[This article is part of the Jadaliyya Iran Page's dossier, "Iran in Crisis: Seven Essays on the Obstacles to Freedom." Click here to read the dossier's introduction and browse the rest of the dossier.]
The Iranian diaspora is characterized by pronounced geographical dispersion and political heterogeneity. North America (the United States and Canada), alongside the United Kingdom and Australia, has largely functioned as a central hub for Pahlavi-linked networks and monarchist/royalist currents since 1979. Continental Europe, despite the presence of sizable monarchist constituencies, has predominantly absorbed Iranian refugees and migrants aligned with alternative political traditions, including leftists, the Mojahedin, women’s rights activists, ethnic movements, republicans, and others. In recent years, popular awareness within Iran of the diaspora has been shaped primarily through the expansion of social media and the rise of migration-, education-, and asylum-focused bloggers, who circulate granular, everyday representations of life in destination countries.
In a secondary yet highly influential role, mainstream Persian-language satellite television has devoted extensive coverage to diaspora activities, including political rallies in support of protests inside Iran. Two networks are particularly significant in this regard: London-based Manoto TV, launched in 2010, and Iran International, launched in 2017. While Manoto, financed by an Iranian monarchist couple, has primarily focused on entertainment alongside political commentary, Iran International is widely known for its financial ties to Saudi Arabia and operates as the only 24-hour Persian-language news channel. According to a 2021 survey conducted by GAMAAN, these two outlets rank as “the most popular” Persian-language satellite channels among audiences in Iran.
The political function of these networks has become increasingly evident in recent years. By blending entertainment formats with historical documentaries on the pre-revolutionary period, most notably “Time Tunnel,” Manoto TV has positioned itself as a narrator of the so-called “Pahlavi golden age” for younger generations. The central objective of these productions is to delegitimize the 1979 Revolution by framing it as the primary source of Iran’s contemporary crises and by attributing responsibility to the revolutionaries of 1979, including Islamists, leftists, and national-religious forces.
At the same time, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting has largely lost its credibility as a news source over the past two decades due to systematic censorship of protest movements and its active participation in both “soft” repression through the persistent state discourse that labels protesters as agitators, and “hard” repression, most notably by using interrogator-journalists to extract televised confessions from detained protesters.
If Manoto TV can be understood as the cultural–media base of Iranian monarchists, Iran International has, since its launch, increasingly functioned as their political platform. Especially after 2022, Iran International adopted overtly aggressive language, surpassing all other Persian-language news outlets abroad. Without meaningful adherence to professional journalistic ethics, it has effectively positioned itself as a mouthpiece for the most extreme opponents of the Iranian government, including openly Zionist currents. The act of one of its reporters during Israel’s genocide in Gaza, who wrote the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” on the wall of a destroyed Palestinian building and presented this slogan as a “gift” from the Iranian people to Israelis, constitutes one of the clearest manifestations of the channel’s political alignment. It is for this reason that many of its critics have derisively referred to the channel as “Mossad International” or “Saudi International.”
The prominence of these networks has enabled diaspora-centered narratives to circulate widely inside Iran, particularly during moments of protest. Their influence has been further amplified by the erosion of public trust in state media, producing a media vacuum in which external broadcasters acquire disproportionate agenda-setting power. It is also important to note that many individuals working for these channels (presenters, reporters, and commentators) have themselves become media celebrities over the past several years, amassing large followings on social media platforms (for example Pouria Zeraati and Sima Sabet from Iran International, and Salome Seyednia and Omid Khalili from Manoto). As a result, segments of Iranian audiences both inside and outside the country increasingly regard them as reliable intermediaries, sending them footage and firsthand reports during uprisings in Iran or rallies abroad and using their broadcasts and social media accounts as mechanisms for amplifying what are perceived as “the people’s voices.”
Over the last decade, monarchist and regime-change currents have emerged as the factions with the loudest public voice, the most expansive propaganda infrastructure, and the most sustained engagement in lobbying foreign states. In the aftermath of the December 2017 uprising, and even more decisively following the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising of September 2022, these currents gradually succeeded in presenting themselves as the hegemonic representatives of the Iranian diaspora, both within its host societies and internationally through global media circuits. This hegemonic position has been constructed and maintained primarily through a long-term propaganda project centered on Reza Pahlavi.
Pahlavi-centered propaganda has exhibited several defining characteristics. These include presenting Reza Pahlavi as a national, democratic, and secular figure, portraying him as the most reliable Western ally in the Middle East, promising the normalization of relations with the United States and the West in the event of “the liberation of Iran”, and proposing a so-called Cyrus Accord modeled on the Abraham Accords initiated under the Trump administration aimed at normalizing relations with Israel. At the same time, this discourse has openly called for military intervention and the bombing of Iran as a means of liberating the population from the Islamic Republic government. Throughout these years, and particularly in the aftermath of the December 2025 to January 2026 uprising, Reza Pahlavi has expected Western governments to recognize him personally as Iran’s legitimate representative in negotiations over a transitional period, thereby positioning himself as the central figure of a prospective Iranian government in exile. These narratives have not remained discursive, but have been materially reproduced through transnational mobilization and symbolic politics.
