FARAHANI: Anti-regime protests outside Iran are not performative — they're necessary

Navid Farahani is a Canadian of Iranian heritage who has called Vancouver home for over two decades. He is a graduate from the University of British Columbia and is regularly involved in online and on-the-ground activism.As a Canadian with Iranian ancestry, being born in Canada and having the privilege of growing up as a Canadian citizen is something I will always be grateful for and proud of. I grew up in a society that encouraged freedom of religion, expression, the opportunity to pursue whatever goals one sought after, so long that they diligently worked towards it. In Canada, meritocracy trumped everything else. There was law, order, and a judicial system that is fundamentally fair and just. However, for Iranians living in the Islamic Republic of Iran, that reality couldn’t be any more different. My parents, on the other hand, only got to experience these blessings for the first decade and a half of their lives — until the emergence of the 1979 Iranian Revolution that dramatically shifted the trajectory of the country into chaos. Around three decades ago, my parents took a leap of faith and fled the Islamic Republic of Iran because they postulated, long before many other Iranians foresaw, that the country was heading toward a future defined by economic collapse, political, religious, and ethnic repression, as well as the criminalization of dissent. .AYAN: Two flags, one message — what Iranians are really saying.This was made clear when, in the years following the revolution, tens of thousands of Iranians who were instrumental in helping to build the country’s public institutions, economy, military, and cultural success during the Pahlavi dynasty, were executed by Khomeini and the revolutionaries. My parents’ decision was not unique though. Like millions of other Iranians, they left a country where — despite the immense wealth that Iran has — the currency was expeditiously losing value, professional advancement was controlled by political loyalty, and everyday life felt more constrained with each passing year. Many of those who left were educated, highly skilled, and were poised to represent Iran’s future, but lost hope in Iran. Over the last forty-seven years, more than four million Iranians have left their homeland, with many of them contributing at the highest levels of business, science, technology, medicine, academia, and public life, the very roles they would likely have filled in Iran had the Pahlavi dynasty remained in 1979. For most people of Iranian descent, integration into countries like Canada was natural. The lifestyle here was akin to the lifestyles that Iranians had before the revolution. They built careers, raised families, voted, volunteered, and participated fully in civic life, while still preserving their storied culture that has lasted for over seven thousand years but also participated in the traditions that were prevalent in their host countries. When Iranians took part in a mass exodus from Iran, they did not arrive with the goal of reshaping their new countries in Iran’s new image, which was a country that was governed by Islamic law. If anything, Iranians came because they believed in the stability, freedoms, and institutions that countries like Canada represented and because they wanted to belong to them. They wanted to escape Islamism. This context is pertinent not only because of the events that are transpiring in Iran today, but because many Canadians of Iranian descent are recognizing the same patterns of fracture in the country they now call home. In other words, Iranians are the proverbial “canary in the coal mine”, and they’re warning that Canada is being afflicted from the very same problems that Iran had forty-seven years ago. In particular, the patterns that once enabled the normalization of both political Islamism and far-left ideological political activism to capture Iran’s institutions; such as the rise of ideological politics, growing economic pressure on ordinary families, and the quiet entrenchment of politically protected networks — are no longer foreign to Canadian public life. For those of us whose families lived through Iran’s collapse, these shifts are impossible to ignore. Before drawing those parallels more directly, it is worth revisiting what actually happened in Iran in the year 1979. Delving into how a modern, functioning society was overtaken by a brutal ideological movement, and how quickly Iranian identity was wiped out by political and religious domination, and how that could quickly happen to Canada if we do not act now. .The Iranian Revolution and its Catastrophic EffectsIn 1979, a political alliance between Islamist and communist movements formed, joined by segments of traditional commercial elites that united around the shared objective of dismantling Iran’s secular, nationalist state and its monarchy, which had endured for more than two and a half millennia. Although these groups were ideologically opposed to one another, they cooperated tactically in order to bring down the state.At the time, Iran was undergoing the White Revolution, which was a period of rapid modernization under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. The country had invested heavily in infrastructure, education, healthcare, and industrial development. The Shah particularly was expanding Iran’s role in international trade and regional security by gaining dominance in the oil and gas industry.Women, ethnic, and religious minorities saw greater freedoms under Pahlavi rule. Women had been granted full suffrage in 1963, nearly a decade before even Swiss women received