Should the Islamic Republic of Iran fall amid sustained anti-regime protests, two movements in exile with competing visions of what happens next pit the son of Iran’s ousted shah against a democratic opposition that opposed his father’s old regime.

Sustained protests are currently rocking the regime in Tehran, which has resorted to violent crackdowns on protesters to maintain control. At the same time, President Donald Trump has vowed to intervene if the regime doesn’t stop the killing of protesters. On Monday, he canceled any further meetings with Iranian officials unless the killings stopped.

In subsequent days, there were signs that the U.S. was preparing military action against Iran. However, by Wednesday, President Trump said he was told that the killings of protesters had stopped, and the regime had no current plans to execute any prisoners.

“There’s no plan for executions,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, responding to a question about Erfan Soltani, a protester that was due to be executed by the regime on Wednesday. “I’m sure if happens, we’ll all be very upset,” Trump added. “But that’s just gotten to me […] they’re not going to have an execution.”

It is not yet clear whether Iran’s response to the American president’s threats has successfully staved off U.S. military action.

Historic challenge to Iran’s regime
The Islamic regime is facing the most significant period of instability since the last major protests in 2022 after suffering dual blows to its credibility and regional power–U.S. strikes against its coveted nuclear weapons program and the decimation of key proxy groups and allies from Hamas in Gaza to the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The instability has vaulted two key centers of opposition to the Iranian regime back to the forefront. Though they have significant disagreements, the two factions, supporters of the old monarchy under the shah and a democratic resistance that opposed him, both view democracy as a viable alternative to the Islamic regime and see the current protests as the best opportunity in years to reverse the 1979 revolution that installed the Islamic Republic under the ayatollahs.

The Shah’s history complicates and divides the opposition
As the protests in Iran expanded, Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah (the Iranian equivalent of a king) who was ousted by the Iranian Revolution in 1979, has called for the Iranian people to take to the streets and protest the regime. But, his father, who ruled the country from 1941 until the revolution, has a divisive and complicated history that might present difficulties organizing a resistance to the Iranian regime around the shah’s son.

Pahlavi seems to recognize this, and has insisted in the past that his goal is not to bring Iran back to the old regime, but calls for a democratic future for the country, whether its people choose to reinstate him as monarch, constitutional or otherwise.

“This is not about restoring the past,” he previously told reporters during a visit to Paris, per the BBC. “It’s about securing a democratic future for all Iranians.” Pahlavi said that he believes that any regime change in Iran will ultimately have to come from the people of Iran themselves, but he has criticized European and other Western governments for failing to sufficiently pressure the regime from the outside.

But, after the regime is toppled, Pahlavi does not insist that he be crowned king of Iran, like his father before him. In fact, the exiled shah views himself as a caretaker or figurehead of a democratic transition.

Pahlavi: All “democratic options” should be on the table
“Once the regime collapses, we have to have a transitional government as quickly as possible,” Pahlavi told Politico last year. He said that a constitutional conference would then decide a new settlement for the country’s government, which would ultimately be approved by a national referendum.

The day after that referendum, he told Politico, “that’s the end of my mission in life.” He does not specifically advocate for the restoration of the monarchy, but says that all “democratic options” should be on the table.

“I’m not going to be the one to decide that. My role, however, is to make sure that no voice is left behind. That all opinions should have the chance to argue their case — it doesn’t matter if they are republicans or monarchists, it doesn’t matter if they’re on the left of center or the right,” he said.

Though videos have circulated during the current and prior rounds of protests of Iranians invoking the name of the shah as a rallying cry, it is difficult to determine the level of support Pahlavi would command in a post-theocratic Iran. At the moment, it is a crime in Iran to support the monarchy, making it hard to measure public opinion about the exiled figure.

The Democratic Resistance
Another group does not believe that the shah has the legitimacy or the support to lead a transition should the Islamic Republic fall. The National Council of Resistance of Iran also calls for a democratic regime change in Iran, but opposes the reinstatement of a monarchy.

This is because the NCRI was founded by members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK), a group formed by those opposed to the shah’s regime, but broke from the takeover of Iran by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic.

Unlike the monarchists, MEK has engaged in armed resistance against the Islamic Republic of Iran since the revolution in 1979, fighting alongside Iraqi troops in the Iran-Iraq War, and was accused of at least one bombing in Iran targeting regime officials. The MEK never claimed responsibility.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran was founded in Tehran in 1981 as a political coalition aimed at promoting a democratic Iran free of the religious dictatorship of the Islamic Republic. Its founding leader was Massoud Rajavi, also the leader of the MEK. The group bills itself as the “parliament” of the Iranian resistance. The group, under the leadership of Maryam Rajavi, calls for an end to theocratic rule, Western freedoms and rights, the separation of religion and state, gender equality, and democratic representation.

National Council: Freedom must come “from the Iranian people themselves”
But, despite the similarity in aims, the NCRI and its leaders are equally opposed to Pahlavi and his movement for an Iranian democratic transition, citing the brutality of his father’s infamous secret police, known as SAVAK, which cracked down on political opponents during the pre-revolution regime.

“The developments of recent months have clearly demonstrated a fundamental truth: although the regime ruling Iran has been seriously weakened and has suffered heavy blows, it will not collapse automatically under the weight of its own failures,” NCRI’s Maryam Rajavi, who was chosen by the group as ‘president-elect’ of Iran, told Just the News.

“This dictatorship will not be overthrown by foreign pressure or by decisions made in world capitals. As I have repeatedly stressed, change in Iran can only be achieved by the Iranian people themselves, through an organized, nationwide resistance present on the ground—one capable of confronting one of the most brutal repression machines of our time,” she continued.

She asserted that NCRI is not a “symbolic or media-based opposition, but a movement forged through six decades of uninterrupted struggle against two dictatorships, Shah and Sheikh alike, in fire, blood, and sacrifice.” This is an implicit criticism of Reza Pahlavi, who has spent his life living abroad in the United States.

“More than 100,000 of its members and supporters have been executed or killed under torture, including 30,000 political prisoners hanged in the 1988 massacre solely for remaining loyal to the MEK. This price is the proof of the resistance’s historical legitimacy and the depth of its roots in Iranian society,” she added.

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