The new battle for Iran's narrative: Media, monarchists, and diaspora politics

As Iran emerges from a major conflict with Israel, one of the most striking aspects was the open support of monarchist groups for the war, framing it as a historic chance to overthrow the Islamic Republic.

Centred around Reza Pahlavi, son of the last Shah, these groups openly called for intensified strikes and direct foreign intervention to bring about regime change.

Primarily based in North America and Europe, monarchists have experienced a revival in recent years, largely fuelled by the rise of satellite channels like Manoto TV.

Through these platforms, they have successfully promoted a nostalgic royalist narrative, sidelining other democratic opposition movements and embracing a pro-Israel stance.

By shaping narratives, identities, and perceptions - increasingly among Iran’s working class - these satellite channels have become powerful tools in a broader psychological and information war.

Producing nostalgia and rewriting the past

Most Iranians today were born after the Shah’s reign and have no personal memory of it. Their understanding of history, beyond the state’s official narrative, has been largely shaped by satellite channels, particularly Manoto TV, and to a lesser extent, Iran International.

These outlets have promoted a revisionist interpretation of contemporary Iranian history, fostering nostalgia and rehabilitating figures from the monarchy’s repressive apparatus.

Despite the state monopoly of Seda o Sima ('The Voice and Vision of the Islamic Republic'), widespread satellite use since the late 1990s has given most households daily access to diaspora channels.

Manoto TV, launched in 2010 in London, with royalist ties, began as popular entertainment and broadcasting without ads, but marked a turning point with documentaries that glorified the monarchy through restored archives and expert commentary.  

While portraying the era as one of progress and national greatness, the repression, including secret police (SAVAK) torture, the execution of dissidents, and poverty, is largely absent from the narrative.

This rehabilitation peaked during the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement, when Manoto aired a seven-hour interview with a former SAVAK officer, who defended his reign of terror without challenge.

Manoto also innovated with formats like “citizen journalism,” featuring videos from inside Iran showing repression, poverty, or systemic failures. This helped reach a broader, especially working-class, audience, offering a critical mirror of the present while projecting an idealised image of the past.

Reaching the working classes

Manoto’s success lies in its ability to bridge Iran’s middle class and, increasingly, the working classes, whose parents were the driving force behind the 1979 revolution.

Few political or media actors in the opposition have managed to build such social bridges, due to fragmentation, lack of organisational and ideological coherence, and the absence of strong media platforms. In contrast, Manoto has reached all layers of society and now boasts over 17 million Instagram followers.

Manoto has broken with the outdated model of monarchist satellite channels from the 1990s-2000s, which typically featured static presenters from the post-1979 exile generation.

The new generation in charge consists of professionals born under the Islamic Republic, some formerly employed by state TV. Deeply familiar with contemporary cultural codes, they produce content far more rooted in Iran’s social reality, moving beyond the frozen memories of earlier exiles.

This intimate understanding of Iranian society partly explains why Manoto is now the second most-watched Persian-language channel, just behind BBC Persian - a longstanding pillar of British soft power, staffed largely by journalists from the Iranian reformist movement.

Monarchism, once confined to the elite diaspora that fled the revolution, has since expanded its social base. Several factors account for this: the widespread availability of satellite dishes, the erosion of trust in institutions, growing fatigue with official discourse, and the central role of television in Iranian domestic life.

In Iran, TV not only provides entertainment but also structures family interactions, sets the rhythm of evenings, and often stays on even when guests are present, making it a key vehicle of political socialisation.

In this context, Manoto gradually penetrated suburban, rural, and provincial areas, traditionally more conservative. It broadcast an idealised image of the monarchical past and promoted cultural norms that challenge those endorsed by the regime. Its influence extended far beyond the affluent neighbourhoods of northern Tehran to more traditional sectors of society.

This phenomenon helps explain the recurrence of monarchist slogans during the popular uprisings of 2018, 2019, and 2022–2023. Manoto played a pivotal role in normalising royalist discourse among audiences once hostile to it, contributing to a deep reconfiguration of Iran’s political imagination.

Narrative capture

Monarchists saw the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ uprising as a strategic opportunity. Though initially sociologically disconnected from the movement, they reclaimed it symbolically, aided by their media power, diaspora networks, and support from Western actors.

Sparked by Jina Amini’s death in September 2022, the uprising, rooted in Kurdish feminist struggles with the slogan Jin, Jîyan, Azadî (‘Woman, Life, Freedom’), brought together an unprecedented coalition: urban youth, the middle classes, marginalised minorities, and economically devastated peripheries.

Jina Amini, a young Kurdish student from a provincial middle-class background, embodied this multiplicity of identities. The movement also emerged amid a collapsing economy and the IRGC's dominance over nearly 40% of Iran’s economy.