the right to vote in 1971. At the advice of President Kennedy, the Shah also created the Literacy Corps, aimed to increase nationwide literacy and public-service programs were established to extend education into rural communities..AYAN: The Shah's forgotten warning — and why it matters today.These reforms, however, directly threatened the political relevance of both Islamist clerical networks and the communists. A more educated population, a stronger middle class, and a secular, nationalist identity weakened the ideological appeal of both movements. Rather than competing through democratic institutions, they mobilized mass unrest, targeted national symbols, and framed Iran’s modernization itself as betrayal.The end result from these two groups collaborating together? It ended up seizing power and dismantling the country’s political, legal, and cultural foundations and replaced them with a system rooted in ideological loyalty. In the years that followed, tens of thousands of Iranians that were responsible for Iran’s prosperity – were promptly executed by this coalition. This ideological capture is what set the tone for what became reality for Iranians for the next 47 years..Current EventsToday, the dark future that my parents and so many other Iranians envisioned, is here. Iran is a country that is infected by what I describe as “islamocommunist” ideology. This is a hybrid of authoritarian religious rule and state-dominated economic control that is enforced by the IRGC and the Basij.This results in a society that is rife with austerity, systemic corruption, and a shrinking path to financial stability unless one aligns themselves with the ruling system and does the bidding of their handlers in the IRGC. I mention islamocommunism deliberately, since one of its key features is the regime’s routine seizure or coercive takeover of Iran’s private sector.The IRGC wastes no opportunity to usurp profitable Iranian businesses by forcing them to renounce a significant ownership stake, or in some cases, the entire business to the IRGC. This pattern has also spread across major sectors, including traditional bazaar networks, manufacturing, transportation, and trade.This form of usurping wealth is a significant source of income for the regime. Instead of reinvesting in Iran, it is diverted to regime agents and their families that end up choosing to live in Western countries, personal enrichment, and the financing of militant and destabilizing activities abroad. What is left behind is an economy hollowed out from within, and a population that is trapped between rising prices, collapsing opportunity, and political fear..AYAN: Two flags, one message — what Iranians are really saying.Despite major nationwide uprisings in 1999, 2003, and most notably in 2009, earlier protest movements were ultimately crushed by the regime’s ability to deploy overwhelming force. Many Iranians also remember, with deep bitterness, the silence of the United States government during the 2009 Green Movement, when demonstrators appealed to the international community for support.President Obama’s silence was widely interpreted inside Iran as tacit acceptance of the Islamic Republic’s leadership and its violent suppression of dissent. The result was predictable: the movement was isolated, and the regime reasserted control. With that being said, for the first time in almost half a century, the balance of power no longer feels immovable.There is hope. Enter President Donald Trump. When he first got into office, he was the first United States President in almost four decades that understood the threat of the Islamic Republic that’s occupying Iran, and would even recall the days in which Iran used to be a prosperous nation before the Iranian Revolution. He also made numerous moves against the Islamic Republic, which prompted the spark in the Iranian people to be bravely protesting for almost every year since he got into office.Across Iran, there’s continued waves of protests over recent years that have exposed the depth of abject repudiation of the system. In December 2025, the Iranian people reached their boiling point. The pressure is no longer driven by only compulsory headscarves, or only strife from economic issues. It is the accumulation of economic collapse, ideological coercion, corruption, the steady destruction of personal futures, the humiliation of the Iranian people as well as the imposition of the Islamist ummah while eschewing Iranian culture and values, and if the Iranian people rise up against all of this? They risk death.What unites these protests is a focused message. It is a broader demand for national dignity, cultural continuity, and a political future rooted in Iranian identity rather than imposed islamocommunist ideology. For Iranians, there has been only one figure in the last 47 years that had a consistent message of hope, freedom, and prosperity for the Iranian people and never sided with the Islamic Republic — Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi.Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi is the only opposition figure that has the gravitas of guiding Iran and has a detailed plan in how to uplift Iran out of this turmoil that it is currently in. He is the only figure that is trusted across the Iranian populace inside and outside Iran to take control of a transitional government until the country reaches stability. Once stability is reached, he advocates for a national referendum, where Iranians can be in charge of their own destiny and select the form of government that will ultimately take place post-regime collapse that is a secular democracy..Increasingly, that conversation includes open discussion of what kind of system the new Iran will have during this transition, however the overwhelming consensus is a return to Iran’s storied constitutional monarchy with King Reza Pahlavi II at the helm. Despite Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi not actively seeking the throne, many Iranians, notably younger ones who never experienced life before the revolution and only have learned by looking at history, now openly express interest in a Pahlavi monarchy as a symbol of national unity and stability rather than clerical rule.Common slogans that you hear Iranians across all demographics chant, have to do with putting Iran and Iranians first, and bringing the country back on track to what it used to be. They advocate for a return to a normal Iran that embraces its Western partners and does not consider America and Israel as the “Great Satan” and the “Little Satan” respectively.Most of all, it is an embrace of the Pahlavi family that once ruled Iran forty-seven years ago:“Reza Shah! Bless your soul!”; “This is the final battle! Pahlavi will return!”; “The Shah is coming home, Zahhak (a tyrant in Iranian mythology, and referring to Khamenei) is overthrown"; and famously “Long Live the King.".AYAN: The Shah's forgotten warning — and why it matters today.This is also why demonstrations outside Iran matter. Protests in Canada, the United States, and Europe are not symbolic performances. They serve three practical purposes: they protect visibility for activists inside Iran, they pressure democratic governments in Western countries to stop normalizing relations with an oppressive, genocidal regime and their acolytes, and they remind Iranian citizens that they are not isolated from the world.They also serve another, deeply personal function for many in the diaspora in their adopted countries. Iranians protest abroad because they have already lived through the consequences of ideological capture once. And increasingly, they recognize uncomfortable similarities in Western public life, including in Canada. When senior public figures frame religious identity as a political organizing principle, when dissenting voices face coordinated intimidation, and when ideology begins to override evidence-based policy in areas such as public safety, social cohesion, and institutional governance, Iranian-Canadians recognize familiar warning signs..While Canada isn’t exactly like Iran, the vulnerabilities that once allowed rigid movements to capture Iran’s institutions are no longer theoretical to those of us who watched that collapse unfold through our families. For many Iranian-Canadians, this is why standing for Iran today is also about protecting the democratic culture that we cherish greatly in Canada.There are also persistent misconceptions about what Iranians are actually asking for. The driving force inside Iran is not foreign troops or external intervention. It is the Iranian people themselves. Iranians are also not asking Western governments to finance Iran. The country already possesses immense national wealth.What matters instead is preventing the continued normalization of a regime whose legitimacy has long since collapsed among the people. What the Iranian diaspora does ask of democratic governments is straightforward; enforce existing legal frameworks, pursue accountability against designated terrorist organizations like the IRGC and their financial networks, and ensure that individuals that are living in Canadian cities and operating on behalf of violent or coercive institutions are promptly deported from the country.Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi best summarizes the requests of the Iranian people to the international community with 6 points.1. Protect Iranians by weakening the regime’s repression apparatus, especially the IRGC and its leadership.2. Impose maximum economic pressure by freezing regime assets and shutting down its shadow oil fleet.3. Guarantee internet access in Iran by expanding Starlink and blocking regime shutdowns.4. Expel regime diplomats, prosecute officials for crimes against humanity, and proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organization.5. Secure the immediate, unconditional release of all political prisoners.6. Prepare for a democratic transition and recognize a legitimate transitional government.Above all, we ask for moral clarity. Public support, even when it is only symbolic, shifts political incentives. It changes how governments engage, how media frames a struggle, and how safely activists inside Iran can continue to speak. In the coming days, as directed by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, Iranians and their supporters around the world will participate in a coordinated global day of action. Media reference:In Vancouver, members of the Iranian-Canadian community will gather peacefully this Saturday February 14th from 2-4 p.m. at David Lam Park to show solidarity with those inside Iran. These demonstrations are not about ideology. They are about national dignity, civic freedom, and the right of a people to determine their own future.For Canadians who believe in democratic institutions, pluralism, and the rule of law, standing beside Iranians today is not an act of foreign politics. It is an affirmation of the values that allowed families like mine to build a life here in the first place.If you’re interested, please come by with a Canadian flag. We would love to have you there.Navid Farahani is a Canadian of Iranian heritage who has called Vancouver home for over two decades. He is a graduate from the University of British Columbia and is regularly involved in online and on-the-ground activism.