For decades, much Western commentary has interpreted Iranian protests as calls for reform within the Islamic Republic and the narrative of the third-worldist Islamic Revolution of 1979. This interpretation is increasingly detached from reality. What has gradually emerged inside Iran over the past decade is something far deeper: a movement that increasingly understands itself as a struggle to reclaim the sovereignty of the Iranian nation-state that was effectively annulled in 1979.
This transformation is not merely political. It is discursive and civilisational. The protests that have erupted across Iran since the mid-2010s reflect a reawakening of Iranian civic and national consciousness that reaches far beyond the ideological framework imposed by the Islamic Republic. In essence, what we are witnessing is the political phase of what may be described as an Iranian Movement of National Consciousness.
From Nation-State to Ideological Captivity
The intellectual and political foundations of the modern Iranian state were established during the Persian Constitutional Movement in the late nineteenth century. With the Constitution of 1906, Iran formally embraced the principles of modern constitutional governance and the rule of law. This constitutional project matured during the twentieth century, particularly under the rule of Reza Shah Pahlavi and later Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. During this period Iran achieved many of the institutions of a modern state: a national army, modern universities, an industrial economy, expanded infrastructure, and a centralised civil administration. Land reforms, public education, and the development of an urban middle class transformed Iranian society.
The Constitutional Monarchy in the Pahlavi era represented the effective consolidation of the modern Iranian nation-state envisioned by the constitutionalists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Iran was gradually becoming what political philosophy would recognise as a mature Rechtsstaat – a state grounded in law, sovereignty, and civic liberty.
This trajectory was abruptly shattered by the so-called Islamic Revolution of 1979. What is commonly described in the West as a “revolution” was, in reality, a popular insurrection against the very foundations of the Iranian nation-state, and established not only a radically ideological state, but a declared state of internal occupation. Under the doctrine of velayat-e faqih, formulated by Ruhollah Khomeini, sovereignty was transferred from the nation to the Shia Muslim clerical authority claiming guardianship over society. The state’s legitimacy was no longer rooted in the Iranian nation but in the purported aspirations of the broader Islamic ummah.
In effect, the Iranian nation-state entered a form of ideological captivity of "Islamofascist nature". The so-called new constitution of 1980 subverted national sovereignty in exchange for a transnational Islamist mission. Concepts central to modern Iranian political life – nation, citizens’ rights, state, civic liberties – were systematically redefined or emptied of their original meaning. The new Iranian state became not the political expression of the Iranian nation but the institutional vehicle of a revolutionary religious and apocalyptic project.
The Collapse of the Reformist Illusion
For three decades after 1979, this ideological transformation was rarely confronted at the conceptual level. Much of Iran’s intellectual elite remained trapped within the discursive framework established by the Islamic Revolution. Political opposition often focused on reforming the façade of the Islamic Republic rather than challenging its ideological anti-Iranian foundations.
Western intellectual circles reinforced this dynamic. Large segments of Western academia and media, shaped by the post-1968 culture of post-colonial and third-worldist thought, continued to interpret the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republic through narratives that portrayed it as an authentic anti-imperialist expression of the Global South. Criticism of the regime was frequently reframed as a form of “Orientalist” prejudice.
This intellectual climate also facilitated the rise of the regime’s so-called reformist faction during the 1990s and 2000s. Figures associated with this faction were promoted in Western political and media circles as the potential players and promoters of a phantomatic change toward democracy within the Islamic Republic.
In practice, the reformist project was never meant to challenge the ideological foundations of the regime. It functioned largely as a well-designed safety valve, a softer façade that allowed the regime to maintain some sort of international legitimacy while preserving the underlying structure of the Islamofascist mission.
The illusion finally collapsed after the protests in 2009, known as the Iranian Green Movement. When the movement was suppressed, many younger Iranians realised that meaningful change was impossible within the ideological framework of the Islamic Republic. A new generation began to rethink the entire political narrative of the past half-century.
The Return of the Iranian Nation
Beginning in the mid-2010s, protests across Iran began to reveal a striking transformation in political language. Rather than chanting vague or naive slogans, demonstrators increasingly appealed to Iran’s deeper national history and the question of the lost Iranian national sovereignty. Three slogans, out of many, illustrate this shift.
In October 2016, thousands gathered at the tomb of Cyrus the Great in Pasargadae. One chant echoed through the crowd: “Iran is our homeland; Cyrus is our father.” The slogan openly invoked Iran’s pre-Islamic heritage, a civilisational memory that the Islamic Republic has mostly attempted to ridicule and marginalise.
During protests in December 2017 across dozens of cities, demonstrators shouted: “Reza Shah, may your soul be blessed.” The chant referred to the founder of Pahlavi dynasty, who was the chief builder of the Constitutionalist ideals of modern Iran’s statehood, a figure vehemently demonised for decades by the regime’s official narrative.
Finally, during the nationwide protests following the killing of Mahsa Amini in 2022, another slogan captured the emerging spirit of the movement. At the funeral of a young victim of the unrest, a grieving mother declared: “We are a great nation. We will take Iran back.”
These slogans represent far more than rhetorical flourishes. They signal the emergence of a new spirit of political determination in which the Iranian people increasingly see themselves not as subjects of a revolutionary ideology but as members of a historic nation seeking to reclaim its sovereignty. In this context, references to monarchy carry both a symbolic and institutional meaning. A figure like Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi is invoked both as a symbol of the pre-1979 national state, and also as the rightful caretaker of the illustrious office of Shah (King), which is the supreme representation of the Iranian Nation in its entirety within the Constitutional Monarchy and its legal continuity.
Western observers frequently misunderstand this phenomenon. Protesters who invoke national symbols and institutions in their chants like Javid Shah (“Long Live the King”) are often dismissed as reactionary nationalists or uneducated nostalgics. Some commentators even label them “fascists”, a striking irony given that the movement they seek to delegitimise is directed against one of the most rigid forms of fascism in the entire modern history. In reality, the emerging patriotic discourse in Iran is fundamentally antifascist in character, and one of the most lucid reasons for this is the mature tendency toward the constitutional monarchy as a proven deterrent against any form of extremism in Iran. It represents a conscious revolt against the ideological usurpation of the nation by this theocratic regime, or any other ideological agenda.
After nearly half a century of clerical rule, many Iranians, especially the youth, are rediscovering their proud political language of nationhood, constitutionalism, and sovereignty that shaped their earlier modern history. Understanding this shift is essential for anyone seeking to grasp the deeper dynamics of Iran’s unfolding political transformation. For the first time in decades, the Iranian nation is beginning to articulate a coherent answer to the ideological rupture of 1979, and to the long captivity that followed it.
Ario Sedaghat
Iranian Philosopher | Ērmān Institute