The public mobilization of monarchist supporters reflects the cumulative effects of decades-long diasporic propaganda. The mobilization of Pahlavi’s supporters across multiple countries in solidarity with cyclical protests in Iran, characterized by the display of Lion and Sun flags, images of Reza Pahlavi, and notably United States and Israeli flags, has been the product of more than two decades of sustained propaganda by monarchist currents within the Iranian diaspora. One of the most striking features of Iranian diaspora politics since 2023 has been the growing proximity between Iranian monarchists and Israeli Zionist actors. As Laden Rahbari has argued, this phenomenon can be understood as a form of proxy nationalism in which Iranian monarchists reframe Zionism as part of a purported Cyrus legacy. This symbolic alignment also reveals the counterrevolutionary imaginaries embedded within monarchist visions of a post-Islamic Republic Iran.
In this regard, monarchist demonstrations so far have normalized authoritarian state violence through the rehabilitation of Pahlavi-era symbols and figures. During their rallies, alongside the Lion and Sun flag, other symbols associated with the overthrown Pahlavi state have been prominently displayed. These have included the flag of SAVAK, Iran’s pre-1979 intelligence service, as well as images of Parviz Sabeti, a notorious SAVAK official widely associated with systematic torture in the 1970s. The circulation of such symbols by monarchist demonstrators, often accompanied by slogans such as “the fear of future terrorists,” reveals how segments of the Iranian diaspora envision and prepare themselves for a so-called “free Iran.” In this regard, they are laying the groundwork for a new authoritarian–fascist order marked by violent hostility toward leftists, workers, the poor, and other marginalized groups. These imaginaries are further reinforced through attempts to impose reactionary slogans and suppress alternative political voices within protest movements.
Since 2022, Iranian diasporic monarchists have actively sought to impose reactionary slogans and interpretive frames onto protest movements through their rallies or social media activism. Examples include the promotion of “Man, Homeland, Prosperity” in direct opposition to the feminist slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” during the 2022 uprising, as well as chants such as “This is the final battle, Pahlavi will return” during more recent mobilizations. These efforts have been accompanied by systematic attacks on and delegitimization of anti-Pahlavi forces including leftists, feminists, ethnic activists, and others who refuse to reproduce monarchist narratives and are instead branded as collaborators with or sympathizers of the Islamic Republic. As Nasrin Rahimieh has argued, the “politics of vengeance” have emerged as a defining feature of Iranian diaspora communities since 2022.
Moreover, by aligning themselves with Trump’s MIGA project, this segment of the Iranian diaspora has effectively displaced revolutionary politics by rebranding “regime change,” a term borrowed from the US neoconservative lexicon, as “the revolution” itself. Within this political imaginary, the “future Iran” is envisioned as a country whose “greatness” is to be restored through the intervention of figures such as Trump and Netanyahu, positioned as the next stage in the Great Middle East Project. In this fantasy, Iran becomes a site of foreign technological and financial penetration, exemplified by the expectation that actors such as Elon Musk, whose Starlink terminals were deployed in Iran during periods of nationwide internet shutdowns, will serve as key investors in the post-transition economy. This vision increasingly operates through spectacle and digital fantasy.
More strikingly, the political imagination of this current has increasingly been reduced to an AI-generated fantasy. Anyone attentive to Iranian social media in recent years will recognize the proliferation of algorithmically produced images of a “free Iran” that endlessly recycle the same hollow motifs: Iranian cities redesigned to resemble Dubai; a suddenly “liberated” population enjoying unrestricted social freedoms; Iranians reimagined as close allies of Israel and the United States; and, as the presumed reward for this alignment, a flood of foreign capital and global consumer brands entering the country. This visual and political repertoire bears notable similarities to Trump’s own imaginary of a “free Gaza,” revealing a shared logic of externally imposed “liberation” grounded in spectacle, global capital investment, and geopolitical realignment.
Alongside monarchist imaginaries, human rights-based regime-change advocacy has also played a parallel role in reshaping diaspora politics. Figures like Masih Alinejad have independently engaged in lobbying Western governments for humanitarian intervention in Iran, framed as assistance in the liberation of the Iranian people and in particular Iranian women. As some scholars have noted, the regime change industry operates within the continuities of colonial and imperial traditions, instrumentalizing human rights categories, especially narratives of sexual and gender repression, to advance political agendas aligned with the economic and strategic interests of hegemonic powers. Alinejad and her My Stealthy Freedom campaign constitute one of the most prominent examples of this dynamic. In recent years, Alinejad and the network surrounding her have succeeded in reshaping diaspora politics away from bottom-up solidarity-based mobilization toward a model centered on elite lobbying of imperial states. Meetings with European heads of state, engagements with members of the Trump administration, and appearances in international forums such as the UN Security Council aimed at pressuring Western governments toward military action against Iran represent the primary political achievements of this segment of Iranian diaspora activism. Together, these dynamics illustrate how hegemonic diaspora representation has been reconstituted through propaganda, exclusion, and imperial mediation rather than emancipatory politics.
