Beyond the Diaspora

Among the Iranian diaspora in Europe and North America, rallies have been anything but quiet, with more than a million people reported to have collectively taken to the streets chanting “Javid Shah,” or “long live the Shah,” in Farsi. Pahlavi himself spoke at one rally just outside the Munich Security Conference, which drew more than 250,000 attendees.

Diaspora enthusiasm always comes with a caveat: exile communities are often made up of those who fled the regime they now oppose, and their preferences do not always transfer to the people who stayed. That is what makes the developments inside Iran all the more important. In the village of Chenar in Hamedan province, residents carrying the old Lion and Sun flags and chanting anti-Khamenei slogans were enough of a threat that the regime surrounded the village at 4:30 in the morning with dozens of armoured vehicles, mounted machine guns on rooftops, and arrested hundreds of people.

The same pattern played out at universities, ironically institutions that were historically strongholds of anti-monarchist ideology, where the 1979 revolution kicked off. When campuses reopened in late February after the January crackdown, Sharif University of Technology became one of the most visible flashpoints: students raised the Lion and Sun flag in the main courtyard, clashed openly with Basij paramilitaries, and chanted “Javid Shah.” Within days, “Lion and Sun Associations” had formed on campuses across the country, issuing formal declarations backing Pahlavi to lead a transition away from the Islamic Republic.

The Polling and Its Caveats

It would be one thing if this were isolated student activism, but such beliefs appear to be more widespread. The GAMAAN research institute, conducting anonymous polling that circumvents the regime’s censorship, has consistently found Pahlavi polling as a front-runner with roughly one-third of Iranians in support. That is well ahead of any other opposition figure, on surveys where nearly two-thirds of the country view the historical monarchy more positively than the Islamic Republic.

It is worth noting he is not competing against a broad array of alternatives. The Islamic Republic has spent decades banning any form of organized political opposition, and has mostly been quite successful. Past protests never coalesced around a leader who could plausibly pose an alternative to the Ayatollahs.

When Pahlavi called for coordinated mass protests in early January, turnout surged dramatically. How much of that reflects his personal influence, versus millions of Iranians independently reacting to economic collapse in real time, is difficult to untangle, especially without a free Iranian press. Still, the massive drop-off in his social media viewership after the regime imposed internet blackouts suggests a high share of his audience was inside Iran.

A Blueprint to Govern

Pahlavi also comes equipped with a plan: the Iran Prosperity Project, developed in consultation with dozens of Iranian experts and released in mid-2025. It lays out the mechanics of a 180-day transitional timeline: emergency stabilization first, followed by the referendum between a secular republic and a constitutional monarchy. Once Iranians choose a path, a vote on new leadership would follow.

Crucially, the plan explicitly tries to learn the lessons of Iraq, where de-Ba’athification gutted the state overnight of its security apparatus and left nothing functional behind. Pahlavi plans to dismantle Iran’s most harmful institutions, the Quds Force, the Basij, and the morality police, but professional military personnel would be vetted and folded into a single, depoliticized national army rather than thrown onto the streets with no income and plenty of weapons. Senior commanders with blood on their hands would be prosecuted, while lower-level, rank-and-file members who cooperate would receive conditional amnesty. The team deserves credit for clearly outdoing the planning for post-Saddam Iraq, but significant doubt remains about whether any of this would survive contact with Iranian reality.

The Men with the Guns

Here is the question that actually matters: can any of this careful planning translate into governance for a post-war country of over 90 million people? The 1979 revolution may have delivered a theocratic nightmare that has oppressed its own citizens for nearly five decades, but that nightmare began with a genuine uprising against the Shah, rooted in serious human rights violations. Those problems did not improve after the revolution, but in retrospect that does not change the fact that millions once took to the streets calling for the Shah to flee.

Asking Iranians to welcome the son of the monarch they had a revolution to topple will be difficult to pull off, especially among the segments of the country still loyal to the Islamic Republic. Millions still support the regime, and many took to the streets to mourn the loss of Khamenei.

Public sentiment would only really come into play if a transition got off the ground at all, and that is a huge if. Any transition will need to get past the Revolutionary Guards, who have spent decades ensuring nothing like this could ever happen. The Guards’ core force numbers around 190,000 active personnel, roughly half of them conscripts, organized into dozens of semi-autonomous provincial corps designed from the ground up to survive exactly the kind of decapitation Operation Epic Fury attempted.

Each provincial unit operates with its own pre-positioned weapons caches, local logistics chains, and independent command authority. Even if central command in Tehran is wiped out, the ground-level apparatus that actually controls Iranian cities remains largely functional.

The Basij and a Parallel Empire

Underneath all of that sits the Basij, the IRGC’s paramilitary wing: 90,000 active members backed by an estimated 300,000 reservists, embedded in universities, factories, mosques, and just about everywhere else. These are the people who show up first when protests break out, who run neighbourhood-level surveillance networks, and who have earned the fear of Iranian demonstrators.

But the Guards are not just a military organization. They have built a parallel economic empire, estimated to control anywhere from a quarter to half of Iran’s entire GDP. Any successor government, especially one promising secular reforms, privatization, and deeper ties with the West, would be threatening the livelihood of these men, whose jobs and comparatively higher standard of living depend on the IRGC maintaining its status as the top dog in the country’s military apparatus.

