By M. Davar
The struggle for Iran’s future is at a crossroads. For over four decades, the Iranian people have lived under a clerical system that rules through repression. Protest is met with violence. Dissent brings imprisonment. This is the undeniable reality. Against this painful backdrop, a fierce debate is raging. It’s a conflict over the very soul of the nation. One path looks outward, hoping for foreign intervention to force change. The other looks inward, trusting in the strength and sacrifice of the Iranian people themselves. Between these visions lies a fundamental question: can true liberation be delivered from the outside, or must it be won from within?
At the heart of this debate is a powerful and growing conviction: Iran’s destiny must be written by the hands of its own people or dictated by foreign powers whose sole interests are their own financial and geopolitical hegemony that time and again have been at odds with those they came to “rescue “and “help”. This principle rejects the notion that freedom can be delivered by foreign missiles or orchestrated from overseas think tank conference rooms or television studios. It is a response to voices, particularly in the diaspora, that openly call for U.S. and Israeli military strikes against Iran to topple the ruling establishment. To many, this is not a strategy, it is a profound betrayal that crosses a line many see as treason. It advocates for the destruction of the homeland as a means to save it, ignoring the grim lessons of neighboring nations. Look at the ruins left behind in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. Foreign intervention brought not democracy, but decades of chaos, civil war, and failed states. To see this history and still call for American bombs to rain on Iran is the position of the politically desperate or the tragically naive. It is the plea of a failing student begging others to do his work. True change cannot be outsourced.
This exposes a deep fracture within the opposition. On one side are people inside Iran, who live with the consequences of protest and repression. On the other is a segment of the diaspora that issues maximalist calls for confrontation from a position of complete personal safety. The most vocal advocates of foreign bombardment are often those farthest removed from Iran’s daily reality. This group includes many who left Iran thirty or forty years ago, as well as some second-generation exiles whose ties to the country are shaped by inherited grievance rather than lived experience. Their anger is understandable and rooted in family trauma. Over time, however, it has hardened into something destructive: an unconscious hostility toward a land that denied them a stable identity. At the center of this camp stands Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Shah. He was 19 years old when the monarchy collapsed in 1979. For the past four and a half decades, he has lived in the United States. Today, at age 65, he has proclaimed himself the national leader of Iran’s opposition, despite having no organized structure, command network, or operational presence inside the country. Reza Pahlavi benefits from coordinated support from several Farsi-speaking radio stations and television networks that are well funded by foreign countries. He has stated publicly that he does not intend to move his family to Iran or live there for any extended period. The same is true for most of his supporters in the diaspora. Yet he and his supporters advocate for a cataclysm they will not have to endure. For them, “Iran” is an abstract idea to be avenged, not a living nation of 90 million people to be rebuilt.
During the first seven days of the recent protest waves, demands focused mainly on economic hardship and living conditions. These were organic protests that began in the Tehran Bazaar, driven by inflation and the sharp devaluation of the Iranian currency. They quickly spread to other sectors, neighborhoods, and cities. During this period, the Iranian diaspora, Reza Pahlavi, and his media network were largely observers, reporting on events as they unfolded.
On the eighth day, Reza Pahlavi declared himself the leader of the movement. Through the same outlets, claims were amplified that more than 50,000 members of the IRGC and the Iranian army were ready to defect and join him in toppling the government. He then cited off-the-cuff statements by Trump to suggest that developments were underway behind the scenes, that help was imminent, and that the United States would bomb IRGC military installations and remove the leadership. These claims were repeated across the same radio stations and television networks, with suggestions that bombing would begin within a day or two. The same platforms urged people to take to the streets, demand the overthrow of the government, chant “death to Khamenei,” and confront the state directly. In reality, none of this was true. At the time, Trump was making familiar rhetorical threats typical of his style, not signaling imminent military action. Any informed observer could have reviewed the global deployment of U.S. aircraft carriers and concluded that the forces required for an attack on Iran were not present in the region. Additionally, the claimed defection of 50,000 members of Khamenei’s military apparatus never materialized.
