The Shah can't save Iran
When authoritarian regimes start to wobble, outside observers often reach instinctively for the single, familiar idea of ‘the alternative’. It is a human reflex, but a dangerous one. In Iran, as the clerical theocracy shows signs of fracture and the country’s crisis deepens, some Western voices have begun to flirt with a thought that feels neat and historically legible: the return of the Shah’s son. That would be a profound mistake. Iran’s tragedy since 1979 has been that an autocracy was replaced by another autocracy. The lesson should be plain: changing the personality at the top is not enough. What matters is the nature of the state and the source of its legitimacy. Iran does not need a restoration. It needs a foundation for a democratic future. It has been argued that Reza Pahlavi could play a unifying role, perhaps as a symbolic constitutional monarch. But this misunderstands both Iran’s recent history and the political psychology of revolutions. The last Shah was not a constituti...
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