Iran is undergoing a bit of a cultural revolution, fuelled by nostalgia for an era from the past.

Before 1979, Iran was a monarchy going back 2500 years. After Cyrus the Great founded the Persian empire, a series of kings and dynasties ruled the nation, which the UN counts as the oldest country in the world, dating its lineage back to 3200 BC, predating even Egypt. The last king, or Shah, was Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, whose son has been exiled since the Islamic revolution ushered in a theocratic government.

A 2,500 Year Old Monarchy Led By Dozens of Dynasties

Before the Pahlavi dynasty, the Qajars made a mess of Iran, that much most people would agree on. But ultimately it was Russia/USSR, the United Kingdom and eventually the United States of America that played a role in who led the country. After a revolution that introduced a constitutional monarchy in 1906 and limited the power of the last Qajar shahs, by 1925 Reza Shah had seized power, with the blessing of the British. Reza Khan had joined the Cossack brigade at 16, becoming the first Persian to be appointed as Brigadier-General. He’d go on to become war minister and prime minister under Qajar rule.

Are Leaders Born or Made?

When we ask “are leaders born or made?” unquestionably, Reza Shah was born a leader, in the Mazandaran region in northern Iran, then still known under its exonym Persia.

To his credit, the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty, Reza Shah ended feudalism, redistributed land to people (taking it away from clerics, which planted a seed of discontent), modernized the nation… but because he had developed a rapport with Germany – problematic during WWII given UK and Russia fighting Axis and needing Iran to stay on Allies’ side – Reza Shah was forced to resign in 1941. He did so to ensure the survival of the Pahlavi dynasty he had founded. Throughout the 2500 years of monarchy rule, a succession of dynasties and kings ruled Iran, at various parts even under the influence of Arabs, Mongols and Turks. Undeterred, Iranians kept language and culture, and went on to invent some of the most remarkable innovations known to mankind. Centuries later, by 1935, Persia was renamed Iran, partly because Iran was the historical endonym, but as the land of Aryans, it was also home to a few dozen ethnicities – Kurds, Lor, Baluch, Persians (from the Pars region) and Mazandarans – which Reza Shah belonged to.

While Reza Shah was born a leader, his son Mohammad Reza became one over his tenure. The second Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty, Mohammad Reza took power in 1941 – a sort of trade off to end the father’s dalliance with Germany during WWII in order to preserve the Pahlavi dynasty. But by 1953, a desire and movement to nationalize the oil industry was gathering steam. When earlier in the century Iran needed investment and revenues, it had signed deals that were egregiously to the advantage of the UK. British Petroleum’s precursor was in fact the Anglo Iranian Oil Company. More on the business of Iran, d/b/a the Islamic Republic here.

It’s All About the Benjamins

But while ministers and the Shah wanted to nationalize and do what was best for Iran, the Shah had to navigate while respecting previous agreements, and avoid alienating the hand that ultimately fed the nation (at least proverbially speaking). Time’s Man of the Year in 1953, Mohammad Mossadegh, was a minister in the parliament – aka Majlis – who rose to become prime minister. The son of a Qajari princess, Mossadegh was never democratically elected, since Iran was not a democracy in the Western sense where the population voted directly for its head of state. The Shah and Majlis selected ministers, and they had the right to remove ministers as part of the rules of engagement of the constitutional monarchy. Because he went rogue and sought to topple the power structure, and the UK didn’t want to lose the lucrative oil deal it has in place, the powers that be had him step down in Operation Ajax. While we can blame the UK and US for this, the Iranian people also deserve some of the blame. But another seed of sorrow was planted, with Iranians at least partly blaming the West for meddling in its domestic policy.

The Shah had left the country for just a few days, but returned shortly and proceeded to consolidate his power thereafter.

