Despite waves of protests against the Islamic Republic, the Iranian opposition is yet to form a credible political alternative.

Shabnam von Hein 

DW: 

"It's time to look for new leadership in Iran," US President Donald Trump told media outlet Politico on Saturday. Trump accused Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of being responsible for the destruction of the country.

The latest wave of protests in Iran has been brutally suppressed, with thousands of demonstrators thought to have been killed. Well-known members of the opposition, such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, are behind bars. As in the past, any form of organized opposition, from the student movement to workers' and women's movements, was crushed.

Most recently, the 65-year-old son of the last Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi told US broadcaster Fox News that he was ready "to lead this transition from this tyranny to a future democracy." After 47 years in exile, having fled Iran in 1978, he was ready to return, he stated.

"This regime is on its last leg. It's about to collapse," Pahlavi told DW at a press conference in Washington.

"The democratic free world, which champions freedom and human rights and equality of citizens in the face of this regime's brutal repression, should act now," Pahlavi said in response to a question from DW's Washington bureau chief Ines Pohl about what he expects from Europe and Germany.

Some protesters chanted Pahlavi's name at nationwide demonstrations, calling for the return of the monarchy. However the extent of Pahlavi's actual support within the country remains unclear.

He cannot rely on financial support from inside Iran, including influential Iranian businesspeople, who played a decisive role before the 1979 revolution.

"Businesspeople from the bazaar benefit from the state today," US-based sociologist Hosein Ghazian, told DW. Under sanctions, the Iranian government has established a state-subsidized foreign exchange system for businesspeople. US dollar revenues from oil exports are distributed to traders and companies that import key goods at a significantly lower rate than in the free market in Iran.

These politically well-connected actors then resell the imported goods at a considerable profit. Many are known to have close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, a powerful military organization that supports the current system. The IRGC export oil, organize imports and bypass regular financial channels.

This is part of the reason why any Iranian opposition lacks the financial and organizational base that supported previous political upheaval in the country.

Iran's leadership says Pahlavi is an agent of Israel. They cite his trip to Israel in 2023, his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reports in Israeli media as evidence.

According to a report by Israeli newspaper Haaretz in October 2025, Israel has conducted digital disinformation and influence campaigns in Persian in order to weaken the Iranian regime and promote Pahlavi as a political force. But the IRGC also have a cyber unit that promotes disinformation and distrust in the opposition.

"I don't believe that Israel is providing financial support to Reza Pahlavi," Arash Azizi, a lecturer in political science at Clemson University in South Carolina, told DW. "Anyone who is seriously involved in opposition politics must be able to mobilize financial support," he said, adding that "Mr. Pahlavi is in fact supported by wealthy circles in the US, including Iranian-born businesspeople and right-wing conservative, pro-Israel American billionaires."

No common vision

While Pahlavi attracts international attention and is seen by some as an alternative to the Islamic Republic, to others he represents Iran's authoritarian past.

Following nationwide protests in 2022, in the wake of Jina Mahsa Amini's death, he and other well-known figures from the Iranian opposition abroad attempted to form a joint coalition. However, for many observers, the rapid collapse of this coalition became a symbol of the weakness of the exiled opposition.

"The main issue with the Iranian opposition abroad is that it does not clearly differentiate between political work and pure human rights work," Azizi says. As a result, there is a lack of organization, strategic direction and any ability to engage in political action in the long term.

"Mr. Pahlavi chose a team of advisors who divided the opposition and regularly attacked anyone who did not accept his leadership role," Azizi said, explaining that, "his [Pahlavi's] wife accused Narges Mohammadi, the Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner, of being an agent of the Islamic Republic for giving an interview to CNN from prison. Or she spread slogans such as 'death to the mullahs, the leftists – people like me – and the mujahedeen."

Historical differences

The exiled opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, has also been speaking out alongside Iran's monarchists.

The organization was founded in Iran in 1965 and originally represented a mixture of Islamic ideology and socialist politics. However, after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, its supporters were arrested en masse and its leadership fled to neighboring Iraq where they cooperated with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Thousands of imprisoned MEK supporters in Iran were executed without trial.

Its troubled past makes the MEK one of the most controversial players in the opposition.

The MEK itself rejects cooperation with Pahlavi. The organization is now based in Albania and regularly invites former Western leaders to speak, including former CIA director Mike Pompeo. "Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them…" Pompeo posted on January 2, 2026, on the social media platform X.

Such statements are used by the Iranian leadership to show foreign control of the protest movement.

"The state's response has moved quickly from deterrence to suppression, including a nationwide communications blackout designed to slow coordination and reduce external scrutiny, which typically coincides with harsher use of force on the ground," Andreas Krieg, a Middle East expert and senior lecturer at King's College London, told DW.

"Where the opposition 'stands' is best understood as fragmentation rather than absence," Krieg told DW. "Inside Iran, collective action remains largely leaderless and networked: Local mobilization, social ties, workplace dynamics and university ecosystems produce bursts of coordinated protest without an integrated national command structure," he explained.

Elona Elezi contributed to this report.