Over the past weeks large numbers of Iranian diaspora have rallied throughout Europe with one
striking symbol, the old Pahlavi tricolour bearing the Lion-and-Sun emblem, chanting for an overthrow of the clerical regime in Iran. This long-banned banner stands as a visual rejection of the Islamic Republic’s tyrannical and theocratic rule, and as a sign of support for Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. Throughout protests and vigils in Europe (and the US), demonstrators boldly waved the flag, together with placards reading ‘Pahlavi will return’ and ‘Death to Khamenei’. These scenes of defiance show that Iranian exiles are rallying behind a new national narrative, one that explicitly calls for the end of the regime, a redemption for a country thirsting for change.

Taken by Matthew Robinson, 13 January 2026, Piazza Pasquale Paoli, Roma

The cinematographic metaphor is used deliberately, ‘The Shah-shank Redemption’, as the Iranian people are trying to break out of a prison themselves, the prison of radicalism, repression, and failed governance. Like Shawshank, it’s about hope, patience, and escape. The Lion-and-Sun emblem and Crown Prince, for many, represents a key to that door. Not because the past under his father, the Shah, was perfect, but because the future under the current regime is intolerable. And Pahlavi, in that framing, is not a saviour in the old sense, he’s a standard-bearer for a pluralistic transition.

Back in Iran protests themselves have broadened far beyond the women and students who rose up previously in 2022 after Mahsa Amini’s death. Starting in December last year, shopkeepers in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar shuttered their stalls in outrage at the plummeting rial and runaway inflation. The same bazaari merchants, once the financial backbone of the 1979 Revolution, have now turned against the clerics they helped bring to power. These elders, sons and daughters of the Islamic Revolution, saw their savings wiped out and trade choked by an economy run by the IRGC.
Iran is convulsed by anger at a decade of economic mismanagement and corrupt rule, and the Iranian people, young and old, male and female, urban and rural, are showing unprecedented unity in demanding a new order.

Reza Pahlavi and the “managed transition”

Into this void steps Reza Pahlavi. From exile he has been issuing urgent appeals to stay the momentum and keep the streets filled, carefully framing himself not as a would-be autocrat but as a guarantor of a democratic future. In mid-January he praised the protesters’ courage, telling them ‘[…] you have severely weakened Khamenei’s repressive apparatus and his regime,’ and warning that many security forces were refusing to obey bloody orders. He declared, ‘[…] it [is] no longer whether this corrupt and repressive regime will fall […] the only issue is the timing of its collapse, and that time is closer than ever.’

Pahlavi has gone further to address the security forces directly, urging them to switch allegiance to the people before history condemns them, while also insisting that any future change be settled peacefully and democratically. He has repeatedly emphasised that he ‘has no interest in serving as an absolute monarch,’ positioning himself instead as a facilitator of a ‘managed transition’ anchored in free elections, making clear that any return of the monarchy would be constitutional, with an elected parliament and prime minister, much like in modern European monarchies. This message strikes a chord, many ordinary Iranians now carry the Lion-and-Sun flag as a marker of resistance, not restoration, with the Shah not as pre-1979 throwback, but a symbol of a future quasi-secular, open Iran.

A return to the Shah could also offer the country the economic redemption its people crave. Iran’s
reintegration into the global markets would be seismic, and not just for Iran itself, but the
international community as a whole. Sanctions relief under a new order would immediately unlock
Iranian oil and gas exports on a large scale, potentially adding over a million barrels per day of
crude to global supply. Tehran’s North Dome and South Pars fields would likely see foreign
investment resumed. Beyond energy, a democratic Iran could forge closer trade ties and tourism
with Europe and the US, offering the West a large new market and ally, while shedding decades of
Iranian isolationism.

While such an opportunity exists, Western policy should stop treating Iran’s uprising as a spectacle and start treating it as a strategic inflection point. The White House’s most powerful move yet could
be to couple a strike package against IRGC targets with a further ramping up of crippling sanctions,
bringing the regime to its knees in the process. European capitals, for their part, should end the
diplomatic half-light, downgrade political contact, coordinate expulsions where appropriate, and
treat the repression apparatus as the enemy of the Iranian people, not a normal interlocutor.

The great promise of regime change in Iran can also deliver for the Arab Gulf region; an opportunity to finally ease the regional security architecture with the Islamic Republic off the geopolitical playing field. A post-theocratic Iran would not automatically become a Gulf ally, but it could cease to be the region’s principal accelerant of proxy warfare, missile brinkmanship and maritime harassment. That would change calculations from Sana’a to Beirut, fewer weapons moving through the shadow pipelines, fewer ‘resistance’ franchises living off Iranian patronage, fewer crises engineered abroad to keep a brittle regime intact at home. For the Gulf, it would open space for a new deterrence-and-dialogue equilibrium, harder lines against illicit networks, but more credible channels for trade, diplomatic relations, and de-escalation that is not constantly held hostage by the IRGC’s appetite for disruption.

The constitutional-monarchy endgame

The endgame on Iran’s political model seems clear. Pahlavi’s vision, backed by patriotic segments of the population, is for constitutional monarchy like we see in the UK, Belgium or Spain. The Crown Prince has repeatedly said ‘my role is not to run for office’ and that ‘decisions on Iran’s future will be settled through a democratic transition.’ In such a setup, Pahlavi could embody a powerful unifying figurehead, upholding the constitution, with true power resting with an accountable democratically elected government. Given Iran’s youthful, urban electorate, there is strong appetite for liberal reforms, including codified women’s rights, independent judiciary and free press, that a new monarchist regime could enshrine from day one. Europeans live with their monarchs under safeguards of human rights and oversight, there is no reason Iranians could not have the same.

There is, too, a distinctly Middle Eastern lesson in the constitutional-monarchy argument that Europeans sometimes miss because we have long since normalised it. In this region, crowns have often outlasted coups not because they are perfect, but because they can act as a non-partisan anchor, a state above faction, a symbol above ideology, a continuity above the daily churn of politics. Look at Morocco experience, as well as the Gulf’s experience, where monarchical systems, for all their different trajectories, have generally delivered greater predictability and institutional stability than the revolutionary alternatives on offer elsewhere. By contrast, the Middle East’s great radical experiments have tended to curdle. Arab socialist republics that promised dignity and modernity too often slid into securitised patronage states, and religious theocracies that claimed moral purity have too often produced repression, corruption and permanent mobilisation abroad to justify control at home. A constitutional monarchy in Iran would not be a nostalgia project, it would be a constitutional circuit-breaker, a way to restore national unity. An new order that would allow elected politics to function, and prevent the next revolutionary ideology from hijacking the state all over again.

The current uprising is the most serious threat to Iran’s barbarous theocracy since it came to power in 1979. The Shah’s son is no saviour in the old sense, but rather a standard-bearer for a pluralistic future. If this ‘Shah-shank’ redemption succeeds, we may finally see Iran break free from the prison
of radicalism. We in the West should prepare to support a transition, diplomatically, financially and
politically, that gives Iranians the chance to elect a government of their choosing, and for the Gulf, a
secular Iran with an elected government would eliminate a longstanding and toxic source of tension
and terror. The Middle East as a whole could shift toward a more open economic system, one in
which free-trade can flourish.

Yes, the road will be bumpy, there are bound to be clashes during a change of regime, but a new
Iran, one roaring from the ashes is on the sunny horizon, ushering in a new era of stability for the
region and its people. A return to the Shah, fit for 21st-century, might yet redeem Iran’s promise of
freedom.

Read also: In Iran we are being slaughtered. Step up before it is too late, by Kaveh Ahangar