Iran’s Next Shah: The Dangerous Mistake in UsefulCharts’ Royal Family Tree
Matt Baker can trace the descendants of Iran's last royal dynasty, identify distant male relatives, and explain which princesses might inherit a restored throne. His UsefulCharts episode, Who Would Be King (Shah) of Iran?, is an entertaining exercise in royal genealogy.
But it leaves the most important question almost untouched: Why should anyone inherit Iran in the first place?
The distinction matters because Iran is not an abandoned kingdom waiting for its rightful owner. It is a country of millions of people living through political repression, war, and economic hardship, with competing ideas about their future.
Baker acknowledges that the Islamic Republic might survive and that Iranians might reject a restored monarchy. He calls these uncertainties "two very big ifs." That qualification is fair.
Yet once those uncertainties have been acknowledged, the episode largely returns to the comfortable world of family trees. Reza Pahlavi is presented as the straightforward answer to who would become Shah. His daughters, cousins, and more distant relatives become the next problems to solve.
The result is a genealogically interesting account that gives surprisingly little attention to the political facts that would determine whether any of these people could govern.
And when the historical account moves beyond genealogy, some of its omissions and assertions deserve much closer examination.
The Missing Election: Only 34% Preferred Monarchy
The strongest evidence against treating a Pahlavi restoration as Iran's natural political destination comes from Iranians themselves.
The Netherlands-based research organization GAMAAN conducted a nationwide online survey between June 20 and 27, 2026, using censorship-circumvention networks to reach respondents inside Iran.
Its findings are revealing.
Approximately 33.9% preferred some form of monarchy, divided between 25.4% favoring a non-federal monarchy and 8.5% favoring a federal monarchy.
Another 27.5% preferred a republican system, while 13.4% selected the Islamic Republic. The remaining 25.2% either did not consider the alternative system's form important or lacked sufficient information to choose.
Monarchy was the largest individual constitutional preference when its two variants were combined. But it was nowhere near an outright majority.
That finding is especially important because opposition to the Islamic Republic does not automatically translate into support for the Shah.
An Iranian can despise clerical rule, support women's rights, admire ancient Persian civilization, and still reject hereditary government.
The same survey uncovered an even more interesting distinction.
Approximately 64.2% preferred a national flag featuring the traditional Lion and Sun emblem, either with or without a crown. Yet only 33.9% preferred monarchy.
The questions measured different preferences, so the figures cannot tell us precisely how many republicans favor the historical flag. They nevertheless establish an important distinction: Iranian national symbolism cannot simply be counted as a vote for royal government.
There is substantial evidence of support for Reza Pahlavi himself.
About 48.4% of respondents reported a positive opinion of him following the protests and war. Among respondents who said they participated in the January 2026 protests, 54.6% identified his call to demonstrate as one influence on their participation.
That is meaningful political support. Dismissing it would be as misleading as exaggerating it.
But personal popularity, participation in protests, support for constitutional monarchy, and willingness to accept someone as a transitional leader are four different things.
Nor is the survey a substitute for a free election. GAMAAN used online recruitment through VPN networks, demographic weighting, and methods designed to reduce the fear of expressing political opinions under authoritarian rule. Those methods provide valuable evidence but cannot eliminate sampling and response biases.
The figures are not a referendum result.
They are, however, considerably more informative about Iran's political future than determining which distant Pahlavi cousin has produced a son.
Reza Pahlavi Is Not Promising the Coronation Baker Explores
There is another complication in treating Reza Pahlavi as a monarch awaiting restoration.
The claimant himself publicly describes a different political objective.
In a July 2026 interview with Reuters, Pahlavi said he wanted Iranians to decide their future political system through a constitutional process and referendum.
Asked whether he might eventually become monarch, he replied:
"I'm not running for office."
He described his principal responsibility as helping Iran reach a political transition in which the people could decide between alternatives, including a parliamentary monarchy and a republic.
That is not a minor distinction.
Baker spends considerable time explaining why Pahlavi's eldest daughter, Noor, would face difficulties inheriting under the former constitution's male-only succession rules.
He then explores other male branches of the family.
