Iran’s Future Will Not Be Delivered by Bombs or by an Exiled Prince

Protesters gather with Iranian national flags during a demonstration in support of the government and against US and Israeli strikes outside a mosque in Tehran, Iran. (Photo: AFP)

Iranians have endured months of war, repression and economic collapse, and the question that matters most is what comes next. History offers a clear warning: democracies are not delivered by bombs or missiles, nor manufactured in exile. They are built from within, through organisation, sacrifice and legitimacy among the people themselves. That is precisely why exiled prince Reza Pahlavi’s meetings with European leaders this month are actively harmful.

At a moment when Iranians are paying in blood for change, the idea that the son of the deposed Shah could somehow emerge as a democratic saviour is a dangerous illusion. Pahlavi’s posture during the conflict has only deepened that concern. He has welcomed U.S. and Israeli military action against Iran and framed it as a pathway to liberation. He has notably refrained from condemning the bombardment of his own country, an outlier among opposition figures for his support of such strikes.

That position cuts to the heart of the problem. However brutal the Islamic Republic may be, the idea that democracy can be advanced through foreign bombing campaigns is both historically illiterate and politically corrosive. Across the Middle East, from Iraq to Libya, externally driven regime change has consistently failed to produce stable democracy. Instead, it has fractured societies, empowered militias and discredited reformist movements by associating them with foreign intervention. Iran would not be immune to the same dynamics.

Even Iranian opposition figures who reject the regime outright have warned against this illusion. Maryam Rajavi, leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), has argued that the mullahs’ regime “cannot be broken with bombs”and that only the Iranian people themselves can determine their future. That distinction is crucial. Democracy imposed from outside is rarely democracy at all. By aligning himself, even implicitly, with foreign military action, Pahlavi has undermined the very principle on which any legitimate democratic transition must rest, national sovereignty expressed through popular will.

But the deeper issue is not simply his stance on the war. It is the absence of any meaningful political foundation. For nearly five decades in exile, Pahlavi has failed to build what every successful democratic movement requires:, organisation inside the country. There are no known networks, no coordinated structures, no visible leadership cadres operating under his banner within Iran. No trade unions, no student bodies, no grassroots infrastructure capable of mobilising or sustaining a transition. This matters because the fall of an authoritarian regime is only the beginning. What follows is a struggle for control of institutions, of security forces, of the political narrative itself. Without organisation on the ground, that vacuum is not filled by democratic forces. It is filled by whoever holds power, guns or patronage. Pahlavi offers none of that organisational depth. What he offers instead is symbolism, rooted in a monarchy that many Iranians associate with repression, inequality and foreign interference. Tehran has long portrayed opposition movements as foreign-backed conspiracies seeking to restore a discredited past. When Western media amplify a royal figure who supports external military pressure, they reinforce exactly that narrative. 

Today, that internal pressure is unmistakable. The regime faces soaring inflation, currency collapse, infrastructure failures and widespread public anger. Repeated uprisings across dozens of cities in recent years demonstrate a society that is no longer willing to accept the status quo.  Yet the regime still controls the instruments of coercion, its security forces, its prisons and its capacity for violence. The frenzy of executions of political prisoners and even young protesters arrested during the nationwide uprising in January continues apace. Any democratic breakthrough will depend on whether those structures can be fractured from within, not shattered from above.

That requires leadership that can organise, coordinate and sustain resistance on Iranian soil. It does not come from a self-appointed monarch in exile, however well-connected he may be in Western capitals. If the international community is serious about supporting democracy in Iran, it must begin by abandoning comforting illusions. There is no shortcut through bombing campaigns. There is no substitute for internal legitimacy. And there is no democratic future in the restoration of a political order that Iranians themselves overthrew. Iran’s future will be decided by Iranians, through struggle, organisation and sacrifice. 

There are grounds for cautious optimism. Across Iran, a younger, more connected generation is steadily eroding the regime’s foundations through courage, defiance and an unyielding demand for dignity and freedom. Their struggle, led by workers, students, women and organised resistance networks, reflects a society that has already begun to imagine life beyond authoritarian rule. If that energy can be harnessed into coherent leadership and sustained organisation, it holds the potential to deliver what no foreign intervention or exiled figure ever could: a genuinely sovereign, democratic Iran, built by its own people and accountable to them alone.

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This article written by Struan Stevenson, a former member of the European Parliament representing Scotland (1999-2014), president of the Parliament's Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009-14) and chairman of the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup (2004-14). He is an author and international lecturer on the Middle East.