From Ahmad Chalabi to Reza Pahlavi: The politics of manufactured opposition

In May 2004, 14 months after the invasion of Iraq, it was clear that weapons of mass destruction could no longer be cited as justification for it. An intelligence source told the Guardian, “It’s pretty clear that the Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”They were referring to Iraqi fraudster Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, which he headed. In the months before the invasion, Chalabi’s operation fed Washington repeated claims about Saddam Hussein’s purported WMD program. The claims seemed to arrive through separate channels, independently corroborating one another. In reality, they all had one source.If Iranian intelligence was involved, Tehran had helped remove its greatest regional enemy without ever needing to persuade an American to serve the clerical regime’s interests. Twenty-some years later, a similar question faces Western capitals, this time about Iran: Who defines and directs dissent in a country that erupted in a nationwide uprising in January and is likely to do so again?There is now ample and growing evidence that the Islamic Republic has been doing to its domestic opposition what Washington may once have done to it: manufacturing, protecting, and amplifying a political current presented as its fiercest enemy — namely, the monarchist movement around Reza Pahlavi.An authoritarian state facing mass protests cannot make opposition disappear, but it can shape how that opposition is perceived. The ideal alternative is well-known enough to crowd out rivals, divisive enough to fracture opponents, and weak enough, especially at home, not to pose a serious threat. In other words, an opposition Tehran can manipulate.Pahlavi fits that bill perfectly.He is the eldest son of Iran’s last monarch, who was ousted by a popular revolution in 1979. Pahlavi is a familiar name in Western capitals and on Persian-language satellite television. But he lacks a structured organization even outside Iran, and there is little sign of a domestic structure capable of turning visibility into a serious challenge to state power. Instead, his presence sustains a false choice between two dictatorships: the clerical one Iranians live under and the royal one their parents rose up against. The more he is presented as “the only alternative,” the more change appears to be something delivered from abroad rather than achieved from within.Voices close to the regime have put this logic into words. In February 2025, Tasnim, the news agency of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, wrote that “the existence of a weak and rootless current like monarchism can help the survival of the Islamic Republic.” In September 2025, Khabar Online, a news outlet operating freely in Tehran, raised the question of whether the promotion of Pahlavi was “a project manufactured by the Islamic Republic.”Statements such as these do not prove a covert operation, but they indicate that Tehran insiders know exactly why such an operation would be worth undertaking.The mechanics were clearest in January. The protests began as a nationwide uprising with dozens of slogans, but much of the international media quickly portrayed a revolt in which Iranians were “calling Reza Pahlavi’s name.” That claim rested largely on videos purportedly from Iran, but scrutiny of the footage revealed a different story. Some clips had been dubbed. In others, a small group of protesters chanted, “Long live the shah,” but the rest of the crowd did not join in. Yet the commentary declared them all monarchists. Persian-language satellite channels abroad replayed the clips, Pahlavi’s camp embraced them, and social media amplified them.The clearest evidence came from Iran’s universities. When campuses reopened on Feb. 21 and students began commemorating those killed in January, “Lion and Sun Associations” announced their formation one after another at Tehran University and Amirkabir University of Technology. Within days, dozens had surfaced, with almost identical names, parallel Telegram channels, and nearly indistinguishable language.Students organizing anti-regime protests told a different story. In a Clubhouse discussion on Feb. 24, one student said the ostensibly anti-regime associations had told students not to gather or chant, so that afternoon’s protest at Tehran University “ended.” “They say they oppose the regime,” the student said, “but, in practice, they are helping suppress the students.” Another said students who refused to chant for Pahlavi were threatened with having their personal details circulated and their names passed to university security offices.Student movements do not spontaneously emerge across the country, speak with one voice, and work to silence fellow protesters. The evidence suggests these associations were at least tolerated by the regime and quite possibly guided by its security apparatus. Their targets were republican and democratic students who threatened it.The same pattern is evident online. In late 2025, X began displaying where accounts were located, and thousands of staunchly monarchist accounts turned out to be based in Iran. X is blocked there and generally requires a VPN, yet these accounts appeared to be using the Iranian Android app. That strongly suggests “white SIM” access — unfiltered connections granted to people trusted by the state.A careful analysis of 66 of these accounts pointed to a deliberate division of labor. Some defined an ever-widening circle of “enemies,” targeting the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, leftists, republicans, ethnic minorities, “Woman, Life, Freedom” activists, critical journalists, and even monarchists who stepped out of line. Others pushed hashtags or called for foreign military strikes. One favorite slogan was “death to the three corrupt forces: mullah, leftists, and MEK.” It sounds anti-regime, yet it places every non-Pahlavi opponent in the same camp as the regime itself.On March 5, the Atlantic Council also pointed to evidence that the regime’s cyber army was “feeding opposition divisions by posing as fake monarchists.”It is deja vu from the Chalabi experience. An operation need not control every link in the chain. It only has to create or protect material that appears to originate inside Iran, channel it through privileged networks, and let independent actors amplify it for their own reasons. Genuine adoption is not evidence against the operation — it is a measure of its success.Covert operations are designed not to leave fingerprints. Instead, we have a convergence of evidence: regime media explaining the strategy, dubbed and selectively framed protest footage, campus groups appearing to work in cahoots with the security apparatus, privileged online access, coordinated network behavior, and the same political line repeated in different settings.JD VANCE FOUND A NEW PEN PAL: AN IRGC TERRORIST WITH AMERICAN BLOOD ON HIS HANDSThe greatest damage is the theft of the political message of an uprising meant to reflect the democratic aspirations of a nation shackled for more than a century by two dictatorial systems. A movement born of resistance to repression is depicted in foreign capitals and newsrooms as a campaign to restore a dynasty. That distortion gives the regime its most convenient argument: that there is no alternative to the mullahs except a return to the past.Western policymakers and analysts should treat the apparent monarchist groundswell with the skepticism they wish they had applied to Chalabi’s sources. Fool me once, shame on thee — fool me twice, shame on me.Ivan Sascha Sheehan (@ProfSheehan) is the interim dean of the College of Public Affairs at the University of Baltimore, where he is a professor of public and international affairs. Majid Rafizadeh (@Dr_Rafizadeh) is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. The views expressed are the authors’ own.