Analysis
Growing
protests in Iran do not necessarily herald a return to monarchy
Patrick
Wintour
Diplomatic
Editor
Despite
significant support for the shah, Iranian society may be looking for any
‘escape from a dead end’
Fri 9 Jan
2026 17.46 GMT
Supporters
of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s deposed shah, were claiming the
crowds out in the streets of Iran were a direct response to his call to action.
They described it as a referendum on his leadership and that the response
showed he had won.
Yet the
issue of an alternative leadership for Iran remains unresolved. Many Iranians,
eager to end the 47-year-long rule of the clerics, still view a return to
monarchical rule with suspicion.
On the
international stage, Donald Trump has yet to endorse Pahlavi.
Pahlavi’s
supporters, including on the foreign satellite channels, highlight the many
calls for the return of the shah being heard in the crowds. However, just as
Trump did not rush to back the candidacy of the Venezuelan opposition leader
María Corina Machado, the US president is being equally cautious about Pahlavi,
apparently fearing the US may end up entangled in a civil war.
The lack
of a clear alternative leadership or even a single set of political demands by
the protesters, apart from ending corruption, repression and inflation, has
been a boon to Pahlavi since he at least has name recognition and has nurtured
support for the monarchy for decades.
Others
inside Iran capable of leading the country to a secular future, such as Narges
Mohammadi and Mostafa Tajzadeh, have been locked in jail sporadically for
years.
One
Iranian described Iran as living in an era of no manifesto politics.
Pahlavi,
calling on his supporters to take to the streets again on Friday, is due at an
event in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, on Tuesday, but his team stressed he had not yet
been granted a meeting with Trump, and the event, a Jerusalem prayer breakfast,
was unconnected with the US president’s team.
In a sign
of Trump’s caution, the president has also avoided acting on his unspecific
pledge to come to the aid of the Iranians if they were being attacked.
Trump’s
caution has led to reports the president may be exploring a deal with a
breakaway group inside the government. Officials from Oman, traditional
mediators between the US and Iran, are due in Tehran this weekend. Although
desperation is setting in, there is no sign the panic that has swept parts of
the government is forcing the supreme leader to rethink his determination to
retain Iran’s uranium stockpile or aspirations to enrich uranium inside the
country. For him it is a symbol of national sovereignty.
But Trump
may also be wary of a full embrace of Pahlavi since it is possible to
misinterpret the calls for his return.
In an
internal analysis given to the Guardian, one Iranian said: “What is heard in
the slogans today is not a call [to] return to the crown; it is an escape from
a dead end. A society that has no way out retreats – not out of interest, but
out of compulsion. This retreat is not a choice; it is the nervous reaction of
a tired political body that no longer responds to prescriptions.
“For
decades, society was told to ‘wait’. It waited. It was told ‘it will be fixed’.
It wasn’t fixed. It was told ‘it can’t get worse, it’s enough’. It got worse.
Then they said ‘we have no alternative’. And this was precisely the moment when
the street created its own alternative; not with classical rationality, but
with the instinct for survival.
“The
monarchist slogan is not a declaration of love for Pahlavi: it is a declaration
of disgust for the Islamic Republic. It is a cry of ‘no’ when no ’yes’ is
available … Everyone is stuck in the past or in empty promises. When the
horizon is empty, society looks back because it sees nothing ahead.”
The
Iranian Writers’ Association also called for caution about “externally imposed
solutions”.
“Freedom
certainly will not fall from the sky with bombs and missiles from predatory
powers. Those who have risen up against the status quo while maintaining their
independence from domestic and foreign exploiters,” the group said. “Neither
wait for repetition of an imaginary past and its heralds, nor wait for fake
reformers.”
Pahlavi
has long been disliked by the left in Iran. The Syndicate of Workers of Tehran
and Suburbs Bus Company, one of the most prominent independent unions, said on
Wednesday it opposed “the reproduction of old and authoritarian forms of
power”.
“The path
to liberation of workers does not lie through the path of a leader carved above
the people nor by relying on foreign powers,” it added.
Either
way, the current reformist Iranian leadership, struggling to understand the
evaporation of the nationalism created by the 12-day war in June, has few
solutions left. It can rally the people against what it claims are foreign
malice and rioters. It can hope somehow the technocrats in the economics
ministry and Central Bank have gathered the resources to stabilise the
currency.
Ahmad
Naghibzadeh, emeritus professor of political science at the University of
Tehran, warned the solutions may no longer be technocratic, but historic. He
told Euronews: “In the end, there will be no choice but to repeat in Iran what
happened in Europe, that is, they decided the dispute between religion and
state in favour of the state.”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário