Dr. Kazem Moussavi

This essay was translated from German into Persian and was originally published in Jungle World.

Why Iran’s Freedom Movement Needs More Than the Overthrow of the Islamic Republic

“Even myth is already enlightenment; and enlightenment reverts to mythology.”
— Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno

Iran’s freedom movement needs a “Tehran School.” This school should not be a copy of the Frankfurt School, but should learn from it while responding to Iran’s own historical circumstances. Only an independent critical tradition can ensure that, after a political transformation, freedom does not give way to a new form of domination.

The overthrow of the Islamic Republic is a necessary precondition, but it is not enough on its own. It would be tragic if Iran—with its thousands of years of history and civilization, its human potential, and its abundant resources—were once again destroyed under authoritarian rule.

Iran needs a political and intellectual order that prevents authoritarian power from returning under another name.

The Frankfurt School emerged from the experience of fascism, antisemitism, and the failure of the European Enlightenment. A “Tehran School” should likewise emerge from Iran’s own experiences of monarchy, Islamism, antisemitism, and failed revolutions. Its starting point should not be the adoption of European answers, but a critical examination of Iran’s own historical experience.

Iran’s history shows precisely what can happen when a liberation movement fails to examine itself critically: liberation can turn into a new form of subjugation.

Political Deadlock

Iran has lived for decades under the violence of an Islamist regime. Arrests, torture, executions, and the repression of women, workers, students, environmental activists, political prisoners, and members of ethnic, sexual, and religious minorities have created a society in which millions of people demand freedom, democracy, and human rights. Yet the opposition has so far been unable to turn resistance into the overthrow of the regime or to offer a shared political vision for the period that follows the Islamic Republic.

This criticism should not be understood as diminishing the opposition. The courage and personal sacrifices of many people in Iran and in the diaspora deserve recognition. The argument here concerns political obstacles, not the legitimacy of the people’s demand for freedom.

This political deadlock became especially visible during the war between Israel, the United States, and the Islamic Republic in 2025 and 2026. Some activists and opposition groups hoped that the regime would collapse under foreign military pressure or following the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. That expectation proved unrealistic: Khamenei was killed on February 28, 2026, in a joint US-Israeli airstrike. Yet only a few days later, the Assembly of Experts selected his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as the new Supreme Leader, and the regime, now dominated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, essentially remained intact. The question of a democratic alternative remained unanswered.

The problem, therefore, is not only the regime’s violence. It is also the opposition’s weakness and its inability to turn resistance into a political future.

Reza Pahlavi is not the focus here because the crisis of the opposition can be reduced to him. Rather, he has become the most visible object onto which a political vacuum is projected. In this sense, he provides an example of authoritarian continuities that extend far beyond any one individual. His political role also offers a useful case for examining the dangers of personalizing power and of nationalism within the opposition. At the same time, experience so far has shown how his political role can divide and obstruct the formation of a broad coalition of democratic opposition groups.

The roots of this deadlock, however, go deeper than current disagreements among opposition groups. The violence of Iran’s Islamist regime and decades of appeasement by Western governments have seriously hindered the development of democratic alternatives. The country’s unresolved authoritarian past, the dictatorial structures of the Pahlavi dynasty, the religious and patriarchal influences within society, and the political, ideological, and organizational weaknesses of large parts of the diverse opposition have all contributed to the current situation.

The Islamic Republic’s decades of propaganda also continue to have an effect. Antisemitism, anti-Zionism, conspiracy thinking, and a form of Persian nationalism intertwined with religion have been systematically embedded in politics, education, and social relations. The regime uses these elements against the United States, Israel, and ethnic minorities, while at the same time basing its ideological legitimacy on the organization and mobilization of the Shiite umma.

The Frankfurt School and Self-Criticism

Iran needs to confront critically the conditions that have allowed authoritarian domination to take root. The question is why freedom has repeatedly been lost in Iran.

This is precisely where the importance of the Frankfurt School begins. The school emerged from the experience of a historical catastrophe and sought to understand why modern societies, despite education, science, technological progress, and cultural development, can descend into barbarism, mass violence, and dictatorship. Its most important contribution was not a political program but the capacity to examine itself critically. Liberation is not a final state. Even a society that considers itself democratic can produce new structures of power, new myths, and new forms of subjugation.

In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer wrote: “Even myth is already enlightenment; and enlightenment reverts to mythology.” This idea has immediate relevance for Iran.

From this perspective, a “Tehran School” should not simply transfer German theory to Iranian conditions. It should apply the methodological core of critical theory: the ability to subject one’s own political traditions, culture, established beliefs, and promises of liberation to rigorous critical examination.

The Culture Industry and Internal Conformity

The Frankfurt School offers another lesson that is important for Iran: freedom can be undermined not only by the state, but also by a culture of simplification. Through the concept of the “culture industry,” Adorno and Horkheimer showed how mass-produced culture can standardize thought, weaken critical thinking, and generate consent.

For Iran, this means that domination does not operate only through police and prisons. It can also operate through images, slogans, influencers, and diaspora media such as Iran International TV, Manoto, and similar networks. These media can shape perceptions in one-sided ways, strengthen camp thinking, and encourage the personalization of politics. When such public spaces adopt the language of simplification, freedom may be praised on the surface while being emptied of meaning from within.

Authoritarian ways of thinking and propaganda are not limited to the regime or to the media. They can appear across different political camps and can persist even within opposition movements. In such environments, criticism is often met not with an objective discussion but with accusations of attack, betrayal, division, or “undermining unity.” Loyalty takes the place of political debate. Instead of arguments, identities, camp thinking, and competition for political legitimacy become dominant.

Democracy requires disagreement to be tolerated and political opponents to be recognized as legitimate participants in a shared public sphere.

Culture Wars and Blind Spots

Extreme monarchists, Pahlavi supporters, and some political forces in the West conduct their culture wars broadly against Islam and the “left,” without clearly distinguishing between Islam and Islamism. What is at issue here is Islamism, whose political center is the Islamic Republic of Iran. At the same time, legitimate criticism of Islamism is often broadly condemned by cultural relativist currents as racism. As a result, legitimate criticism is silenced while those responsible for violence and repression escape critical scrutiny.

The issue is not the left as a whole, but particularly anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, and partly BDS- or Hamas-aligned currents that minimize or overlook authoritarian politics. Secular Muslims and progressive leftists who are fighting for freedom in Iran—hundreds of whom are in prison or have been executed—become invisible in this debate. Ultimately, this benefits the religious-racist regime and its supporters, as well as cultural relativists in the West.

This point is consistent with Adorno’s warning that the “relentless self-destruction of enlightenment” requires thought to “abandon the last naivety about the habits and tendencies of the spirit of the age.”

This idea matters here because it reminds us that criticism retains its value only when it does not become captive to fashionable political camps, moral certainty, or political convenience.

The Public Sphere and a Democratic Future

A free public sphere is a prerequisite for any democratic future. Jürgen Habermas emphasized the central role of public debate in democratic societies. Democracy does not simply mean elections or majority rule. It also requires the ability to discuss and resolve social conflicts openly, peacefully, and on equal terms.

For Iran, this will be fundamental after the end of the Islamic Republic. For nearly five decades, independent media, free scholarship, labor unions, women’s organizations, and critical voices have been systematically suppressed. Public debate has been replaced by repression and state control. A democratic future therefore requires the creation of a free public sphere.

This includes independent media, free universities, autonomous trade unions, academic freedom, civil-society organizations, and the right to discuss political questions openly.

The Responsibility of the Public Sphere

Such a public sphere needs not only independent institutions but also intellectuals, journalists, and writers who reflect on their social responsibilities. Their task is not to judge Iranian society from a safe distance or to place responsibility for authoritarian domination on those who have been subjected to it. The people of Iran have paid a heavy price under both the Pahlavi monarchy and the Islamic Republic. Anyone analyzing their political reactions, hopes, and mistakes must therefore never confuse the roles of perpetrators and victims.

Critical analysis of society should make clear who exercises violence, who benefits from it, and which institutions make it possible. At the same time, it should examine how repression, propaganda, trauma, and political frustration affect social perceptions. Analyzing authoritarian tendencies must not become a way of blaming victims. Instead, it should explain how authoritarian domination harms people and how its effects can continue even within opposition movements.

Journalists have a responsibility to investigate political claims rather than simply repeat them. They should ask who speaks in the name of the people, what interests and networks stand behind a campaign, and which voices have become invisible. Writers and artists can preserve individual experiences of fear, imprisonment, exile, loss, and resistance, thereby preventing the human consequences of political violence from disappearing from public memory.

Nationalism as a Technique of Domination

The history of Iran shows how political power can escape democratic control when it becomes concentrated in a single figure. The Shah and the Islamic Supreme Leader represent very different ideological systems, but certain structural similarities deserve examination: hereditary or lifelong authority, sacred or national forms of legitimacy, control over resources and coercive institutions, censorship, and repression.

This does not mean that monarchy and Islamism are identical. It means that nationalism and religion can both become tools of domination when they are placed above democratic institutions and used to justify unlimited political authority.

A “Tehran School” must therefore examine not only Islamist authoritarianism but also the authoritarian potential of nationalism. The question is not simply which ideology claims to represent the nation, but whether political power can be questioned, limited, and removed through democratic institutions.