But the former constitution belongs to a monarchy abolished in 1979. A genuinely new constitutional settlement would have to establish its own rules.
If Iran becomes a republic, the genealogy is politically irrelevant.
If it becomes a constitutional monarchy, the electorate and its constitutional representatives would still need to settle the monarchy's powers, the dynasty's position, and the succession rules.
Baker's historical succession analysis may be correct as an account of the old system. The problem is giving those rules more attention than the much more consequential question of who would authorize their return.
A monarchy cannot acquire democratic legitimacy merely by locating an eligible male descendant.
And a politician cannot acquire a democratic mandate merely by having once been a crown prince.
The Shah's Modernization Story Has a Missing Half
Baker describes Mohammad Reza Shah as a modernizer.
He highlights the White Revolution of 1963, expanded rights for women and minorities, and the monarchy's renewed emphasis on Iran's ancient Persian identity.
The White Revolution did introduce major reforms, including land redistribution, women's suffrage, industrial profit-sharing measures, and literacy programs.
These were real developments, not royal inventions manufactured for propaganda.
But modernization is not the same as political freedom.
A particularly consequential omission is the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953.
Mosaddegh had nationalized Iran's British-controlled oil industry. His government became the target of an operation organized by American and British intelligence, working with Iranian participants.
Declassified American government documents establish that the CIA and British intelligence services helped plan and implement the coup.
The overthrow removed Mosaddegh and strengthened the political position of Mohammad Reza Shah.
This history matters directly to an episode concerned with who deserves to rule Iran.
The Pahlavi dynasty's survival was not simply the natural continuation of hereditary tradition. Foreign intervention played a consequential role in preserving and strengthening the last Shah's position.
The monarchy also maintained an extensive apparatus of political repression.
Amnesty International's reports from the 1970s documented allegations and evidence of torture, arbitrary detention, unfair trials, and executions involving political prisoners.
Its findings described the role of SAVAK, the Shah's intelligence and security organization, in interrogations and the mistreatment of detainees.
Amnesty's reporting included accounts of electric shocks, beatings, prolonged detention, and abuse in prisons including Evin.
These abuses cannot be dismissed as minor imperfections in an otherwise uncomplicated modernization project.
They help explain why opposition to the monarchy extended beyond religious conservatives and included secular political movements, students, intellectuals, and other groups.
The Shah's overthrow did not mean that the Islamic Republic subsequently delivered freedom. Its own record of repression is extensive.
But the abuses of the government that followed do not retroactively absolve the government that preceded it.
Iran can have suffered under both systems.
Baker's episode need not become an exhaustive history of the revolution. But once it introduces the Pahlavis as modernizers and potential returning rulers, excluding the overthrow of Mosaddegh and the monarchy's coercive institutions produces an incomplete political portrait.
A Historical Error: Persia Did Not Wait 850 Years for a Persian Dynasty
There is also a straightforward problem with Baker's historical narrative.
He describes the Safavids as the first Persian dynasty to rule Persia since before the Islamic conquests, portraying their arrival as the end of approximately 850 years of Arab or Turco-Mongol rule.
That account is wrong.
The Safavid dynasty was enormously important. Ismail I established it in 1501, and its rulers helped shape the territory, institutions, and Shia religious identity of early modern Iran.
But indigenous Iranian dynasties had already emerged centuries earlier.
The Samanids ruled from the ninth century into the early eleventh century, governing territories including Khorasan and Transoxiana.
The Saffarids also established Iranian rule in eastern territories during the ninth century.
The Buyids, a dynasty of Daylamite origin, controlled substantial territories in western Iran and Iraq beginning in the tenth century.
These were not obscure footnotes to Persian political history. They were central participants in the revival and development of Persian political and cultural traditions after the Islamic conquests.
The Safavids helped reunify much of Iran under a durable early modern dynasty. That is a defensible historical claim.
Presenting them as the first return of Persian dynastic rule after approximately 850 years is not.
The distinction matters because Baker is constructing a narrative of Iranian political continuity.
When the history is compressed into foreign rule followed by the glorious return of native kings, the actual complexity of Iranian state formation disappears.
Iranian identity, Persian language, and concepts of kingship survived and developed under a variety of political arrangements.
