Will there be a new Shah in Iran?

On a London high street where Persian groceries and kebab shops blend easily into the city’s everyday multicultural rhythm, Iranian exile politics has found an unlikely new outlet. A restaurant window advertises a 20 per cent discount on any purchase to anyone who walks in and says a sentence banned in Iran since 1979: Javid Shah — long live the Shah.

The poster shows Reza Pahlavi, son of Iran’s last monarch, framed by images of his father and grandfather beneath the pre-revolutionary lion-and-sun emblem. The Persian text is explicit: say the slogan and receive the discount.

It is a small, almost playful gesture, but it captures a real shift in mood among parts of Iran’s diaspora. What for years survived as nostalgia or provocation has edged into something more deliberate. Protest alone, many exiles now believe, has reached its limits. What follows protest, they argue, must be a credible alternative and that inevitably revives the question of succession.

That question is resurfacing now, not because the protest has failed, but because it has persisted long enough to exhaust faith in spontaneity alone. Repeated nationwide mobilisations, met with repression rather than reform, have sharpened the search for an endpoint rather than an eruption.

Since the nationwide demonstrations triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, monarchist language has re-emerged with surprising confidence outside Iran. Flags once confined to living rooms appear at rallies; chants once whispered are shouted; and now slogans migrate into shopfronts.

The restaurant poster does not argue for restoration in constitutional detail. It does something simpler. It asks customers to say the words out loud, to test whether a taboo still holds.

At the centre of this recalibration is Reza Pahlavi himself. He has no party machine, no organisation inside Iran, and no formal claim to power. What he offers is recognisability, secular credentials and acceptability in Western capitals as a transitional figure rather than an ideological unknown.

In media interviews last year, Pahlavi argued that Iran’s system was hollowing out under corruption and repression, while insisting that change must come from within. “The solution is regime change by the Iranian people,” he said, rejecting the idea of foreign military intervention.

Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, he framed the political end point even more starkly. “Separation of religion and state is a prerequisite to democracy in Iran,” Pahlavi told his audience, a formulation carefully calibrated to reassure republicans as much as monarchists.

The London poster, by contrast, crowns him “King”. The distinction matters. It reveals a tension at the heart of today’s exile politics: the slogan demands restoration even as its subject insists on transition.

None of this means Iran’s opposition has unified around a single figure. Fragmentation remains its defining condition. Inside Iran, the most compelling voices belong to those who cannot campaign freely at all.

Narges Mohammadi, writing from prison, described the protest movement in her Nobel Peace Prize lecture as “a movement against tyranny and religious authoritarianism”, a formulation that deliberately avoids endorsing any particular political heir. Her authority comes precisely from the fact that she speaks from within the system’s punishment cells rather than from exile studios.

Abroad, activists such as Masih Alinejad have kept attention focused on executions, intimidation and the cost of dissent. In interviews with British media, Alinejad has spoken of the particular cruelty of exile activism: the constant fear for families left behind and the knowledge that visibility abroad can translate into home reprisals.

Organised opposition groups such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, led by Maryam Rajavi, continue to present themselves as a government-in-waiting, complete with detailed transition plans, but remain deeply polarising among Iranians who question their representativeness.

Attempts to impose unity from above have repeatedly failed. A short-lived coalition of opposition figures announced in 2023 collapsed within weeks amid accusations and mistrust, reinforcing a long-standing problem of exile politics: visibility without coordination.

Whether Tehran itself is close to collapse is another question. The regime’s legitimacy has been badly eroded, but legitimacy has never been its primary defence. Power rests with security institutions that control coercion and cash.

Western news reporters claim the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has tightened its grip over large parts of Iran’s economy, enabling the state to fund repression and preserve elite loyalty amid sanctions and unrest. No verified, large-scale defections from the security apparatus have yet occurred, marking insufficient struggles to break the system.

External pressure complicates the calculation. Donald Trump has revived the language of “maximum pressure” in recent statements on Iran. During his first term, US sanctions sharply reduced Iran’s oil exports and sent the currency into freefall, briefly rattling elite confidence even as repression intensified.

Trump has again said that “all options are on the table” and warned of “consequences” for continued repression. For some exiles, such rhetoric is reassuring; for others, it is dangerous. Loud threats have allowed Iran’s leadership to frame dissent as foreign-engineered, a siege narrative that can still mobilise nationalist reflexes.

Pahlavi himself has warned against that trap, arguing that international support must not delegitimise movements inside Iran. It is a caution shared by activists who know how quickly outside pressure can be weaponised by a regime skilled in survival.

Seen in this light, the London poster is not a prediction but a barometer. It marks impatience with endless protest cycles and frustration with opposition figures who cannot agree on a roadmap, and a willingness among some exiles to test forbidden language in public. A restaurant doorway becomes a political checkpoint, asking passers-by a simple question: are you prepared to say these words?

Whether Iran itself would ever answer yes remains unknowable. How parts of its diaspora are now rehearsing the answer, in daylight and on glass, tells its own story.