By Alain Renault
As protests intensify across Iran and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s grip weakens, a question once considered hypothetical is becoming urgent: what happens if the Islamic Republic collapses—and who fills the vacuum? At the center of this debate stands Reza Pahlavi, the exiled crown prince, whose name is increasingly chanted inside Iran not out of nostalgia for monarchy, but as a rejection of clerical rule.
Pahlavi’s reemergence reflects exhaustion more than ideology. For many Iranians, especially younger generations, he represents a figure untainted by the repression, corruption, and regional militancy of the Islamic Republic. His appeal lies less in what he proposes than in what he is not: not a cleric, not a Revolutionary Guard commander, and not a recycled regime insider.
This symbolic role matters—but symbolism alone does not ensure a safe transition.
Pahlavi’s political operation has real shortcomings. It lacks organizational discipline and strategic coherence, and at times has drifted into provocative digital tactics that alienate potential allies. Still, despite these weaknesses, he remains the most plausible unifying civilian figure for a post-Islamic Republic transition. The alternatives are grim. A “Venezuela-style” outcome—where the regime collapses only to reconstitute itself under rebranded elites—could return figures from within the system, offering cosmetic change without real reform.
Iran’s history offers a warning. Power rarely transfers through direct confrontation between rival leaders on Iranian soil. Mohammad Reza Shah returned in 1953 with outside backing. Ayatollah Khomeini arrived in 1979 only after the Shah fled, stepping into an already-collapsed authority. This suggests Pahlavi is unlikely to return while Khamenei remains in control. More likely, he is waiting for the “zero hour”—the moment when the system fractures politically or physically.
But that moment is also the most dangerous.
Recent Middle Eastern history underscores the risk. After Saddam Hussein’s fall, Shiite cleric Abdul Majid al-Khoei returned to Iraq hoping to contribute to a peaceful transition. Instead, he was brutally murdered by a mob amid post-regime chaos. His death exposed a harsh reality: when authoritarian systems collapse, violence does not discriminate. It targets visibility, not guilt.
Iran’s internal landscape—armed militias, ideological factions, criminal networks, and rival opposition currents—makes such chaos even more likely. The assassination of Reza Pahlavi upon return would not simply remove a figurehead; it could trigger a spiral of violence that destabilizes Iran far beyond its borders.
This leads to the central strategic question Washington and its allies can no longer avoid: who protects a transitional figure in Iran? Would the United States or regional partners provide security guarantees? Or would Iran be left to navigate a power vacuum where force, not legitimacy, determines outcomes?
Reza Pahlavi’s return is not a personal matter. It is a strategic event with consequences for regional stability, nuclear proliferation, and global energy markets. The fall of the Islamic Republic, if it comes, will not automatically produce democracy. The real danger may not be the regime’s survival—but its collapse without a plan.
History is unforgiving on this point: how a regime falls matters as much as that it falls—and who replaces it determines whether a nation is rebuilt or broken
