US – Israel – Iran war: The dark scenarios that a well-known Iranian researcher sees for her country. Why the son of the Shah is not a good solution

Iranians are living an absurd situation, in tune with the times. As American and Israeli bombs continue to fall on Tehran, even over schools with children in themthe Western world somehow expects Iranians to be grateful that someone is trying to rid them of their dictatorship. A well-known Iranian researcher from Johns Hopkins University in the USA published a moving article in New York Magazine in which he explains why things are very complicated.

“What I constantly encounter is a form of double consciousness, excruciating: people who loathe the establishment in power in Iran, who have lost family members in its prisons, who have dreamed of its end for decades — but who cannot rejoice in the death of Iranian children,” writes Narges Bajoghli in the article called “Resentment: Iranian diaspora fractures in real time, over dinner tables, on WhatsApp and in the silence of blocked phone numbers”

Narges Bajoghli is a researcher, anthropologist, international award-winner and professor, coordinator of the Middle East Studies department of Johns Hopkins University in the USA. In 2024 he published the book “How sanctions work: Iran and the impact of economic warfare” together with other authors (“How sanctions work: Iran and the impact of economic warfare”).

As a parenthesis, the article written by the Iranian researcher was shared on the X network by another well-known Iranian writer, Ramita Navai. In these troubling days, following the accounts of Iranian intellectuals who have written about their country is a more than necessary act.

As always, in the bellicose declarations of the planet's most powerful leaders, ordinary people are treated with hypocrisy. Or, at best, carelessly.

Intellectuals, however, manage to see the human side of the tragedy or those nuances that escape the powerful of the day. And look to the future with more responsibility.

The Iranians are desperately looking for a solution. But not the one that the West wants to impose on them

The article written by Narges Bajoghli, based on his interactions with relatives and friends, some remaining in Iran, others in the diaspora, shows a certain form of despair that has set in in Iran. A desperation to find a solution.

People were radicalized as never before, even though the differences between them were already known: some were monarchists, others leftists, secular nationalists or devout Muslims.

On January 8 and 9, Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran's former monarch, who lives abroad, called on people to take control of city centers. In those two evenings, the state massacred thousands of protesters.

“The killings broke something. People who until then had been cautious opponents became harder and more desperate.

And into that desperation emerged Pahlavi—long in exile in the US—who, with Israel's help, positioned himself as the leader-in-waiting of a free Iran.

Inside the country, Iran International — the London-based satellite TV channel with a pro-Pahlavi bias — was leading the public discourse, shaping the conversations in a way that the state media could never do,” the researcher writes.

But is Pahlavi a good solution for Iran? Narges Bajoghli does not believe this. And he says it bluntly, admitting at the same time that this point of view attracted a lot of criticism, including from many acquaintances who categorized it as “pro-regime”.

“After the riots and massacres in January, I was giving interviews and writing publicly that Pahlavi had no experience and was being promoted by Israel and the US in the same way that Ahmed Chalabi had been promoted before the invasion of Iraq: a convenient diaspora figure acceptable to Western interests, while his real relationship with the Iranian people was a secondary concern,” writes Narges Bajoghli.

What's next?

“A country subjected to a bombing campaign does not emerge from it as a liberal democracy, but traumatized, fragmented, angry,” writes Narges Bajoghli. One scenario is that of the “Balkanization of the country”, that is, the deliberate division of a country of 90 million inhabitants along ethnic and regional lines. Such a scenario would make Iraq look stable by comparison.

Another possibility would be the collapse of the state. That is, simply that after this war there will no longer be a functional state in a territory located in one of the most important areas, from a geopolitical point of view, on earth.

And there is, of course, the possibility that the Americans refuse to accept. For Iran to become what Vietnam was to the US and Afghanistan to the Soviet Union: “A country that absorbs the blows until the superpower dares not come back.” What many overlook is that for the past 150 years, Iranian society has organized itself around the desire for independence from foreign powers.

“The psychological operations and artificial campaigns of foreign powers to make some of the population want outside rescue may not survive once houses start collapsing and more and more civilians are killed — or once pro-Pahlavi Iranians hear Trump say he has no plans to bring the former shah's son to power.

The assumption that the people of Iran will continue to receive the violent dismemberment of the country with gratitude, rather than resistance, is the same assumption that has produced every catastrophic miscalculation of the last century,” writes Narges Bajoghli.

This topic will also be covered in the Tuesday edition of the “Ration, back!” newsletter, written by journalist Gabriel Bejan. If you want to receive it by mail, you must subscribe here: