Iran’s Streets Speak
Iran is erupting once again. Since last week, citizens have returned to the streets, openly demanding the dismantling of the Islamic Republic. While immediate economic hardships sparked the demonstrations, their deeper roots lie in five decades of systemic failure. The regime has failed to deliver a normal life, producing political repression, social and cultural stagnation, economic decay, chronic mismanagement, and entrenched corruption.
These protests are more than a typical episode of social unrest, they mark a historical turning point in a struggle that began long before the Islamic Republic came to power. In the chants ringing through streets, the slogans scrawled on walls, and the symbols revived by a new generation, one message is unmistakable: the sons of a long-dead king have returned to Iran’s political imagination. Across the country, from major cities to improvised neighborhoods, slogans such as: “This is the last battle; Pahlavi will return,” and “Peace on your soul, Reza Shah Pahlavi” are increasingly heard.
Forty-six years after the 1979 Revolution toppled the Pahlavi monarchy, a striking historical reversal is unfolding. The very system that once claimed to liberate Iranians from Pahlavi monarchy now faces a population calling for the return of what it destroyed. This should not be mistaken for narrow nostalgia for monarchy; it signals a deeper yearning for an alternative vision of Iran itself.
Pahlavi as Symbol
When Iranians invoke “Pahlavi” today, they are not simply calling for the return of a monarch. They are pointing to something far deeper: a historical era, a political discourse, and an ideological alternative to Islamism.
The Pahlavi period, from 1925 to 1979, was one of the most ambitious state-building projects in modern Iranian history. It was defined by a firm commitment to secular governance, Iranian nationalism, and rapid modernization, guided by a Western-oriented vision. The state sought to transform Iran into a modern nation-state rather than a society defined by feudal or hierarchical relations. Citizenship was prioritized over religious or land-based affiliations, and national identity over transnational religious or familial ties. Progress was measured in terms of development, education, and integration into the global order.
This vision directly opposed what would later become the ideological foundation of the Islamic Republic. After 1979, Islamism rejected nationalism in favor of the Islamic umma. The state was reshaped into the Umma-imam model, where religious identity outweighed national identity and religious duty supplanted civic responsibility. Western modernity was seen not as an opportunity but as a moral threat. Most crucially, the state became an instrument of moral engineering, seeking to shape the lives, and even the souls, of its citizens according to a rigid religious vision. The Islamic Republic does more than govern Iran, it seeks to shepherd its people toward a prescribed religious conception of salvation, even if that requires coercion. In this worldview, the state’s mission is not to ensure freedom or prosperity, but to deliver Iranians to heaven, by force if necessary.
The Shift in Contemporary Protests
The current protests reveal the exhaustion of this ideological project. Decades of Islamization have failed to produce moral harmony or social justice. Instead, they have brought repression, economic stagnation, and widespread alienation from political Islam. A young population - educated, connected, and acutely aware of the world beyond Iran’s borders - no longer accepts a system that claims divine legitimacy while delivering both corruption and material failure. As one popular chant declares: “Ta akhund kafan nashavad, in vatan, vatan nashavad” which means: Until the mullah is shrouded (dead/buried), this homeland will not [truly] be a homeland. The shift is clear: the demands in the streets go beyond mere reform, they call for an entirely new framework of governance and identity.
Some observers misread these slogans as a rejection of democracy in favor of monarchy. Hearing the name “Pahlavi,” they assume an anti-democratic nostalgia for hereditary rule. This, however, is a superficial interpretation of Iranian political language. For many protesters, invoking Pahlavi is shorthand for liberalism in the Iranian context. The slogans signal a rejection of ideological theocracy and demand a secular state that does not regulate belief, dress, or private life, while affirming individual freedom, women’s rights, and national sovereignty.
This misunderstanding arises from treating monarchy and democracy as mutually exclusive abstractions. Iranian protesters are not debating theory, they are responding to lived experience. After four decades of clerical authoritarianism, ideological policies, political and social repression, mismanagement, and systemic incompetence, Pahlavi symbolism has become a way to express what Islamism cannot provide: a normal life and a future grounded in this world.
Here, the Pahlavi discourse reenters Iran’s political arena. Historically, the Pahlavi era symbolizes order, state capacity, and national pride. As an ideological framework, it embodies secularism, nationalism, Western engagement, and modernization, directly challenging the foundations of the Islamic Republic. It rejects the primacy of religious authority in governance, affirms the nation over the umma, and values life in this world rather than promised rewards in the next.
Crucially, this revival is not driven solely by older generations. Many calling for the return of Pahlavi symbols were born decades after the monarchy fell. Their engagement is rooted not in memory but in comparison: they weigh what Iran could have become against what it has become. Measuring the promises of the 1979 Revolution against its outcomes, they reach a radical conclusion: the revolution did not solve Iran’s problems, it created them. In that realization lies the symbolic death of Islamism in Iran.
Since 2017–18, Prince Reza Pahlavi has gradually emerged as the most visible embodiment of this alternative discourse. His significance goes beyond claims to the throne or dynastic entitlement. He is widely seen as a symbolic representative of a secular, national, and non-Islamist future. For many Iranians, he embodies continuity with a state-centered vision of Iran that predates the Islamic Republic. At the same time, he represents rupture, a clear break from clerical rule and ideological governance, unlike certain political elites perceived as extensions of the regime.
The Islamic Republic recognizes this threat, explaining its aggressive reaction to the resurgence of Pahlavi symbols and narratives. The regime was founded on the complete negation of the Pahlavi legacy; its legitimacy relies on portraying the monarchy as corrupt, dependent, and un-Islamic. When many Iranians, particularly the youth, reclaim Pahlavi as a positive reference, they undermine the regime’s foundational myth, revealing the 1979 Revolution not as an act of liberation, but as a historical detour that derailed Iran’s development.
A Battle of Ideas: Pahlavi vs. Islamism
At its core, the current struggle is not about personalities, it is about competing visions for Iran’s future. On one side stands Islamism, with its focus on religious obedience, transnational Islamic identity, and moral coercion. On the other stands a revived Pahlavi discourse, centered on secular governance, national sovereignty, and progress in this world. These two visions are fundamentally incompatible: one prioritizes heaven, the other, life.
This is why the recent protests feel different from earlier waves of dissent, such as in 2009, when slogans like Ya Hossein or Allah Akbar predominated. Today, the demonstrations go beyond economic grievances or policy failures; they demand the regime’s complete dismantling. Protesters question the very purpose of the Islamic Republic: Should it exist to discipline souls or to serve citizens? Should identity be defined by faith or nation? Should Iran look inward toward an imagined religious past, or outward toward a modern future?
The answers are becoming increasingly clear. By chanting the name of the long-dead Pahlavi king, Reza Shah, and elevating his son, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s heir, as a political symbol, protesters are not advocating a return to the past. They are demanding a restoration of a path interrupted in 1979 - a vision of Iran grounded in this world, not the next.
If this is indeed the last battle, it will not be fought by arms alone. It is a struggle of ideas, memory, and identity. In this contest, the Pahlavi discourse has reemerged as the most serious ideological challenger the Islamic Republic has faced in its five decades of rule.
Dr. Saeid Golkar
Associate Professor | University of Tennessee