Pahlavi as a Political Vacuum

The growing support for Reza Pahlavi in parts of the diaspora can be understood partly as an expression of frustration with an ineffective opposition and of uncertainty about what will replace the Islamic Republic. It also reflects nostalgia for, and idealization of, the Pahlavi period.

Adorno’s analysis of authoritarian identification can be used here as a way of examining this phenomenon: an oversized leadership figure can become a focus for national hopes, while disagreement and criticism within the opposition can come to be treated as disloyalty. In such an environment, criticism of Reza Pahlavi is no longer understood as a necessary part of democratic self-examination, but as an attack on opposition unity or even as support for the Islamic Republic.

In this way, the personalization of politics can take the place of developing pluralistic, institutional, and accountable alternatives.

However, whether genuine right-authoritarian ambitions exist, or whether coordinated “astroturfing” campaigns are taking place, must be established through specific statements, organizational structures, and verifiable communications. The authoritarian effect of a political symbol should therefore not automatically be equated with proven authoritarian intentions on the part of Reza Pahlavi. This distinction is precisely part of the critical method that a future “Tehran School” should cultivate.

Gender Backlash and Authoritarian Masculinity

The global backlash against the struggles of women, LGBT people, and other marginalized groups is also visible within Iranian civil society. Violence against women within the family has increased significantly, while the revival of traditional family values at the expense of liberation and equality is being promoted by interconnected religious-right and far-right conservative groups in Russia, Hungary, Iran, and other authoritarian states, as well as in the United States. In Germany, parts of the CDU/CSU and AfD support this trend. As a result, the political horizon shifts away from equality and solidarity and back toward obedience, hierarchy, and traditional gender roles.

For a “Tehran School,” analyzing these developments would not be a secondary issue. The stability of authoritarian systems rests not only on political institutions but also on social ideas about gender, family, authority, and obedience. Democratizing Iran therefore also requires a critical examination of patriarchal structures.

Many young men who initially supported women’s uprising against the system of gender apartheid are increasingly drawn to influencers such as Daryush Valizadeh (Roosh V), Jordan Peterson, and Andrew Tate. This shift can also be seen in the slogan “Man, Homeland, Prosperity” used at Pahlavi-oriented demonstrations. The Iranian regime directly benefits from the gender divide and from abandoning solidarity with women’s struggle for equality.

Theodor W. Adorno helps us understand this development. In The Authoritarian Personality, he and his colleagues examined the social and psychological conditions associated with authoritarian tendencies. At the center of their analysis were conformity, belief in authority, the construction of enemies, and prejudice. These concepts help explain how frustration, insecurity, and the desire to belong can create a renewed openness to authoritarian images of masculinity and leadership.

Monarchist slogans make this development particularly visible. Slogans such as “Long Live the Shah,” “Reza Shah, may your soul rest in peace,” “Iran is ready, give the order, Crown Prince,” “This is the final battle, Pahlavi will return,” “Long Live the Shah forever,” “One flag, one nation, one leader,” and “Great Nation” do not revolve around democratic pluralism. They revolve around leadership, redemption, and the restoration of national greatness. “Great Nation” here does not simply mean “large population”; it suggests a superior, exceptional, and self-glorifying nation and therefore carries a form of nationalist superiority.

This matters for Iran because it shows that freedom can be threatened not only by open repression but also by an internal readiness to submit. Many supporters of Reza Pahlavi are themselves victims of the Islamic Republic and have fought for freedom and democracy for years. Precisely for this reason, the question is not whether they are “authoritarian at heart,” but why a movement that seeks freedom repeatedly returns to the image of a powerful leader.

This political symbolism contains the danger of reviving an old political pattern: personalization instead of institutions, promises of salvation instead of political organization, and national symbols instead of democratic self-government.

Antisemitism as a Core Element of Domination

The mullahs’ regime directs its hatred toward everything it regards as a symbol of freedom and modernity, including Israel and Zionism, unveiled women, feminism, homosexuality, Baha’is, universal human rights, and the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. Opponents are executed on accusations of spying for Israel. For nearly five decades, the regime has extended this hatred beyond Iran’s borders. Its principal enemy is the Jewish state of Israel.

Antisemitism is not a marginal issue but one of the pillars of domination. Adorno summarized the mechanism of this hatred in the phrase: “Antisemitism is the rumor about the Jews.” Such hatred is not based on actual experience but on something that is produced and circulated, much like the conspiracy narratives through which the regime constructs its enemies.

Antisemitism is a political tool of the Islamic Republic. It concentrates fears and resentments on a single target, shifts attention away from domestic problems, and justifies internal repression. Israel, the United States, and alleged international networks are presented as permanent enemies. In this way, criticism can be dismissed as part of a “conspiracy,” while freedom can be portrayed as a threat.

