Boston Rally for Iran Reveals a Diaspora Divide Over Who Gets to Lead

In Copley Square, in front of the Boston Public Library, several hundred people formed a human chain in 10-degree temperatures on a recent Saturday afternoon, clasping gloved hands as they tried to keep the line unbroken and visible from a distance. Up close, however, the solidarity the chain was meant to project remains fractured over a fundamental question: Who, if anyone, should speak for a revolution?

The rally, billed as “Boston Stands With the People of Iran,” carried the familiar choreography of diaspora solidarity, with flags raised, chants repeated, and a plea for awareness when people inside Iran cannot safely gather. Yet even as demonstrators sought unity in the cold, the event underscored an unresolved divide: whether the movement needs a leader, and who, if anyone, gets to claim that role from abroad.

LEADERSHIP IN QUESTION: Demonstration for Iran in Copley Square in early February. Photo by Kevin Mani.

Saeid Gholami, one of the rally’s organizers and the founder of a digital health company, described the gathering as both a moral obligation and a messaging strategy. Internet disruptions, he said, create what amounts to a “total blackout.” In that silence, he argued, the diaspora inherits a temporary responsibility. “We felt a responsibility to be their voice,” he said, so people inside Iran would not “die in silence.”

But the rally’s language was not only about grief. It was also about leadership.

“We are also chanting our leader’s name, which is Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi,” Gholami said, casting him as a transitional figure who could lead the country from the Islamic Republic to “a true democracy.” Pahlavi is the exiled son of Iran’s last shah.

A promotional flyer circulated through the Iranian Association of Boston’s CityNews service placed Pahlavi front and center alongside protest imagery. The association appended a disclaimer stating that “all opinions, points of view, and topics presented at any of these events are not necessarily that of IAB or its Board of Directors.”

When asked whether focusing on Pahlavi risks narrowing the movement, Gholami explained,

“I’m not a monarchist. I’m actually a person who believes in democracy and free elections in Iran for everything.”

Still, he framed Pahlavi as the focal point of the movement. “We ask the world’s leaders, President Trump, all leaders who trust (Pahlavi), talk to him,” Gholami said. “He’s representing us.”

For others, the case for a singular leader was less about symbolism than about what they believed regime change requires.

One attendee, who asked not to be identified because his family still lives in Iran, said, “Any movement or revolution that is going to result in regime change requires a leader.” He described Pahlavi as the figure many are now looking to for a transition that results in “democracy,” defined through “free elections” and “freedom of speech.” While the United States is home now, he said, he hopes that if he visits relatives again, it will be “in a free Iran.”

The rally’s stated logic of unifying behind a leader, pressuring the West, and speaking for those who cannot is a familiar formula in exile politics. But Rod Sanjabi, an opposition figure who has spent years analyzing Iranian political and legal affairs, urged caution.

Sanjabi argued that opposition leadership is not produced by rallies or personality branding and that it cannot be safely outsourced to foreign intervention.

“It’s not spontaneous and unplanned, and it doesn’t rely on magic,” he said. “It doesn’t rely on an outside force coming in and dropping bombs.”

What works, Sanjabi argued, is slower and less cinematic. “Hundreds of meetings,” he described, and an approach that treats supporters as “a treasure” who “have to be preserved and kept safe as much as possible.”

He contrasted this approach with Pahlavi’s public messaging. Sanjabi pointed to a CBS News interview in which Pahlavi described the unrest as “a war” and said that “in a war, there are casualties.”

Sanjabi called the remark dismissive of demonstrators who were killed.

Sanjabi also pointed to what he called a lack of strategy. “If protesters succeeded in occupying a neighborhood, or a police station, or any other government building, as did briefly occur in some isolated cases,” he asked, “What was the plan? What were they expected to do next? Simply wait for the government response? It’s clear that there was no advice forthcoming in this regard."

The absence of practical guidance, Sanjabi said, puts Iranians at risk. Media reports put the number of Iranian protesters killed so far at around 7,000.

Democratic promises can also be a lure for the concentration of power, said Sanjabi.

“In 1978 and 1979, Khomeini was saying the same thing,” he said, referring to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and recalling assurances that clerical authority would remain outside politics in a future secular democratic system after the overthrow of Pahlavi’s father. “Of course, that’s not what happened.”

Sanjabi pointed to an “emergency phase booklet” published by the National Union For Democracy in Iran, a Washington, D.C.-based pro-Pahlavi lobbying group. The document outlines a transitional structure in which political appointments flow through a single figure designated as the “Leader of the National Uprising” — a framework Sanjabi described not as a bridge to democracy but as a blueprint for replicating the Islamic Republic’s authoritarianism under a different name.

“Once you have that kind of power,” he said, “few forces are willing to give it up.”

“What is his plan?” Sanjabi asked. “What are the institutions? What are the structures?”

He also challenged the assumption that diaspora enthusiasm mirrors domestic opinion. “The common refrain one hears inside Iran is that the members of the diaspora sit outside and are living comfortable lives, and that they want to come and install themselves and rule over us,” he said.

The available evidence, he argued, complicates the claim, advanced by some monarchists in the diaspora, that Pahlavi is the movement’s natural leader. Sanjabi pointed to an analysis by Mazdak Azar, who reviewed roughly 9,000 videos from recent protests inside Iran and estimated that only 17% included slogans supportive of the monarchy.

By the time the human chain loosened and the crowd began to thin, the temperature hadn’t changed — nor had the unresolved tension the rally made visible.