Iran’s future cannot be a return to the past by Mathew Walls

Iran needs change. That much is undeniable. The frustration felt by millions of Iranians today, young people demanding dignity, women demanding autonomy, workers demanding economic justice is real, urgent and impossible to ignore. Yet amid calls for transformation, a dangerous nostalgia has begun to surface, the romanticization of Iran’s so-called “good old days” under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. History deserves better than selective memory.

The Shah’s era was not a golden age interrupted by tragedy. It was a monarchy built on repression, inequality and fear. Political opposition was crushed through SAVAK, the infamous secret police whose reputation for torture and surveillance silenced dissent across the country. Intellectuals, students, journalists and ordinary citizens learned quickly that criticism could cost them their freedom or their lives. Stability existed, yes, but it was the stability of intimidation.

Supporters of the old monarchy often highlight modernization projects, Western alliances, and social liberalization. These elements did exist but they benefited a narrow segment of society. Tehran’s elite enjoyed luxury lifestyles, grand celebrations and rapid urban development while vast portions of rural Iran remained impoverished and politically invisible. Wealth accumulated at the top while inequality widened below. For many Iranians, modernization felt imposed rather than shared.

This imbalance matters because revolutions do not emerge from comfort. The 1979 revolution was not born simply from religious fervor; it was fueled by humiliation, economic disparity and political suffocation. When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile, millions welcomed him not necessarily because they desired clerical rule, but because they sought escape from authoritarian monarchy. Khomeini became, in their eyes, an alternative to a system that had stopped listening.

That hope, tragically, transformed into another form of repression. The Islamic Republic replaced royal authoritarianism with ideological authoritarianism. Different rulers, different symbols, same silencing of dissent. Women’s rights became battlegrounds, political freedoms narrowed again and generations grew up under restrictions their parents had never imagined when they marched against the Shah.

This is why today’s calls for change must resist false binaries. Iran’s future is not a choice between a crown and a turban. It is not a debate over whether women wear veils or remove them. The deeper question is whether Iranians can finally achieve accountable governance, economic fairness, and personal freedoms without trading one authoritarian system for another.

Nostalgia is powerful, especially in exile communities and political discourse abroad. Images of glamorous Tehran in the 1970s circulate online, creating the illusion of a lost paradise. But photographs of fashion and nightlife cannot erase prisons filled with dissidents or villages left behind by uneven development. Romanticizing the monarchy risks repeating the very mistake that produced the revolution, ignoring the lived realities of ordinary people.

Iran’s younger generation understands this instinctively. Many protesting today were born decades after both the Shah and Khomeini. They are not demanding restoration; they are demanding reinvention. Their struggle is not about returning to yesterday but about building something entirely new, an Iran where power is accountable, wealth is less concentrated, and identity is not dictated by ideology or dynasty.

Change in Iran is necessary. But meaningful change cannot come from longing for a past that failed so many. The future must belong neither to monarchs nor clerics but to citizens. Only when Iran moves forward, rather than backward or blindly, can it finally break the cycle of replacing one form of oppression with another.