Preface: Necessary Clarification
Before proceeding, it is crucial to state unequivocally that this article is not in any way an attempt to whitewash the criminality of the Islamic Republic of Iran or to obscure its 47 years of brutality and oppression against the Iranian people. The regime’s atrocities are well documented, from mass executions and political imprisonments to systemic violence against dissent. However, for many Iranians, this repression is not an aberration but a continuation of the same machinery of state terror that existed under the Shah. The apparatus of dictatorship was not invented by the Islamic Republic; it was inherited. Evin Prison, with its legacy of electric shocks, sensory deprivation, and rape, was built by the Shah in 1972 and later adopted by the Islamic regime, serving the same purpose: silencing opposition. The notorious SAVAK (Shah’s secret police), responsible for kidnappings, torture, and assassinations, was not dissolved with the revolution, it was rebranded. Lieutenant General Nasser Moghaddam, SAVAK’s final head, was initially recruited by the Islamic Republic’s interim government to help establish its own security apparatus. Though Moghaddam himself was later executed, many of his former agents were rehired, seamlessly transitioning from one regime’s enforcers to the next. The revolution of 1979 did not dismantle the structures of tyranny; it merely transferred power from the crown to the turban. The essence of authoritarian rule remained unchanged, only the facade shifted.
With this backdrop in mind, the purpose of this article is not to equate or absolve regimes but to examine a recurring pattern among exiled communities; Cubans, Vietnamese, and Iranians who, despite their distinct histories, share a striking tendency to externalize blame, romanticize the past, and resist critical self-reflection.
The Cost of Denial: How Iranian Exiles Repeat the Mistakes of Cuba and Vietnam
Throughout history, political factions that lose power often refuse to acknowledge their own role in their downfall. Instead, they construct narratives that shift blame to external forces, foreign interference, betrayal, or manipulation. This pattern is well documented among Cuban and Vietnamese exiles who fled socialist revolutions, and it finds a striking parallel in the Iranian diaspora that emerged after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Like their Cuban and Vietnamese counterparts, many Iranian exiles, particularly monarchists and supporters of the Shah, have spent decades avoiding critical examination of why the Pahlavi regime collapsed. Rather than confronting the Shah’s political and economic failures, they have cultivated narratives that attribute the revolution to foreign conspiracies, opposition groups, or Western betrayal.
This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as “Collective Narcissism”, or a group-level trait where factions see their own side as inherently virtuous and unfairly targeted. This leads to dismissing defeats as illegitimate rather than reflecting on shortcomings. Imagine a soccer match where the home team, brimming with every advantage superior training, ample experience, vast resources, and deep pockets, somehow loses to a ragtag opposing squad. This underdog team has no cohesion, no formal training, and virtually no resources. Yet, after the stunning defeat, the privileged team doesn’t look inward. Instead of reflecting on their own performance and what went wrong, they point their fingers, blaming the winning team. In life, we’d typically scorn such behavior and label it as scapegoating. Yet this is precisely the attitude and behavior displayed by certain exiled communities in the U.S.
In a curious twist of human behavior, we often observe a peculiar phenomenon among communities uprooted from positions of wealth, power, and recognition. Detached from their former lives and forced to migrate to new lands, they are compelled to start anew, frequently never regaining the prominent social standing they once held in their motherland. The tendency to externalize blame is not unique to Iranians diaspora. Cuban exiles who fled Fidel Castro’s revolution frequently idealized pre-1959 Cuba, ignoring the corruption and repression of Batista’s dictatorship. They framed their exile purely as a result of communist tyranny, refusing to acknowledge how Batista’s rule had fueled revolutionary sentiment. Similarly, South Vietnamese exiles blamed the United States for “abandoning” them rather than confronting their government’s corruption and lack of popular support. In both cases, exiled communities preserved myths of lost golden ages, “Cuba Libre” and the “Heroic South Vietnam” that erased their own side’s shortcomings.
Like other exiled communities before them, Iranian monarchists have developed their own mythology about the revolution. Many continue insisting the Shah’s government fell not due to its own failures but because of a foreign orchestrated plot, often claiming the U.S. and UK deliberately destabilized the Shah to install Islamists. While Western powers certainly meddled in Iranian politics, this convenient narrative erases the millions of Iranians who participated in strikes and protests against the monarchy. The revolution wasn’t some covert operation, it was a genuine mass movement fueled by widespread anger at the Shah’s authoritarianism, economic inequality, and brutal suppression of dissent.