Adorno’s analysis of the authoritarian personality is useful here as well. It shows how conformity, belief in authority, and enemy-oriented thinking can create a closed worldview in which deviation from the official line is seen not as criticism but as a threat. Antisemitism, conspiracy thinking, religious prejudice, aggressive nationalism, and the politics of enemy-making become interconnected.

Breaking with the Islamic Republic must therefore also be an ideological break. A democratic future requires a critical examination of the patterns through which the regime has practiced politics for nearly five decades. Anyone who treats antisemitism merely as a foreign-policy issue underestimates its domestic function. Antisemitism is one of the principal tools through which the Islamic Republic has maintained its power.

The Opposition, Israel, and the National Interest

The opposition must finally condemn destructive antisemitism clearly. Many left-wing organizations and parts of the opposition have failed to take it seriously and have thereby minimized the mullahs’ support for Hamas and Hezbollah under the banner of “Palestinian liberation.”

A democratic Iran could become a reliable partner of Israel—politically, socially, culturally, and economically. Recognition of Israel, however, should not become a tool for elevating particular figures in exile. It should instead be part of the national interest of a democratic Iran with popular legitimacy, established constitutionally, and grounded in the interests of its people. This includes recognizing Israel’s right to exist, protecting Jewish life, and firmly rejecting antisemitism and Islamism.

Woman, Life, Freedom as an Alternative Model

“Woman, Life, Freedom” represents a social force that places freedom, equality, and dignity above the cult of personality and displays of national grandeur. It is not simply a protest against compulsory hijab. Women, workers, political prisoners, students, teachers, retirees, environmental activists, LGBTIQ people, and members of religious and ethnic minorities have been fighting for freedom for years, often at great personal risk. This diversity is one of the movement’s greatest strengths and provides an important foundation for a “Tehran School.”

The movement shows that the struggle against the Islamic Republic extends far beyond any single social group. The call for life, freedom, and dignity connects different experiences and political demands.

“Woman, Life, Freedom” stands against the Islamic Republic’s religious totalitarianism, but it also challenges the idea that a single national leader can represent the country’s political future. It connects freedom with equality and collective self-determination. This is precisely where its democratic potential lies.

The Tasks of a Tehran School

A “Tehran School” would give intellectual form to this social empowerment. It would be an independent critical tradition that examines Iran’s history, its experiences of revolution and dictatorship, the role of religion, nationalism, antisemitism, and misogyny, as well as the emergence of democratic movements—all from within Iranian society itself.

Its task would be to analyze the Islamic Republic’s religious totalitarianism, critically examine the 1979 revolution, prevent new dictatorships, connect freedom with equality and social justice, and investigate the social conditions that produce authoritarianism. This includes the relationship between religion and the state, the position of women, the situation of ethnic and religious minorities, the political function of nationalism, the spread of antisemitic and conspiratorial thinking, and the treatment of dissent.

Such a “Tehran School” should be interdisciplinary, bringing together political science, philosophy, sociology, history, religious studies, cultural criticism, and gender studies. Iranian society itself should be the starting point for its inquiry and research.

Adorno’s most famous educational and political demand can also be applied here—not by equating historical crimes, but as a model for the idea that knowledge gained from catastrophe must become a first responsibility: “The demand that Auschwitz not happen again is the first of all demands on education.” For a “Tehran School,” this would take a similar form: preventing dictatorship from returning to Iran should be the first responsibility of education, scholarship, and the future public sphere.

The Real Test After the Overthrow

The overthrow of the Islamic Republic is necessary, but it is not enough. The real test begins afterward. Authoritarian ways of thinking, enemy-making, the cult of personality, nationalism, antisemitism, conspiracy ideologies, and the desire for simple solutions can survive even after political power changes hands.

Iran’s future therefore cannot be reduced to the question of whether a monarchy or a republic takes power. The decisive question—even for me as a republican—is how power will be limited, controlled, and given democratic legitimacy.

A free society does not emerge simply by replacing one political elite with another. It is built through institutions, rights, and social structures that prevent power from becoming concentrated again.

Adorno summarized the relationship between external and internal liberation in the phrase: “Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.” Replacing a regime built on the cult of personality, antisemitism, and authoritarian structures with different versions of the same patterns would, from this perspective, still constitute a wrong life—even if the Islamic Republic had been overthrown.

From Frankfurt to Tehran, there is no path of imitation. The point is not to transfer the German experience directly to Iran, but to learn from critical theory and apply it to our own historical circumstances.

A “Tehran School” is both a political demand and a methodological principle:

There is no liberation without self-criticism, no democracy without institutions, and no future without critically examining and working through authoritarian traditions.