Frederick Forsyth, in Icon, explains a cold, vital truth about nations and what holds them together: “An icon. Not a religious painting, but a symbol. He stands for something. All nations need something, some person or symbol, to which they can cleave, which can give a disparate mass of varied people a sense of identity and thus of unity.

Without a unifying symbol, people drift into internecine feuds… To achieve unity by volition, there must be that symbol.”Later, Forsyth sharpens the warning: “But if he is destroyed? It’s back to chaos. Even civil war… Unless one could introduce into the equation another and a better icon.”In Forsyth’s fiction, the icon turns out to be Prince Kent, resurrected as the Tsar of All Russias. And in an irony history seems to relish, Iran is now looking at a former monarch’s son as a possible icon of its own.

With the Ayatollah’s authority under sustained pressure, the Iranian question has shifted. It is no longer confined to regime change or reform. It is the deeper, more dangerous question Forsyth posed decades ago.If an icon falls, what replaces it? For some, that answer has begun to sound like Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah.Who is Reza Pahlavi?Reza Pahlavi was born into a future that assumed permanence. Born in Tehran in 1960, he was raised as heir to the Peacock Throne, educated by private tutors, and prepared for monarchy as destiny rather than possibility.

The Pahlavi state rested on continuity. Succession was taken for granted.That assumption ended abruptly in 1979.As the revolution gathered force, Pahlavi was in the United States training as a fighter pilot. Within weeks, the monarchy collapsed, the court dissolved, and the political system that had governed Iran for decades ceased to exist. The crown prince never returned to a country that had abolished the very idea he embodied.Why did he leave?History overtook inheritance.The revolution dismantled the monarchy outright. Power, citizenship, property, and legitimacy disappeared in a single stroke. Exile followed as a condition of survival. His father drifted between countries, increasingly isolated, before dying in Egypt. The family scattered. Personal tragedy compounded political collapse.Reza Pahlavi settled in the United States, studied political science, married, and raised a family.

For years, he avoided positioning himself as an alternative leader, aware of Iran’s unresolved and deeply divided memory of its monarchical past.What happened after Iran got rid of the last shah?Iran did not transition into a pluralist republic.The Islamic Republic concentrated authority in clerical institutions and rooted legitimacy in religious guardianship. Over time, dissent narrowed, civil society contracted, and elections functioned within strict ideological boundaries.