The unprecedented configuration of the Iranian diaspora in recent years has significantly undermined the prospects for internationalist solidarity with progressive forces connected to struggles inside Iran. This has been driven by the diaspora’s disproportionate access to Persian- and English-language mainstream media, alongside large-scale social media mobilization around pro-Pahlavi propaganda centered on a political figure openly aligned with Israel and the United States. These dynamics have been accompanied by sustained efforts to lobby Western governments in favor of military intervention aimed at regime change in Iran, regardless of the social and human costs involved.
Access to Persian- and English-language mainstream media, combined with large-scale social media mobilization around pro-Pahlavi propaganda centered on a figure who is explicitly aligned with Israel and the United States, and the relentless efforts to persuade Western governments to pursue military intervention aimed at overthrowing the Islamic Republic at any cost, have produced a perception of the Iranian diaspora as a homogeneous political actor. From this perspective, the diaspora appears to have no objective other than paving the way for the advancement of Israeli and U.S. agendas.
The symbolic and discursive practices of the hegemonic diaspora have actively alienated leftist and anti-imperialist forces in Western and Middle Eastern contexts. The recurrent display of Lion and Sun flags alongside Israeli and U.S. flags has led significant segments of progressive movements to associate Iranian opposition politics with imperial alignment. As a result, social movements in Iran, and those claiming to represent them, are increasingly viewed as hostile to popular and anti-colonial struggles in regions long subjected to imperialist war, intervention, and genocide.
Within this environment, alternative diaspora currents including leftist, feminist, oppressed nationalities, and broader progressive forces have attempted to challenge the dominance of monarchist and regime-change discourses. Since 2022, initiatives such as Feminists for Jina and other collectives have sought to reframe Iranian struggles in emancipatory and anti-imperialist terms. Yet progressive forces within the Iranian diaspora have thus far failed to secure durable alliances with radical social movements in their host countries. While visible in moments of protest and online mobilization, these forces have not succeeded in building long-term coalitions around the defense of popular struggles in Iran. This failure has limited their political weight both in material terms such as street mobilization and organizational capacity, and in symbolic terms, particularly within media and dominant political discourses. As a result, progressive narratives remain marginal when compared to hegemonic diaspora currents. This marginalization is further compounded by the influence of another powerful discursive bloc within the diaspora.
The prominence of the so-called neo-campist left[1] within the Iranian diaspora has further eroded international solidarity with Iranian social movements. Operating across the Middle East and Western countries, these actors have uncritically reproduced the Iranian state’s framing of domestic protests, characterizing demonstrators as “terrorists” or as “foot soldiers” of Israel and the United States. By legitimizing this narrative, neo-campist currents actively delegitimize internal dissent and reframe state repression, killings, and violent crackdowns as necessary measures in defense of Iran’s “national security.” This framing is then circulated among political forces in Western countries as a supposedly anti-imperialist position. The combined effect of these competing yet mutually reinforcing hegemonies has been the systematic exclusion of genuinely progressive diaspora forces.
Consequently, progressive segments of the Iranian diaspora have been pushed to the margins of internationalist attention and solidarity. On one side, monarchists and regime-change advocates function as open supporters of imperialist agendas; on the other, neo-campist leftists operate as discursive and media extensions of the Islamic Republic abroad. Between these poles, progressive diaspora actors are rendered politically invisible. The resulting fragmentation and invisibility of progressive diaspora actors not only weakens transnational solidarity but also reinforces a false binary in which imperial intervention and authoritarian state power appear as the only available political options. Overcoming this impasse requires a rearticulation of internationalism that centers the autonomy of popular movements in Iran, rejects both imperialist regime change and state-centered neo-campism, and rebuilds organic ties on the basis of shared struggles against oppression, exploitation, and domination.
[1] The concept of neo-campism refers to the post–Cold War reconfiguration of campist logic, in which global politics is still interpreted through a binary opposition between a U.S.-led “imperialist” bloc and a supposed “anti-imperialist” bloc. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, this framework was increasingly applied to states such as Russia, China, Iran, and others, which came to be viewed by some currents of the left primarily through their geopolitical opposition to U.S. power. Within this perspective, internal class struggle and anti-authoritarian movements are often subordinated to geopolitical considerations, and criticism of or opposition to such states may be dismissed as serving Western imperial interests. In this way, neo-campism can function as an ideological justification for overlooking or minimizing domestic repression in the name of anti-imperialist alignment (for discussions on campism see this and this).