Supporters of Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, declined to speak to Alhurra for this report, which includes representatives of Kurdish, Arab and Baluch groups that royalists often describe as “separatists.”
Their refusal reflects one of the Iranian opposition’s deepest problems: the factions seeking to overthrow the Islamic Republic remain divided over what kind of state should replace it.
For monarchists, Mr. Pahlavi remains the leading figure for a transitional period that would restore Iran as a secular and centralized state. For Kurdish, Ahwazi Arab, Baluch and Azeri groups, however, removing the clerical establishment is not enough if power in Tehran remains concentrated in the same centralized structure that, they argue, marginalized their communities for decades.
The dispute has left Tehran facing many opponents, but without a unified front capable of speaking on behalf of them all. It also helps explain why repeated waves of protests, combined with sustained American and Israeli pressure on Iran, have failed to produce a clear political alternative to the ruling system.
In January, President Donald Trump said it was time “to look for new leadership in Iran.” But interviews conducted by Alhurra with activists and opposition figures from different ethnic communities suggest that such leadership has yet to emerge.
Over the past decade, Iranians have repeatedly taken to the streets. In 2022, the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests erupted after the death of the young Kurdish woman Mina Amini — also known as Mahsa Amini — following her detention by the morality police over hijab rules. Late last year, protests returned to several cities over taxes and deteriorating living conditions, continuing through February.
Yet those protest movements remained leaderless.
Inside Iran, demonstrators largely organized through small local networks. Outside the country, opposition groups remained fragmented among monarchists, leftists, nationalists, the Mujahedeen-e Khalq and non-Persian movements pursuing their own agendas.
Kamal, an activist from Tehran who participated in the January protests, told Alhurra that most of the protest groups operating in the capital and other cities had little coordination with opposition organizations abroad. He said many protesters had grown increasingly skeptical of those groups, which they believed had failed to transform public anger into a political strategy or establish meaningful ties between protesters and the outside world.
That divide is reflected in much of the opposition’s own narrative. Older parties possess names, offices and media platforms. Younger activists command networks inside Iran and a reservoir of anger. But the two sides have yet to converge under a single framework.
The deeper disagreement is not only about who should lead the opposition, but about the very definition of Iran itself.
Aref Bavjani, head of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, rejected the idea that Kurdish, Ahwazi Arab and Baluch parties should be categorized simply as part of the “Iranian opposition.” In his view, they are liberation movements rather than parties seeking a share of power in Tehran.
Mr. Bavjani said Kurdish parties had remained active through protests, strikes, political activism and armed operations inside Iran. He argued that these groups pose the clearest threat to the Islamic Republic, unlike what he described as the “Persian opposition,” which he characterized as weak and disconnected from events inside the country.
That argument is precisely what supporters of Mr. Pahlavi and other centralist currents reject. For them, opening the door to self-determination movements risks threatening Iran’s territorial integrity.
One supporter of Mr. Pahlavi, an Iranian opposition journalist based in Europe who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity under the pseudonym “Kayan,” described the exiled prince as “the only alternative” capable of leading Iran toward secular democratic rule. But he also said monarchists refuse to engage with groups demanding self-determination because they see them as advocating the partition of the country.
For years, the Iranian opposition has remained trapped between these competing visions. Nearly all factions agree on ending the Islamic Republic. But they remain divided over the nature of the state that would follow it.
Iran’s geography further complicates the dispute. Persians are concentrated across much of central and eastern Iran. Kurds live in the west and northwest alongside Azeris. Ahwazi Arabs are concentrated in the southwest, while Baluch communities are based in the southeast near the Arabian Sea. Mazandaranis and Gilaks inhabit the Caspian coast.
For non-Persian parties, this map represents more than demographic diversity. It reflects a history of linguistic, cultural and security policies that shaped Tehran’s relationship with Iran’s peripheral regions. For centralist factions, however, reopening those questions risks undermining national unity.
Awda Afrawi, a leader in the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, told Alhurra that some centralist opposition currents approach ethnic issues in much the same way as both the shah’s government and the Islamic Republic did: through a strong center and a single national identity that leaves only limited space for others.
Mr. Afrawi argued that no future political order in Iran could achieve stability if it ignored the country’s ethnic and cultural diversity. But he also rejected the claim that the opposition had played no role. Political and ethnic movements, he said, had paid a heavy price since 1979, while Iran’s security apparatus had made organizing inside the country extremely dangerous.
Abdullah Aref al-Balushi, a Baluch human rights activist based in London, said blaming the opposition alone for failing to overthrow the government ignored the scale of repression inside Iran. The protests, he argued, showed that large segments of Iranian society were willing to confront the state, but the power of the security services, the lack of effective international backing and fears among many countries of chaos inside Iran had all prevented the demonstrations from turning into political change.
But those factors alone do not explain the opposition’s fragmentation.
The divisions among Iran’s opposition movements predate the Islamic Republic itself. Many groups now opposed to the doctrine of clerical rule also opposed the shah before the 1979 revolution. Some fought armed campaigns against the state even before Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power. After the revolution, those rivalries endured.
Monarchists argue that the fall of the monarchy paved the way for the current religious system. Kurdish, Arab, Baluch and leftist groups counter that the problem did not begin with the clerics, but with a centralized state that never recognized them as equal partners.
In January, a Reuters report concluded that the Iranian opposition’s fragmentation had deprived it of a unified leadership capable of mobilizing Iranians against the government. Interviews conducted by Alhurra suggest that the opposition is divided not only over how to remove the current system, but also over whether a future Iran should remain centralized or fundamentally redefine the relationship between the state and its ethnic communities.
In February, six armed Iranian Kurdish groups announced the formation of a joint political and military alliance aimed at overthrowing the Islamic Republic. The move came roughly a week before the outbreak of the American-Israeli war with Iran.
But Kurdish opposition leaders say the alliance has not yet launched coordinated military operations inside Iran and remains focused primarily on aligning political positions and messaging.
Soran Balani, a specialist on Iranian affairs, described the Kurdish alliance as an important step, though one that has yet to alter the balance of power inside the country. He said the same problem affects Arab, Baluch and Azeri opposition movements: they represent real opposition forces, but remain divided among multiple organizations. The Persian opposition, meanwhile, he described as fragmented and poorly coordinated.
Iran, then, does not lack opposition movements. Opponents of the Islamic Republic exist both inside and outside the country, in the form of political parties, armed groups and, more broadly, decentralized protest networks. But they still lack a unified structure capable of rallying the Iranian public or convincing the outside world that they represent a credible alternative to the current government.
That fragmentation gives Tehran a clear advantage. The authorities can continue treating their opponents as scattered movements rather than a single organized front.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