Another persistent myth among exiles suggests the Pahlavi regime would have survived if not for a handful of underground leftist organizations like the Organization of Iranian People’s Fedai Guerrillas (OIPFG; سازمان چريکهای فدايی خلق ايران), Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK; سازمان مجاهدین خلق ایران), the Tudeh Party, and other groups that numbered merely a few thousand members. While these radical factions certainly contributed to the revolutionary momentum, this reductive explanation ignores how discontent had spread through every sector of Iranian society, from university students to oil workers across the nation. By blaming the monarchy’s collapse solely on opposition groups, exiles avoid confronting the uncomfortable truth: the Pahlavi regime had already lost legitimacy among most Iranians well before Khomeini emerged as the revolution’s figurehead. Perhaps most telling is how exile discourse romanticizes the Pahlavi era, portraying pre-1979 Iran as a modern, prosperous secular paradise while airbrushing its profound failures. While the Shah’s economic policies did create growth, the benefits flowed overwhelmingly to elites while rural and working class Iranians struggled. Political repression was systemic, with SAVAK routinely torturing dissidents and crushing free expression. Yet in exile retellings, these harsh realities are either minimized or disappear entirely, replaced by nostalgic fantasies of what might have been rather than honest reckoning with what actually was.
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi ruled Iran for nearly four decades, transforming it into a regional power through sprawling infrastructure projects and modern universities. Yet by 1979, millions of Iranians from all walks of life took to the streets, demanding his overthrow. The question is: Why? Perhaps the answer lies in the Shah’s authoritarian governance and profoundly misplaced priorities. Iran’s vast oil wealth could have lifted millions from poverty. Instead, the Shah funneled billions into military expansion, hosting over 60,000 foreign advisors while countless villages lacked roads, electricity, and running water. Between 1972 and 1979, he deployed 15,000 Iranian troops to Oman to suppress a progressive movement, a costly foreign intervention that claimed 700 Iranian lives with no tangible benefit to Iran. At home, he squandered resources on extravagances like the $100 million celebration of the Persian monarchy’s 2,500th anniversary, even as wealth inequality and corruption deepened. Rather than addressing public discontent, the Shah banned opposition parties, disregarded the rule of law, and relied on the brutality of SAVAK, his notorious secret police. Was this democracy? His supporters today sidestep these questions, just as they avoid confronting the systemic failures that sparked revolution. The parallels are undeniable: Like the spoiled soccer team blaming its underdog opponents after a loss, monarchist factions refuse to reckon with their own side’s role in collapse. History demands evidence, not nostalgia. Scholars begin with research questions: Why did the Shah fall? How independent was he? Why wasn’t he liked by people? What could he have done differently? Then they weigh primary sources and multiple perspectives. Yet for 47 years, many in exile have romanticized the era without scrutiny. History cannot be condemned, but it must be understood. Until the monarchist camp confronts its legacy of repression and waste, its narrative will remain incomplete and unconvincing.
The Exile Paradox– As decades pass, exiled communities clinging to the past often develop a growing resentment toward their homeland, one that shapes their distinct cultures and traditions, increasingly detached from those evolving back home. This mindset can harden into a belief system fixated on nostalgia, where the past is glorified rather than critically examined. At best, it reflects a unique experience foreign to most in their native country; at worst, it fosters a stubborn refusal to engage with the present. This backward gaze does more than distort memory, it hinders adaptation and integration. The more a community romanticizes a bygone era, the wider the disconnect grows between its idealized past and today’s realities. History should inform, not imprison. And for Iran to move forward, its past must be confronted not merely mourned.
The Iranian monarchists who left after the 1979 Revolution, has cultivated a subculture deeply rooted in nostalgia for a distant past, one that remains frozen in time, detached from the lived realities of Iran over the last few decades. While culture is inherently dynamic, shaped by collective experience, the diaspora’s version of Iran often preserves an idealized memory, untouched by the daily struggles, evolving slang, or shifting rhythms of life back home. For those who left, Iran lingers as a sensory ghost, the scent of saffron and dried limes in the bazaar, the crisp autumn air of the Alborz Mountains, the lazy hum of Tehran’s summer afternoons. Yet these impressions remain static, unaltered by the passage of time. Meanwhile, inside Iran, generations have grown up under vastly different circumstances: the trauma of the Iran-Iraq War, the crackle of air raid sirens during Israeli bombings, the thrill of underground music scenes defying censorship, or the quiet rebellions of young lovers openly displaying their love for one another. The diaspora’s cultural expressions from Tehrangeles pop reviving 1970s disco to Nowruz parties in Los Angeles and Los Vegas ballrooms, reflect a longing for a homeland that no longer exists in the same form. Even language evolves differently: while exiles cling to Persian as they once spoke it, peppered with dated idioms, Iran’s urban youth weave in new slang, shaped by digital culture and global influences. This disconnect extends to collective memory where diaspora narratives fixate on the revolution and its exiles, Iranians at home carry the weight of sanctions, political unrest, and a society in constant negotiation with itself. The result is a parallel culture, one that cherishes a romanticized past but remains estranged from the textures, sounds, and heartbeat of contemporary Iran.
