Since the 1920s, Iran has experienced two decisive political moments that have reflected two distinct civilizational identities. They have shaped not only the internal character of the country but also its relationship with the rest of the world.
Today, with the Islamic Republic under unprecedented pressure, a third Iranian moment may be approaching.
Modernity on the Shah’s terms
The first Iranian moment was the reign of the Pahlavi monarchy, which began in 1925 with the accession to the throne of Reza Khan Pahlavi, an army officer, and ended in 1979 with the outbreak of the Iranian Revolution. It was built around a particular vision of Iran: secular, modernizing, and firmly anchored in the dominance of the Western-led camp during the Cold War.
Tehran recognized Israel after its creation in 1948, supplied oil to Western markets and served as Washington’s chosen guardian of the Gulf. The shah projected power in a region rife with ethnic and sectarian rivalries, leading a country that posed a challenge to its Arab neighbors but also served as a model of state-driven development.
A central element of the Pahlavi project was a deliberate attempt to anchor the monarchy’s legitimacy not in Islam, but in the Persian imperial past. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi consciously linked his rule to the ancient Achaemenid Empire, the dynasty of Cyrus and Darius that forged the first great Persian civilization in the 5th century BC
The grandiose celebrations of 1971 in the ruins of the ancient capital of Persepolis, commemorating 2,500 years of the Persian monarchy, were the most theatrical expression of this claim: a declaration that the Pahlavi throne was not a modern construction but the heir of an unbroken imperial tradition. In doing so, the shah sought to place himself above religion: a king of kings in a lineage older than Islam itself.
However, beneath the surface of modernization and imperial grandeur, the monarch was openly authoritarian. SAVAK, the feared secret police, was synonymous with torture and repression. When the mass protests of 1978 and 1979 broke out, all the geopolitical partnerships that the shah had cultivated proved useless.
No foreign ally moved a muscle to save him. A monarch who had prioritized strategic utility over popular legitimacy found himself completely alone. The first Iranian moment ended not with a war, but with a revolution, and those who followed unlearned the lesson.
The Islamic Republic
From the ashes of the Shah’s rule arose something genuinely new: the Islamic Republic of Iran, founded under the doctrine of velayat-e faqih (the guardianship of the Islamic jurist) of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. It became only the second Shi’ite state since the Safavid Empire (1501-1736), which had made Twelfth Shi’ism the defining identity of Iran.
The new republic was built on the premise that Islamic principles should govern not only religious life, but also politics, the economy, and even social life. The public sphere was to be controlled, morality imposed, and Iran’s cultural identity explicitly de-Westernized.
While the Pahlavis had embraced the United States and Israel, the Islamic republic built its identity in explicit opposition to both. Its foreign policy was defined by the resistance: support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and Shiite militias across Iraq and Syria, a network of proxies that Tehran called the “axis of the resistance.” This ended up causing the current crisis in Iran’s neighborhood.
In terms of economic governance, the regime looked east, aspiring to a model similar to that of China: authoritarian in politics, state-led in economy, independent of Western institutions.
That independence came at an enormous price. More than 3,600 different sanctions have been imposed on the republic, a cumulative siege that devastated the lives of ordinary Iranians. The decline in Iran’s regional influence emerged after two major shocking events: the Arab Spring, which raised questions about the credibility of Iran’s claim to defend the oppressed, and the October 7 attacks, which made Iran a potential military target for Israel.
Three major armed conflicts marked its existence: the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988, in which hundreds of thousands of people died; the 12-day war involving Israel and the United States in June 2025; and the ongoing conflict that began on February 28.
Each war deepened the siege mentality that is at the core of the regime’s identity: the conviction that today’s Iran is perpetually surrounded and its very survival is threatened.
Moment of precariousness
You can understand, in retrospect, how the first moment ended. The Pahlavi monarchy lost its internal legitimacy and its foreign patrons looked the other way. The revolution continued. But the trajectory of the second Iranian moment is much less clear, and that opacity is itself a source of regional and global anxiety.
The Islamic republic today is neither the confident revolutionary power it was in the 1980s, nor a stable religious state capable of managing its contradictions indefinitely. Mass protests over the past two decades have raised social, economic and political questions about the nature of the social contract offered by the Islamic republic.
At the same time, its regional influence is waning, its nuclear program has sparked direct military confrontation, and its economy – devastated by sanctions and endemic corruption – cannot generate the prosperity needed to buy popular acquiescence.
There are several scenarios for what happens next. The regime could survive in its current form. A reformed Islamic republic could retain its Shiite theological identity, while abandoning its more confrontational stances, although such a transition would require a political class willing to negotiate and an opposition capable of responsibly receiving and retaining power; neither condition is clearly present.
There is also a more turbulent scenario: fragmentation, civil conflict and power vacuum. This cannot be ruled out in a country that includes Persians, Azeris, Kurds, Arabs and Baluchs, who are increasingly held together only by coercion.
Iran’s next chapter will not be written by foreign powers alone, nor by the clerical establishment alone, nor by the protest movement alone. It will arise from the collision of all these forces: internal and external, historical and immediate.
This new Iranian moment is a leap into the unknown: for the Iranians above all, but also for the region and the world that will feel its consequences. Precarious and perplexed, Iran finds itself on the brink of the abyss. What lies beyond remains to be seen.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