As the state enforced internet blackouts and repression, satellite channels became key informational interfaces between Iran and the outside world. The information that comes out of Iran is reworked, filtered, and amplified by the diaspora before returning in the form of images, narratives, and instructions. Iran International, launched in 2017 in London, plays a central role in this informational back-and-forth.

This process enabled monarchist networks to position Reza Pahlavi as a central opposition figure, despite his distance from the movement’s social base, and the fact that, ironically, Jina’s grandfather was executed by the Shah’s regime.

In early 2023, the ‘Alliance for Democracy and Freedom’ was launched in Washington, bringing together media and political figures from the diaspora. However, it was quickly criticised for its lack of representational balance: while most of the victims of the uprising came from Kurdish, Baluch, and working-class backgrounds, media discourse was dominated by a Persian-speaking urban elite in exile.

Internationally, diaspora narratives dominate without enough critical scrutiny, causing parts of the uprising to be overlooked while allowing Western-influenced views, like focusing on the headscarf, to prevail. This reflects a neocolonial pattern where the West entrusts exiled elites, such as Reza Pahlavi, with shaping the regime change discourse.

Key slogans like ‘Neither Shah nor Supreme Leader’ were absent from satellite coverage, distorting the uprising’s image.

Funding also raises questions: while Manoto‘s finances remain opaque, The Guardian revealed that Iran International is funded by a Saudi businessman close to Riyadh.

Despite operating at a loss, these channels continue, fuelling suspicions of state support. Notably, Iran International’s budget decreased in 2023, coinciding with the Tehran-Riyadh rapprochement.

Iran International was also the first to leak medical records contradicting the official narrative around Jina Amini’s death, reportedly obtained through a hack by a group that may have ties to Israeli intelligence, according to Amwaj.Media citing Israeli officials in Maariv. While sharing this information is important given Iran’s state repression, it’s crucial to consider the state interests behind these channels.

Foreign alignment

The Alliance quickly collapsed amid internal rivalries, with many pointing to Pahlavi’s responsibility. However, Pahlavi sought to co-opt the movement and present himself as the face of the opposition.

In April 2023, he visited Israel, reinforcing alignment with the Israeli-American neoconservative axis. His meetings with Netanyahu, Herzog, and Gamliel were intended to project the image of a post-Islamic Republic Iran allied with Israel, even as Netanyahu faced backlash over power-grabbing judicial reforms.

During the trip, Pahlavi frequently invoked the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ slogan, ignoring the irony of using a movement against state violence to justify other state violence.

He tried to link the Pahlavi dynasty to Israel, ignoring the historical contradictions: his father, while being close to Israel, opposed the 1947 partition of Palestine, the post-1967 occupation, and criticised aspects of Zionism, even making conspiratorial remarks. His grandfather sympathised with Nazi Germany. This revisionism mainly aims to legitimise Pahlavi’s political ambitions internationally.

Pahlavi has since attended AIPAC events, allied with figures like Sheldon Adelson, and since the war in Gaza has joined pro-Israel rallies with his supporters. He also endorsed Trump’s second term, with the slogan ‘Make Iran Great Again’ and backed a policy of maximum pressure on Iran’s economy.

This posture was echoed in Manoto and Iran International, which amplified anti-Palestinian content, suggesting that Gaza and Lebanon “stole” the Iranian people’s wealth due to the state’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas.

12-day war

With the 12-day war - if it indeed has ended there - Reza Pahlavi and the monarchists saw their dream of regime change come closer to reality. Years of psychological warfare via satellite and Instagram, amplified by Western media, reshaped political imaginations in Iran and the diaspora.

Yet, many voices remain critical. Pro-democracy activists, unionists, lawyers, and feminists - many of them imprisoned - emphasised that the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement opposes all forms of state violence, discrimination, and religious fundamentalism, whether Iranian or Israeli. Many of them have also condemned Israel’s attacks, despite media invisibility.

Pahlavi’s camp, meanwhile, has aligned with the global far right, making no concessions, supporting intervention, sanctions, and military confrontation with the Islamic Republic.

Paradoxically, this has led them to resemble Iran’s ultraconservatives, through their attacks on pro-democracy activists, their militarism, xenophobia toward Afghans, and discrimination against marginalised communities.

Finally, amid the chaos of the war, the Islamic Republic, continuing its authoritarian machinery, has intensified executions, citing espionage and national security.

Armin Messager is a researcher and journalist focusing on political and social movements, sectarian dynamics, and state power in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iraq, Iran, the Kurdistan region, and Syria. Follow him on X: @ArminMessager