Constitutional Monarchy in Name

From 1953-79, due to many internal players (clerics, marxists) and external risks (UK, Russia and US – though each had different interests and influenced Iran in different ways), the monarchy was constitutional only in name. Understandably, to fend off these risks and navigate the fluid landscape, the Shah adopted tactics from absolute monarchies as well as royal dictatorships – and his private security force SAVAK was one such tool and tactic, trained by CIA. These are all touchy matters with fans of the Pahlavi era, but it’s asinine to compare Iran in the 1970s with any modern nation today. Either way, whereas media in the West reported 100,000 political prisoners, the actual number was lower, 3,000 according to the Shah in interviews given to CBS, one of the main three American TV networks. SAVAK was a feared entity, corruption existed… and understandably this upset people. Ultimately you don’t need millions to have a revolution, you just a number of strong-willed people and one charismatic leader. Iran has never had a shortage of charismatic leaders, and by the 1970s, that leader came in the shape of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The One Major Miscalculation

One of the greatest business founders and leaders, Intel’s co-founder Andy Grove once said “Only the paranoid survive.” Indeed, the Shah was, like many Iranians, paranoid about his fate (rightfully), but proceeded to make a huge miscalculation. The Shah suspected his greatest threat to be Marxists, accentuated by the shadow of the USSR to the North. Ultimately though, his undoing were the clerics, and his nemesis was Khomeini. The clerics despised losing land, the hijab ban, and what they viewed as outsized political influence and “social corruption” by the West. Note Iran is a paradox for many reasons, one of them being that the people are secular and love the west (unlike the Arab states, where its heads are usually in America’s pockets but its people despise American foreign policy). Nonetheless, the Shah – whose mother was religious – would go to Mecca and pay tribute to clerics, and while he imprisoned Marxists and clerics, he did not kill Khomeini, but exiled him to Iraq… and after a while, he asked Iraq to exile him further, to France. There, no one knew of the philosophy and full worldviews of the Ayatollah, extolled in his book Velayat-e-Faqih, who held court outside Paris to the media who viewed him like Gandhi. His book served not only as the original thesis on which the Islamic Republic of Iran was founded, but as blueprint for the kind of social revolution Khomeini and allies implemented. The Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist, also called the Governance of the Jurist is “a post-Age-of-Occultation theory in Shia Islam which holds that Islam gives a faqih (Islamic jurist) custodianship over people.”

From Asset to Liability?

After a couple of decades in power, Mohammad Reza Shah had grown into a leader, confidently boasting of Iran’s future as a top global power. Facing increased commodity prices, he sought to raise the price of oil, which angered the West. A portion of the population looked the other way with regards to corruption, put up with the risk of SAVAK if they themselves were not political, but enough of a movement had started with this cocktail of circumstances. To soften some of the growing resentment, by the mid to late 1970s, the Shah scaled back SAVAK’s brutality, but with an ailing health due to cancer, once the protests reached a boiling point, he did not crack down as much as he could on protesters who were the same Marxists and clerics whose ilk he had imprisoned. So when today people ask or talk about SAVAK, they either point to it as a reason for the growing displeasure with the Shah, or they state somewhat sheepishly that the Shah was right to imprison the very same people who ultimately led the revolution and converted the secular monarchy into a theocratic republic.

Eventually, the Shah went from being called a so-called puppet of the West to no longer being useful to them (at best), and at worse, posing a risk as an ambitious leader of an oil rich nation with a strong military. Meanwhile, Khomeini astutely positioned himself and the clerics to America as a better alternative to Marxists, which were always the bogeyman in America’s eyes during the 20th century, especially before the fall of the Soviet Union.

As a result, Khomeini gained the implicit support of the West. Whether President Carter and Western powers asked the Shah not to kill the protesters, or more likely, the Shah chose not to kill his own people en masse (I’ve already read some suggest that the army, or Artesh, defected and what not, but it’s impossible to think any single one of these is correct. The most likely answer is a combination of these led to the eventual denouement. What cannot be disputed is that the Shah’s docility strengthened the hand of clerics, who smelled blood by the time the Shah was making television speeches to quell the crowds. By the Guadeloupe conference, his fate was sealed… Seeing the writing on the wall, the Shah fled, never to return.

The Shah & The People?

After ascending to the throne at the age of 21 (one month short of his 22nd birthday), the Shah died at the age 60. The Iranian life expectancy in 1980 was 58.54 years.

There’s an inherent sadness in the Shah’s final years. But leadership, empire building, monarchies are messy. Even Cyrus the Great, revered by all and widely seen as the most powerful leader of all time (relative to the then known world) did not know when the stop, meeting a gruesome (but rarely discussed) and swift death.