The January protests were the one real stress test of whether that apparatus could crack. Despite an uprising sustained across dozens of cities, with death tolls that some estimates place above 30,000, it largely held. There were some cracks: security forces showed signs of discontent, from refusals to fire to full retreats, and there were reports of officers arrested for disobedience. And yet no garrisons turned, no commanders broke ranks, and the institutional structure came out battered but intact.

Why the War Changes the Math

The war is changing the math in ways January did not. Washington and Jerusalem’s campaign has gone directly after the infrastructure of domestic repression, from the Sarallah Headquarters that ran suppression operations in Tehran to the Basij bases involved in crushing the protests themselves. But degrading the IRGC from the air and actually replacing it with something functional are two very different propositions. It is the second part where the Pahlavi plan runs into problems no amount of bombing can solve.

To dissolve the IRGC’s more problematic wings into a single national army, the institution would have to at least mostly go along with it. Considering that the Guards control up to half of the country’s economy without currently having to answer to anyone other than themselves and the Supreme Leader, they are not exactly likely to cooperate. The entire plan depends on a level of territorial control that a transitional government operating from exile simply would not have. Even analysts at institutions like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, broadly sympathetic to Pahlavi, have conceded the plan faces severe obstacles, especially the risk that provincial corps fragment and fight each other instead of integrating in an orderly fashion.

The Fault Lines Beneath

Speaking of fragmenting, that brings us to yet another risk that could undermine the whole project. Iran is home to nearly 40 percent minority groups, many of whom have long viewed centralized Persian governance with deep suspicion. Those groups are not likely to line up behind a transition that treats their demands for autonomy as a problem to be managed.

Earlier this year, the Tishk Center, a Germany-based think tank that advocates for Kurdish issues, denounced Pahlavi’s plan as a “non-democratic roadmap” that “reproduces authoritarian power in Iran.” It is a reminder that even within the anti-regime coalition, the vision of what comes next is contested. A power vacuum in a country this ethnically diverse carries the same danger that turned Iraq and Syria into long, bloody conflicts.

Where That Leaves Everything

So where does all of this leave the picture? Despite his sizable public backing among the diaspora and, to an extent, inside Iran itself, the structural barriers standing between Pahlavi and actual power are among the most daunting ever seen. And yet those barriers are also weaker than they have ever been, with two of the world’s most advanced militaries doing just about everything in their power to make sure they get weaker by the day.

Whether that is enough depends on questions no one in Washington, Jerusalem, or any analyst can confidently answer. Maybe the IRGC’s provincial commanders decide they are better off cutting a deal than going down with the ship. Maybe Iran’s ethnic and regional fault lines survive a power vacuum without tearing the country apart. And maybe, just maybe, the millions of Iranians who clearly want the Islamic Republic gone can agree on what, and who, should replace it.

As of June 2026, none of those questions has an answer, and Iran’s future hangs on every one of them.

Presented by

Simon Whistler

Simon Whistler is one of YouTube's most prolific educational creators. HomeFronts is his deep dive into geopolitics, modern conflict, military history, and the civilian and societal dimensions of global events.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Reza Pahlavi? He is the son of the last Shah of Iran, who was overthrown in the 1979 revolution. Pahlavi has lived in exile since he was seventeen years old and has never set foot in Iran in the decades since. He is now the figure many protesters, both in the diaspora and inside Iran, are calling on to lead a transition away from the Islamic Republic.

What kind of government is Pahlavi actually proposing? He is not proposing a return to his father’s style of monarchy. He frames himself as a transitional leader who would oversee a 180-day stabilization period, then hold a binding national referendum letting Iranians choose between a secular republic and a constitutional monarchy. Separation of religion and state, full equality for women, and an independent judiciary are built into both options.

What changed to make a restoration suddenly plausible? Operation Epic Fury. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening strikes, along with dozens of senior leaders. For the first time since 1979, the question of who will govern Iran is genuinely open. Combined with mass protests and economic collapse, that has put an exiled prince into a conversation that had been dismissed as unrealistic for decades.

How much real support does Pahlavi have inside Iran? The GAMAAN research institute, which uses anonymous polling to bypass censorship, consistently finds him polling as the front-runner with roughly one-third of Iranians in support, well ahead of any other opposition figure. Nearly two-thirds view the historical monarchy more favourably than the Islamic Republic. Students have formed “Lion and Sun Associations” on campuses backing him, though some loyalty to the regime clearly remains.

Why are the Revolutionary Guards the central obstacle? The IRGC fields around 190,000 personnel in semi-autonomous provincial corps built to survive a decapitation strike, plus the Basij paramilitary with 90,000 active members and an estimated 300,000 reservists. The Guards also control an estimated quarter to half of Iran’s economy. A successor government promising secular reform and privatization directly threatens their livelihoods, giving them every reason to resist.

What lessons does Pahlavi’s plan take from Iraq? The Iran Prosperity Project explicitly tries to avoid the mistakes of de-Ba’athification, which gutted the Iraqi state of its security apparatus overnight. Rather than disbanding everything, Pahlavi would vet professional soldiers and fold them into a single depoliticized national army. Senior commanders with blood on their hands would be prosecuted, while cooperating rank-and-file members would receive conditional amnesty.

What are the risks of the country fragmenting? Iran is home to nearly 40 percent minority groups who have long been wary of centralized Persian governance. Analysts warn that the IRGC’s provincial corps could fragment and fight each other, and Kurdish advocacy groups such as the Tishk Center have denounced the plan as a “non-democratic roadmap.” A power vacuum in such a diverse country risks the kind of sectarian violence seen in Iraq and Syria.