The recent unprovoked attack by Israel on Iran revealed a stark contrast in reactions between Iranians inside the country and the exiled monarchist opposition. Despite their opposition to Ayatollah Khamenei’s regime, many Iranians’ immediate response was anger toward Israel and a defensive instinct to protect what they have, their safety, their homes, their national identity, and their pride. Their priority is survival and stability, not abstract political ideals. In sharp contrast, many monarchists in exile celebrated the bombing of Iranian cities and infrastructure, rallying behind the Israeli flag while hundreds of Iranians perished. For them, this destruction represents an opportunity to realize their utopian vision, one rooted in nostalgia for a bygone era. These opposing perspectives reflect a fundamental divide: one grounded in the harsh realities of life under conflict, the other in an idealized past cherished by a privileged few.
The underlying question is one of accountability: Who bears the real cost of regime change? For exiled monarchists, the answer is simple, they do not. While they champion the overthrow of the Islamic Republic from afar, they face none of the consequences: no bombs falling on their neighborhoods, no economic collapse threatening their survival, no loved ones caught in the crossfire. The true price paid in blood, instability, and shattered lives is borne entirely by those inside Iran. Yet, these exiles continue to advocate for destructive policies, cloaking their ambitions in the language of democracy and freedom, even as their visions for Iran remain disconnected from the urgent struggles of its people.
This pattern is not unique to Iran. Cuban exiles in the U.S. have advocated for decades of sanctions and maximum pressure since 1959, achieving nothing but worsening conditions for Cubans on the island. Similarly, many Vietnamese exiles still wage a mental war against “Uncle Ho,” supporting adversarial policies toward Vietnam, fighting a conflict that no longer exists. What unites these exile groups Cubans, Vietnamese, and Iranians is that they often come from privileged backgrounds, having enjoyed financial security and social status in their homelands before leaving. Their political agendas, shaped by personal loss and nostalgia, rarely align with the immediate needs of those still living under the regimes they oppose.
The fight for a free and democratic Iran demands more than opposition to the current regime, it requires an honest confrontation with history. For monarchists to credibly join this struggle, they must critically examine their own past, openly acknowledge the Shah’s authoritarian excesses, and take responsibility for the failures that fueled the revolution. Without this reckoning, their claims of supporting democracy remain hollow, and their role in Iran’s future will be marginal at best. The parallels with other exiled communities are undeniable. Over decades, Cuban and Vietnamese exiles in the U.S. have hardened into right-wing factions, their politics shaped more by nostalgia and grievance than by the realities of their homelands. The Iranian monarchist diaspora has followed the same path, morphing into a reactionary movement that increasingly mirrors the ultranationalist rhetoric of figures like Netanyahu. Like their Cuban and Vietnamese counterparts, they have grown alienated from the struggles of their people, retreating into a subculture that bears little resemblance to the Iran of today. Why this stubborn resistance to self-reflection? Psychological trauma plays a role. Acknowledging the Shah’s failures can feel like validating the Islamic Republic’s crimes. There is also political utility in maintaining a victimhood narrative: it sustains exile activism, justifies calls for foreign intervention, and preserves the myth of a “golden age” under the Pahlavis. But generational shifts are exposing cracks in this narrative. Younger Iranian Americans, less burdened by exile nostalgia, are increasingly willing to critique both the Islamic Republic and the Shah’s regime, recognizing that Iran’s future cannot be built on selective memory. The refusal to confront history has consequences. By clinging to myths, Iranian exiles distort their past and limit their ability to engage meaningfully with Iran’s present. The same dynamic plagued Cuban and Vietnamese exiles, whose denial prolonged frozen conflicts and hindered reconciliation. The lesson is clear: lasting change requires honest reckoning. Defeat demands accountability, not just blame.
Iran’s monarchists cannot move forward until they reckon with history, including their own complicity in the revolution. The monarchy didn’t simply fall; it collapsed under the weight of its failures. Clinging to denial only deepens their irrelevance. The choice is clear: repeat the same self-defeating myths that doomed other exiles or break free with honesty. Only through this reckoning can they shed their grievances and join Iran’s real struggle, not for a restored past, but for a just future. It is only then will they earn the right to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Iranian people in building a nation that honors both its history and its potential.
Article by M. Davar
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of IranOnline.com.