About this episode

The episode explores modern Pahlavism with guest Josef Burton, focusing on its origins, evolution, and parallels to other political movements.

We’re joined by former U.S. diplomat Josef Burton to examine modern Pahlavism: an online, diaspora-driven movement built around nostalgia for Iran’s deposed Pahlavi dynasty and the imagined restoration of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. What was once a marginal exile politics of royalist uncles, former regime officials, and anti–Islamic Republic hawks has, in the past decade, been transformed into a bizarre right-populist scene. It’s part monarchist revival, part regime-change lobby, part “Make Iran Great Again” fandom. Josef traces how this movement emerged from the trauma and politics of the Iranian diaspora, then accelerated through Persian-language satellite TV, social media influencers, think tanks, bot campaigns, and the broader ecosystem of neoconservative, Israeli, Gulf State, and MAGA-aligned regime-change politics. Pahlavism presents itself as the authentic voice of Iranians, but often functions more like an astroturfed culture-war identity: anti-regime, pro-Western intervention, aggressively nostalgic for a whitewashed “Iran before the revolution,” and hostile toward Iranian dissidents who favor diplomacy, pluralism, or any future not centered on the Pahlavi name. The…

People in this episode

Hosts: Julian Feeld, Travis View, Jake Rockatansky

Guest: Josef Burton

Topics covered

• Pahlavism
• Iranian diaspora
• monarchist revival
• regime-change politics
• right-populism
• social media influence

Keywords

• Pahlavism
• Iran
• Josef Burton
• monarchism
• regime change
• social media
• right populism

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Islamic Republic, QAnon

Places: Iran, U.S., Iranian diaspora, Persian-language satellite TV, Gulf State

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