A royal family tree is not an adequate substitute for that history.
The Republic Has Already Produced a Father-to-Son Succession
One of the episode's most revealing observations concerned the possibility that the Islamic Republic might eventually develop something resembling hereditary succession.
Baker noted that a son of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was considered a possible replacement.
That possibility subsequently became reality.
Following Ali Khamenei's death during the American-Israeli military campaign in February 2026, Iran's Assembly of Experts appointed his son Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader in March.
The appointment preserved the Islamic Republic's clerical system while transferring its highest office from father to son.
As of October 27, 2026, Reuters continued to identify Mojtaba as Iran's supreme leader.
This development occurred after the circumstances described in Baker's episode, so it would be unfair to criticize him for failing to predict it.
Its significance is nevertheless striking.
Iran abolished the monarchy nearly half a century ago. Now the Islamic Republic has placed the son of a supreme leader in the same office.
That does not make the Islamic Republic legally hereditary. The Assembly of Experts retains its constitutional role in selecting the supreme leader.
But it illustrates that family influence can survive the abolition of monarchy.
A republic can operate through powerful family relationships without calling itself a dynasty.
Conversely, a constitutional monarchy can exist with an elected government exercising political power.
The decisive questions concern institutional authority, accountability, and the rights of citizens.
Those are more revealing measures of political freedom than the title carried by the person at the top.
Reza Pahlavi Has Supporters, Money, and a Serious Leadership Problem
The modern Pahlavi story becomes considerably more interesting once the family tree is set aside.
A July 2026 Reuters investigation examined Reza Pahlavi's efforts to become a leading figure in Iran's political transition.
The journalists interviewed more than 50 people, including current and former associates, and investigated his fundraising, relationships, and attempts to unite Iran's divided opposition.
Their findings complicate both the heroic and dismissive accounts of the exiled prince.
Pahlavi attracted substantial financial support from Iranian-American business figures.
According to a donor interviewed by Reuters, fewer than 10 members of a business network contributed more than $3 million to his campaign.
Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi was among the contributors. A company spokesperson confirmed his donation and said he was not a monarchist, explaining that the money was primarily intended to assist with Pahlavi's security.
Another supporter helped arrange a meeting between Pahlavi and JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon.
These details establish something important: Pahlavi is not simply a nostalgic figure sustained by old photographs and royal titles.
He has access to wealthy supporters, political networks, and influential international audiences.
But money and access are not proof of effective political organization.
Reuters reported that some financial backers had become dissatisfied with his leadership, particularly his efforts to unite the opposition and his response to intimidation by radical supporters.
The investigation documented allegations of threats and violence involving people identifying themselves as Pahlavi supporters.
Crucially, Reuters found no evidence that Pahlavi personally directed those incidents.
He condemned such conduct and said he was introducing stricter controls over the public statements of close associates.
That distinction must be preserved. A leader's supporters can behave disgracefully without their conduct establishing his personal responsibility for every offense.
Nevertheless, building a democratic coalition requires more than condemning violence afterward.
It requires demonstrating that rival political movements can coexist without being treated as enemies.
Another problem concerns organization inside Iran.
Pahlavi claimed to maintain contact with extensive networks capable of participating in a transition. Reuters was unable to independently verify the scale of those organizations.
That limitation is consequential.
A prominent surname, international fundraising, and large demonstrations do not automatically produce an administration capable of governing a country.
Nor does their absence conclusively disqualify someone operating against a repressive government.
But an investigation into political succession has to confront the difference between being a recognizable opposition figure and possessing the organizational capacity to lead a national transition.
Baker's royal genealogy cannot answer that question.
The real investigation begins where the chart ends.
A Future Government Cannot Be Selected by Ancestry
The strongest defense of Baker is also the simplest: his video is explicitly about genealogy.
He does not promise that Reza Pahlavi will become Shah. He acknowledges the possibility that the monarchy will never return.
The succession questions are therefore legitimate within the limits of the format.
I accept that defense.
But the weakness of the episode lies in what happens when those narrow historical questions are placed against a contemporary revolutionary backdrop.