Even post death, the Shah’s legacy is tainted based on one’s allegiance. Partisanship makes us poor judges of history which only hurt future generations. Iranians have become (understandably) so polarized that they are incapable of fairly looking at their history. Iran ruled the world in the 6th century before BC all the way until the mid-4th century BC, when Alexander the Great defeated Darius III not once, not twice, but three times, ending the supremacy of the Persian empire. But instead of celebrating Cyrus and the Persian empire, the regime in power today has sought to extinguish those traditions and identities, leading to what I call a Cultural Revolution.

Regardless of what you think of monarchies in general or Iran’s last Shah in particular, what Iran accomplished throughout the 20th century was nothing short of incredible: ending feudalism, modernization, urbanization, industrialization, and so on. Granted, all of these “improvements” come with pitfalls… but Iranians who developed a disdain for monarchies cannot seem able to acknowledge the good; while those who miss the Shahdom are unwilling to dissect the policies and results of that era to ascertain which policies make sense going forward. 

Ultimately, without a doubt the Pahlavi’s helped Iran – I would suggest Reza Shah moreso than his son Mohammad Reza, given how tribal Iran was at onset of 20th century – but all of those seeds of discontent simmered to a boil in 1979 with a revolution (or coup depending on who you ask). As was done many times before, religion was used as a tool to seize – and retain – power, which meant cracking down on freedoms and liberties, pre-selecting political candidates etc. That the Islamic Republic’s nature is rooted in religion makes the current regime different than previous governments that merely used religion to win over people.

Survey Results on Population Inside Iran

Thus, if you fast forward to 2024, with the passage of time, 

i) a large majority of the Iranian diaspora and

ii) a sizeable amount of those inside Iran misses & yearns for a return of the constitutional monarchy (these would be the “monarchists”) with a majority of these favoring a return of the Pahlavi dynasty (“royalist”) via the exiled crown prince… Reza Pahlavi.

Given the reality inside Iran, it’s hard to conduct polls and surveys, but despite limits placed on the internet, two recent surveys shed some light onto what Iranians inside Iran think.

In one, by Gamaan:

When asked about their preferred regime type

  • 34% chose a “secular republic”
  • 22% the “Islamic republic”
  • 19% a “constitutional monarchy”
  • 3% an “absolute monarchy”.

About the head of state:

  • around 78% opposed this function being passed down through heredity,
  • 72% opposed the head of state being a (Shia) religious authority, and
  • 66% think the head of state should not appointed/elected for life.
  • Also, 56% oppose the head of state being an Atheist.

Asking about the political leaders of Iran’s modern history:

  • 66% have a positive view of Reza Shah Pahlavi (1878-1944) while 23% evaluate him negatively.
  • Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919-1980) is viewed positively by 64%, while 28% judge him negatively.
  • Mohammad Mossadegh’s (1882-1967) popularity is similar, with 64% positive responses and 27% negative.
  • In contrast, 28% have a positive view of Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-1989), while 64% evaluate him negatively.
  • Finally, approximately 26% of the population evaluate Iran’s current Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei (b. 1939), positively, while 66% judge him negatively.

To summarize, it’s as if most were unhappy with the regime and favored a republic, but ultimately they trusted Reza Pahlavi most. It’s not like Pahlavi would return as prime minister, making this a bit of a head scratcher. Many Iranians have grown to distrust and dislike republics.

In another, by ERF.i:

  • An overwhelming 60.4% of Iranians support a return to a constitutional monarchy in Iran
  • while only 17.5% favored a democratic republic
  • The remaining 14.5% are still undecided.
  • Many Iranians reject the ideals of the 1979 revolution.
  • It is almost as if they want to return to the time before the 1979-Revolution when the constitutional monarchy held sway: “Pahlavi nostalgia is further reflected in the survey’s findings that 79.9% of Iranians overwhelmingly favor Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi over the current political leaders.”

Given that Reza Pahlavi represents a known brand and Iranians lack of trust in anyone else, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. But given the growing strength of the Islamic Republic geo-politically, that could all be moot.