By Dr. Majid Rafizadeh*
This article was originally published by EuraAsia Review on November 4, 2025
Reza Pahlavi’s latest political invention, the so-called “Imperial Guard,” rebranded as a self-styled network of small groups purportedly designed to defy Iran’s ruling regime is cloaked in the language of trust, self-organization, and national renewal, yet the scheme collapses under the weight of its own impracticality.
In a state where surveillance is omnipresent and infiltration an art form, the idea of operationally ambiguous cells borders on fantasy. More importantly, Reza Pahlavi’s invocation of his father’s Imperial Guard betrays a lingering nostalgia for the very instruments of repression that defined the monarchy, suggesting not a break from authoritarianism but a yearning to reconstitute it under a different banner.
The Resurgence of a Name Best Forgotten
Recently, a small audience in Canada heard Reza Pahlavi unveil yet another initiative, this time the formation of “small groups” under the banner of the Imperial Guard. The choice of name is revealing. The former Shah’s Imperial Guard of Iran (gard-e-shəhanshahi-e Iran), also known as Immortal Guard (gard-e–Javidan) which expanded to some 18,000 men by the late 1970s, was one of the few military formations permanently stationed in Tehran and directly loyal to the Shah. Its duties included palace security, internal repression, and the suppression of protests, roles that earned it immortal infamy. The Imperial Guard’s actions reached their tragic apex at Tehran’s Jaleh Square on September 8, 1978, when unarmed demonstrators were gunned down by the troops in what became known as “Black Friday.” For Reza Pahlavi to reintroduce that nameis a striking display of political naivete and illiteracy.
Shortly after the announcement, a 13-page booklet appeared under the title Iran’s Imperial Guard: A Guide to the Beginning. The document offers little beyond vague exhortations: “Form small groups of three to five,” “share resources,” “avoid Telegram,” “stay calm.” Absent are any mechanisms of coordination, chain of command, leadership, or accountability, elements essential to the very resilience it purports to build.
The QR-Code Revolution That Wasn’t
This latest foray follows the familiar pattern of Pahlavi’s political life—a flash of publicity, a vague promise, and the inevitable fizzle into irrelevance. In the Iranian diaspora, the most pressing question now is not how the Imperial Guard will operate, but what became of the “fifty or sixty thousand” supposed recruits regime’s security and intelligence organs, who Pahlavisaid have signed up after he unveiled his now-infamous QR code on Iran International TV more than four months ago. Like so many of his initiatives, the “digital uprising” vanished without a trace.
Obsession with Suppression
Pahlavi’s Daftarcheh, a self-styled “booklet,” betrays an enduring preoccupation with the coercive architecture of his father’s rule. Incredibly, it proposes the re-creation of the Shah’s infamous security service, SAVAK, reimagined as SAVAM. Such a revival would signify less an evolution of governance than the reassertion of authoritarian reflexes—the transposition of royal absolutism into the lexicon of modern opposition.
This impulse toward the restoration of coercive power finds its latest expression in his Imperial Guard, which his father used to suppress dissent. Even more tellingly, Pahlavi has appealed to elements within the mullahs’ Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—the same apparatus responsible for decades of repression—to join his cause. In doing so, he reveals a political imagination that cannot envision liberation without the instruments of repression. His is a vision built on the logic of repression: a proposal that mirrors, rather than transcends, the very autocracy it claims to oppose. That is why, in nearly every uprising, one of the most resonant chants among the Iranian people todayis: ‘Death to the oppressor—whether Shah or the mullah.’
From Tea Cups to Tyranny: The Fantasy of the Imperial Guard
Even setting aside his fixation with the instruments of suppression, Pahlavi’s latest invention collapses under minimal scrutiny. Effective resistance requires more thanempty rhetoric; it demands coordination, hierarchy, and disciplined organization. Yet his Imperial Guard “manual” offers none. In a state where surveillance, intelligence, and coercion intersect to pre-empt dissent, the notion that scattered, leaderless cells could outmaneuver such machinery is less a plan than fantasy. What Pahlavi presents as “decentralization” is, in fact, disarray—an unstructured vacuum easily penetrated and neutralized by the regime.
If the Imperial Guard booklet were not so earnest in tone, it might almost pass for parody. The “manual” instructs aspiring revolutionaries to “find three to five trusted friends,” “write their names on paper,” and “meet for tea or coffee.” These gestures—part neighborhood watch, part self-help circle—reveal the gulf between fantasy and strategy. The text oscillates between banal common sense (“don’t trust strangers”) and the delusional (“hundreds of such groups will form an unbreakable network beyond the reach of repression”). The entire exercise reads less like a blueprint for resistance than a civics club for the politically nostalgic, a ritual of make-believe where rebellion is rehearsed in whispers over tea rather than organized through risk, structure, and sacrifice.
The Cult of Posturing
At its core, the Imperial Guard is not a movement but a performance—another stage upon which Reza Pahlavi rehearses the illusion of leadership. This pattern is sustained more by nostalgia and spectacle than by strategy or structure. Such posturing might appear inconsequential were it not for its corrosive effect on genuine opposition movements. By diverting media attention and public energy, these episodic ventures are meant to erode the momentum of organized resistance and blur the distinction between activism and performance.
The Seventeenth Mirage
By most measures, introducing the Imperial Guard is Reza Pahlavi’s seventeenth experiment in transforming the ruins of a deposed monarchy into the semblance of a movement. The record includes such ethereal entities as the Council of Iranian Solidarity, the Iran National Council, Ofogh Iran International, and the Phoenix Project of Iran, among others. One could be forgiven for mistaking this catalogue of stillborn projects for a museum dedicated to the art of failure. This pattern reflects a deeper pathology of exiled monarchism: the conflation of symbolism with substance, of nostalgia with strategy. Such theatrics offer catharsis without consequence.
Conclusion
Real and enduring change in Iran demands far more than sentiment or scattered theatrics. It requires disciplined organization, strategic coherence, international alignment, and above all, a unifying leadership capable of transforming resistance into sustained, goal-driven momentum. A genuine model of effective defiance already exists in the Resistance Units affiliated with the main organized opposition Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK). Since their formation in 2014, these networks have built a resilient, coordinated presence across Iran’s major cities, embodying the discipline and strategic clarity essential to any transformative movement. Their impact is reflected in the regime’s own behavior: officials and state media repeatedly brand them as existential threats, acknowledgingtheir pivotal role in catalyzing Iran’s next uprising.
While true resistance is forged through organization and a democratic vision oriented towards the future, Pahlavi’s Imperial Guard proposal reveals a wistful attachment to the repressive machinery of his father’s regime. By resurrecting the names and symbols of the monarchy’s most feared institutions—from the Imperial Guard to a rebranded secret police SAVAK—he reveals not a vision of liberation but a longing for monarchical dictatorship. It is a politics steeped less in imagination than in inheritance—the reflex of a man who mistakes the instruments of fear for the foundations of order and democracy.
Pahlavi occasionally resurfaces, tossing grandiose and absurd rhetoric into the public sphere. But each return only further exposes his true colors and the central contradiction of his politics: a self-proclaimed democrat enamored with the trappings of despotism and its suppressive apparatus. Over time, these performances have eroded any pretense of relevance, reducing him to a figure of ridicule. To the Iranian people, he has become little more than a punchline—a would-be heir auditioning for a throne that neither history nor the Iranian people will ever grant him.
*Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. X: @Dr_Rafizadeh