For years, Western media outlets, pundits and politicians have asked the same question about Iran: But who is the alternative?
They ask it earnestly. Repeatedly. Almost ritualistically.
And yet, when millions of Iranians inside and outside the country answer that question clearly — by name — the response from the West is often an awkward silence, a subject change or a sudden fascination with hypothetical leaders who enjoy little visibility, legitimacy or public support.
That name, inconvenient though it may be, is Reza Pahlavi.
The reluctance to acknowledge him as the most widely recognized and supported opposition figure among Iranians is not rooted in evidence. It is rooted in discomfort — ideological, historical and institutional.
First, there is the monarchy problem. In much of the Western political imagination, monarchy is treated as shorthand for authoritarianism and regression. Never mind that many of the world’s most stable democracies — Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Japan — are constitutional monarchies. Never mind that Reza Pahlavi has repeatedly and explicitly rejected autocracy, hereditary rule and personal power, calling instead for a secular, democratic system chosen by the Iranian people themselves, whether that results in a republic or a constitutional monarchy.
“Son of the Shah” is a convenient label. “Unifying democratic figure” is more inconvenient.
Second — and far more uncomfortable — is the West’s unresolved relationship with the mythology of 1979.
For decades, Western media and political institutions accepted, often uncritically, the narratives promoted by the revolutionaries who overthrew Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. Claims such as “the Shah was imposed by the CIA after replacing a democratically elected prime minister,” along with wildly exaggerated allegations of mass killings and stolen billions, were repeated so frequently they hardened into assumed truth — despite a lack of serious evidence.
The reality is more complex. Iranian prime ministers at the time were not democratically elected in the Western sense, and the figures commonly cited about deaths and corruption have not withstood historical scrutiny. These are subjects worthy of deeper discussion elsewhere, but they are no longer controversial among Iranians themselves.
Inside Iran, this reassessment is settled. Outside Iran, many Western institutions appear reluctant to acknowledge it.
Many Western news anchors and pundits now seem genuinely perplexed by recent events — the chants, the rallies, the unmistakable calls for Reza Pahlavi. This confusion is revealing. For decades, these same voices portrayed Mohammad Reza Shah as a villain, a necessary prelude to the Islamic Republic’s rise. Having invested heavily in that narrative, they now struggle to reconcile it with the reality before them: Millions of Iranians, inside and outside the country, openly invoking his son as a unifying symbol of national restoration and democratic aspiration — often at enormous personal risk.
What they are really struggling to process is not Iranian revisionism, but the possibility that decades of Western certainty were built on a remarkably fragile understanding of Iran.
Third, there is a persistent Western obsession with “leaderless movements.” When Iranians rise up — from the Green Movement to the Woman, Life, Freedom protests — Western commentary praises the absence of centralized leadership as proof of authenticity. Leadership, we are told, is suspicious.
But revolutions without leadership do not transition to democracy; they fragment, stall or get hijacked. History is merciless on this point. The refusal to recognize leadership is not humility — it is negligence.
Reza Pahlavi’s role is not that of a ruler-in-waiting, but of a unifying symbol — someone capable of bridging secular liberals, monarchists, ethnic minorities, women’s rights activists, labor groups and disillusioned former insiders. That breadth, rather than any imagined ambition, is precisely what unsettles Western observers accustomed to fragmentation framed as pluralism.
Western media further compound this discomfort through a devotion to false balance. Fringe figures, obscure activists and regime-adjacent “reformists” are elevated in the name of diversity of opinion, while the one figure whose name is chanted openly in Iranian streets — often at lethal risk — is treated as merely one option among many.
Finally, there is geopolitical inertia. A democratic Iran aligned with its people rather than hostage-taking clerics would upend decades of diplomatic habits, analytical frameworks and careers built around managing the Islamic Republic rather than imagining its end. Even people-powered change can be inconvenient.
So, the question is not why Iranians rally around Reza Pahlavi. That answer is visible, audible and increasingly undeniable.
The real question is why Western institutions continue to ask who the alternative is — while keeping the sound muted whenever Iranians answer.
History will not be kind to those who mistook ideological discomfort for analytical rigor — or silence for neutrality.
Shahrokh Rezai is an Iranian entrepreneur, political scientist and analyst focused on Iran’s diaspora movements since the 1990s. He writes from Las Vegas.
