I’ve spent the past week with someone who was born and raised in Iran and who has close family members still there. Their statements surprised me - according to them, while Iranians as a whole are not supporters of monarchy specifically, the vast majority see the theocracy as intolerable at this point and see Pahlavi as the only viable path forward with enough support to form a working government.
Do they want to live under the Shah? Most likely not, but they would absolutely prefer it to the status quo.
The goal here isn’t to put the Shah in power, but to rely upon him to form a transition government to avoid a power vacuum and then work out what comes next.
I looked this crown prince history up and he’s been a proponent of democracy there for decades, not returning to a monarchy (ironically). So he says but it should be noted
Serious question: do you think people in Iran would prefer the status quo, or Return of the Shah (son)? My gut says Shah, but I don't know anyone from Iran, so that's just a guess.
About 30% would take the shaw has a first or second choice. This is higher than support for the current regime but the country is deeply divided on what an alternative future would look like.
It’s a serious question but it’s not a relevant one. There isn’t a ballot with just “Pahlavi” and “Ayatollah” on it; and there probably never will be considering how much Iranians hate both.
It is possible to strongly disapprove of both Israel's policies in Gaza and the present regime in Iran. Or is it the case that you support the present regime?
Of course that’s possible — but the context matters doesn’t it? You know - the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Iran because it wasn’t sufficiently pro-west? The installation of a brutal shah who eventually got overthrown in a popular revolution and all the subsequent attempts to attack Iran and overthrow its government (by the CIA and Mossad) — this is all important context.
We can all have our ideological preferences (democracy, socialism, free-market capitalism, etc) but geopolitics does not operate in the world of ideals — there are adversarial relationships that force governments to act in a certain way in order to remain sovereign.
Zionists want to rewrite history so we can all ignore the long list of grievances the Iranians have with the west (Israel in particular) and instead operate in a false reality where the only criminals are the Iranian. The bottom line is you can’t spend decades savagely attacking a nation to undermine its government (because you don’t like their policies ) and then expect to easily paint the government as the evil ones as they fight for survival with the kind of brutality you can expect from a government that has its back to the wall. We all saw you wage economic war with sanctions. We saw you block medicine and food. We saw you assassinate their intellectuals and academics. We saw you bomb their embassies and assassinate their leaders. We can dislike the brutal Islamic dictatorship but we know who is the greater evil — the Zionist hypocrisy doesn’t go far with the free people in this world.
You’re saying the Iranians are hunky dory with Khamenei?
Like yes, the protests align with Israeli geopolitical goals. (Also American and Saudi ones. Probably, too, to some degree, every oil exporter.) That doesn’t mean they’re the root or even dominant cause of the current events, even if their bombings are a proximate cause.
Speaking more broadly, this American obsession with Israel when it comes to the Middle East is belittling to the region’s people. (And recognized as such more broadly, e.g. across Asia.) It’s also destructive to the causes those activists purport to represent—aligning with the IRGC is not helpful to Palestinian independence. (If I have to choose between an independent Palestine and free Iran, I’ll choose the larger population. Granted, Gaza isn’t my pet war. But recognize that turning everything into a single dimension also means rejecting support along tangential, albeit non-parallel, paths.)
The previous revolt happened for a reason.