MADRID – The modern history of Iran over the past century can largely be read as a narrative of unceasing struggle for national dignity in the face of foreign domination and attempts at fragmentation. 

Today, the reemergence of Reza Pahlavi, son of Iran’s disposed Shah, as a supposed “alternative” promoted from abroad—particularly by Israel—marks a new episode of interference that must be rigorously interpreted, taking into account the risks it poses to Iran’s sovereignty and internal cohesion.

The waning popularity of monarchist nostalgia inside Iran contrasts sharply with the sustained efforts abroad to artificially amplify Reza Pahlavi’s figure. This is not simply a matter of sentimental longing, but rather a carefully designed political and media operation orchestrated by foreign influence agencies that see, in the collapse of the global neoliberal consensus, a window of opportunity to subcontract Iran’s geopolitical future.

Digital campaigns, the proliferation of fake avatars on social networks, and the use of artificial intelligence to craft seductive narratives about a “monarchic restoration” now represent the new face of destabilization engineering.

Reza Pahlavi’s official visit to Israel in 2023 must be understood as a calculated move within the logic of hybrid warfare, where public perception itself becomes a key battleground. The construction of political fictions through digital platforms—using structured disinformation networks and locally recruited executors—follows the logic of eroding the institutional and civic legitimacy of the Islamic Republic, while planting the idea that only a monarchic and pro-Western restoration could “save” Iran.

The colonial archetype in the media opposition

In contrast to the rootedness of the Islamic Republic and its resilience against fragmentation, the operation built around Pahlavi bets on media spectacle and the creation of virtual scenarios of social mobilization. The projection of “democratizing movements”—nonexistent in practice—allows external actors to justify future interventions, whether economic, technological, or ultimately military.

The sophistication of digital campaigns has reached unprecedented levels through the systematic use of fake accounts, AI-generated manipulated videos (“deepfakes”), and massive viralization dynamics of messages aligned with Israeli interests. These strategies not only seek to generate internal disaffection but also to shape international perceptions of Iran—projecting the image of a nation without its own project, in need of foreign tutelage, and therefore “suitably restorable” under a puppet figure.

The most glaring paradox of this phenomenon lies in the total disconnection between Reza Pahlavi and the aspirations of the Iranian population. There is no significant social base for monarchism inside Iran; the national historical memory associates the Pahlavi name with repression, torture, corruption, and loss of sovereignty. What foreign designers see as a virtue—Pahlavi’s full embrace of the Western agenda—is understood inside Iran as betrayal, as clear proof of his lack of any autonomous national project.

The Israeli plan, far from seeking genuine democratization, aims at Iran’s structural fragmentation and vulnerability so that the country is rendered incapable of acting as an independent regional player. In this light, the potential restoration of monarchy is nothing more than an instrumental means to subordinate national politics to the dictates “of those who yesterday bombed the cities and today offer exiled kings.” It is an insult to Iran’s historical intelligence to assume that, after the sacrifices of revolution and war, the people would resign themselves to returning to a formula that serves only foreign interests.

An even more troubling dimension is the willingness of certain opposition groups—particularly Pahlavi monarchists—to justify, and even celebrate, Israel’s military violence against Iranian civilians and its brutality toward Palestinians. This is a case of extreme identity displacement, where collaborationism ceases to be mere political opportunism and becomes an obsessive search for approval from “white Westernness,” even at the cost of renouncing one’s own history and turning one’s back on shared struggles.

The manifestations of hatred toward Palestinians within parts of the diaspora, the pressure exerted on pro-Palestinian activists, and the instrumental use of human rights rhetoric to legitimize military aggression all reveal that, for Pahlavi circles, the issue today is not a political alternative for Iran, but a geopolitical and social whitening agenda—one that disregards ethics and ignores its long-term consequences.

The Islamic Republic and the anti-colonial axis: Autonomy under pressure

Iran’s contemporary experience, articulated through the Islamic Republic, must be understood not merely as state resistance but as a collective chapter in the long trajectory of anti-colonial struggles that shaped the twentieth century across Asia and Africa. In this sense, the post-revolutionary political structure that endures in Iran represents the realization of an emancipatory project against persistent efforts at subordination and fragmentation orchestrated by foreign powers.

The centrality of national autonomy is not a product of ideological stubbornness, but rather a historical response to international exclusion and the constant pressure of hegemonic blocs which—like Israel—seek to redefine the regional order according to external interests. In the face of multifaceted offensives—sanctions, disinformation campaigns, covert destabilization operations—the Iranian state has managed to develop a set of political, social, and strategic mechanisms aimed at safeguarding national agency and ensuring that debates about the country’s future remain primarily within Iran’s public and sovereign sphere.

In the current context of “informational warfare” and diplomatic pressure, Iran’s persistence as an autonomous polity constitutes, above all, a declaration of intent against a global order that still reproduces colonial hierarchies. The Islamic Republic has become a regional node of resistance to those projects that, under different pretexts, seek to reduce nations like Iran to passive recipients of history. In the face of renewed attempts at tutelage and fragmentation, Iran’s collective commitment to preserve its political and cultural dynamics represents a continuity with earlier anti-colonial movements and reaffirms that only through the affirmation of difference and organized defense can horizons of justice and dignity be imagined in the twenty-first century.

External pressure has, paradoxically, reinforced Iran’s basic national consensus: the defense of territorial integrity, regional solidarity against colonial projects, and the widespread rejection of top-down “solutions.” The operation surrounding Pahlavi—already showing signs of exhaustion and lacking any real social base—should serve as a warning: foreign tutelage, whether under monarchical or technocratic guise, always leads to the erosion of national agency and structural subordination.

Iran and Palestine

A systematically ignored aspect by the promoters of the monarchist and pro-Israeli agenda is the shared destiny between Iran and Palestine. The same propaganda apparatus that today bombs Gaza and sponsors Pahlavi’s golden exile is the one that yesterday—and tomorrow—looks with indifference at Iranian suffering through the lens of structural Islamophobia.

Iran’s manifest solidarity with Palestine is neither a whim nor a tactical move, but a historical understanding of what coloniality represents in the region: the reduction of peoples to secondary pieces on the global chessboard, along with their material and symbolic destruction. The liberation of Palestine is therefore structurally tied to the survival of a sovereign and autonomous Iran, as the history of recent decades has clearly shown.

The case of Reza Pahlavi as a spearhead of Israel’s influence operations is but one chapter in a larger story: the persistence, in the twenty-first century, of attempts to manipulate, weaken, and subordinate Iran from the outside. Against the mirage of imported modernity and the siren songs of Pahlavi collaborationism, the defense of Iran’s autonomy and sovereignty stands as the only alternative with historical coherence, institutional viability, and social legitimacy to face contemporary challenges.

Unmasking disinformation operations, strengthening the national fabric, and reaffirming solidarity with peoples subjected to colonial domination—beginning with Palestine—are indispensable conditions for Iran to preserve its agency and forge a future of dignity, independence, and self-determined development. This is not merely a political question but an existential one: sovereignty is neither delegated nor leased. And history has consistently shown that, whenever Iran has stood firm, it has prevailed.