A family tree can establish descent. It cannot establish a mandate.
An old constitution can explain historical succession rules. It cannot determine the terms of a new political settlement.
The Pahlavi dynasty modernized significant parts of Iranian society while also exercising authoritarian power. Its surviving members possess historical claims, but those claims coexist with a contested political inheritance.
Reza Pahlavi has demonstrated considerable public recognition, meaningful support, and access to influential financial networks. He has also faced serious questions about political organization, coalition-building, and his ability to translate public sympathy into effective leadership.
None of those questions can be settled by identifying his nearest eligible male relative.
And the most important uncertainty remains unresolved: whether Iranians would choose a monarchy at all.
The available polling gives monarchists a substantial constituency, not a national majority. Pahlavi himself says the final constitutional choice belongs to the Iranian people.
That is where an account of Iran's possible restoration should place its center of gravity.
Baker answers who might inherit an abolished throne. He does not adequately investigate whether that throne has a political future.
His video is useful as a guide to royal ancestry.
As an explanation of who might actually govern Iran, it leaves the most consequential work undone.
An Iranian's ancestry may explain the past.
It does not entitle anyone to the future.
References
1. UsefulCharts — Who Would Be King (Shah) of Iran?
Creator: Matt Baker. Original video; publication date not established from the supplied transcript.
Watch the original episode
The original work establishes Baker's historical narrative, his treatment of Pahlavi succession, and his explicit qualifications about the possibility of restoration.
2. GAMAAN — Iranians' Attitudes Toward the 2026 Protests and 39-Day War
Survey conducted June 20–27, 2026; published July 2026.
Survey results and methodology
The survey provides numerical evidence of political-system preferences, attitudes toward Reza Pahlavi, and the distinction between national symbols and support for monarchy.
3. Reuters — Regime Change? Inside Reza Pahlavi's Faltering Bid to Lead Iran
Steve Stecklow, Nathan Layne, and Gavin Finch. July 28, 2026.
Read the investigation
An investigation based on more than 50 interviews documents fundraising, political relationships, organizational claims, donor disagreements, and controversy involving Pahlavi's supporters.
4. Reuters — Reza Pahlavi Speaks to Reuters About Iran's Future
Steve Stecklow, Gavin Finch, and Nathan Layne. July 28, 2026.
Read the interview transcript
Pahlavi directly explains his proposed constitutional transition, rejects the assumption that he is seeking a predetermined office, and responds to criticism of his leadership.
5. National Security Archive — Iran 1953: State Department Finally Releases Updated Official History of Mosaddeq Coup
Malcolm Byrne. June 15, 2017.
Read the declassified-records analysis
Declassified American government records establish the involvement of U.S. and British intelligence in the operation that overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.
6. Amnesty International — Law and Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran
February 1980. Archived by the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center.
Read the historical human-rights documentation
The report preserves Amnesty International's earlier findings concerning torture, political prisoners, unfair trials, and repression under the Pahlavi monarchy, alongside its examination of abuses following the revolution.
7. Encyclopaedia Iranica — Kingship VI: The Persian Concept of Kingship in the Islamic Period
Blain Auer. July 18, 2022.
Read the historical study
The article identifies the Samanids, Saffarids, and Buyids as Persian dynasties that emerged centuries before the Safavids, contradicting the episode's simplified historical chronology.
8. Encyclopaedia Iranica — Economy IX: In the Pahlavi Period
Scholarly reference article.
Read the economic history
The study documents the White Revolution's reforms, their economic consequences, political resistance, and the Shah's suppression of opposition.
9. Reuters — Iran Names Khamenei's Hardline Son Mojtaba as New Supreme Leader
Parisa Hafezi and Maayan Lubell. March 8–9, 2026.
Read the succession report
The report confirms Mojtaba Khamenei's appointment following his father's death, providing a consequential development in the Islamic Republic's own leadership succession.
10. Reuters — Iran Security Chief Meets Supreme Leader After Talks With Mecca Pact Countries
October 27, 2026.
Read the latest leadership report
The report confirms that Mojtaba Khamenei remained Iran's supreme leader in October 2026, preventing the succession analysis from relying on an outdated political situation.