What followed was predictable. The state responded with extreme force and brutality. Human rights organizations documented large scale killing of the demonstrators, mass arrests and widespread violence. Estimates are that between 6,000 and 23,000 people were killed during these crackdowns. These figures cannot be independently verified. What is not disputed is that thousands were killed or severely injured. Meanwhile, Reza Pahlavi and his television broadcasters continued their lives in the United States and Europe. When CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell asked Reza Pahlavi “Is it responsible to be sending citizens in Iran to their deaths? Do you bear some responsibility?” He replied, “As I said, this is a war, and war has casualties.”
Today, Reza Pahlavi continues to advocate for the United States and Israel to bomb Iran, without addressing the consequences or offering any realistic plan for what would follow once the bombing begins.
Many people are now asking a basic question: why did Reza Pahlavi, together with radio and television outlets funded by foreign countries, move so quickly and forcefully to shift public demands from economic grievances to direct physical confrontation with government forces? Anyone with a basic understanding of the Islamic Republic’s nature should have known that sending unarmed and untrained people into the streets, without a plan or on-the-ground leadership, to challenge Khamenei’s rule in his own stronghold was effectively pushing them toward death. So why did Reza Pahlavi do this?
Two possible explanations are often offered. The first is that he viewed the situation as a war and accepted that people die in wars. He may not have expected the Islamic government to respond with such extreme violence or to kill so many people. Even if true, this is not an acceptable explanation from someone who has appointed himself the leader of a national movement, given the scale of the human cost.
The second explanation is more troubling. Some argue that this may have aligned with an Israeli strategy. The logic would be that once the government killed thousands of its own citizens; the political landscape would fundamentally change. Any possibility of consensus or reform within the system would disappear. From that point on, every protest and every grievance would be met with maximum force, making the state more brutal, more isolated, and ultimately weaker. Combined with sabotage, cyberattacks, and possible U.S. or Israeli strikes, this could gradually reduce Iran’s power and reach. Over time, it could push the country toward internal armed fragmentation, an outcome resembling the Libyan or Syrian trajectories. If this was indeed the thinking, it likely originated in circles well above Reza Pahlavi’s pay grade. Such a strategy would neither free Iran nor improve the lives of its people. It would not restore the Pahlavi dynasty. Instead, it would reinforce the argument made by many opposition groups that Reza Pahlavi is a pawn, used by forces that finance him and the radio and television networks supporting him, networks with reported annual budgets exceeding $100 to 1$50 million, while he himself has been unable to secure even a brief meeting with Trump. Regardless of the underlying motive, a growing number of people now believe that Reza Pahlavi and the media outlets backing him share responsibility for pushing unarmed civilians into the line of fire of the Islamic Republic’s security forces.
The accusation directed at Reza Pahlavi and his followers is stark: they are accused of turning real human lives into pawns in a geopolitical game. In this view, the ultimate beneficiaries of a bombed and weakened Iran would not be the Iranian people, but regional adversaries such as Israel. The objective is seen not as liberation, but as fragmentation, reducing Iran to the unstable condition of Libya or Syria. Any figure perceived as advancing such a foreign agenda is therefore regarded not as a savior, but as a candidate for national dismemberment.
From this logic emerges a slogan that is not merely anti-regime but opposed to all forms of strongman domination: “Death to the oppressor, whether Shah or Leader.” In this framing, the Shah symbolizes monarchy and those seeking its revival, including Reza Pahlavi, while the Leader refers to Khamenei and the Islamic government with its entire apparatus of power. The slogan is a declaration of political self-reliance. Iran, this argument insists, is not an orphaned nation. It does not require a guardian appointed by foreign capitals, whether that guardian wears a crown or a turban. The revolution that can succeed, the only one capable of producing a legitimate and stable future, must be organic. It must be led by those who live in Iran, who bear its struggles, and who will endure the consequences.
The path forward is undeniably hard. It is slower and offers no easy miracles. Yet it is the only path that leads to a truly sovereign nation. Liberation delivered by a foreign army is merely occupation by another name. Iran’s future, this view holds, will be forged through its own struggle, by its own people, and for its own people. There is no shortcut. There is only the long, difficult road home.
Article by M. Davar
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of IranOnline.com.