From Performative Politics to Result-Oriented Politics

Collective Wisdom and Risk Assessment in the Political Action of Iranians Abroad

The problem of collective wisdom, displays of loyalty, and risk assessment in the political conduct of the Iranian opposition abroad

With a focus on the participation of some monarchists and supporters of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi in the "Unite the Kingdom" rally in London, 16 May 2026

Strategic analytical article with risk assessment

Executive Summary

The central issue of this article is the critique of a behavioural pattern in the politics of Iranians abroad: the replacement of rational assessment of outcomes with displays of loyalty. In such a pattern, the value of a political action is not judged by whether it helps the freedom of Iran, strengthens the voice of the victims of the Islamic Republic, builds global consensus, and moves society toward the ballot box. Instead, it is judged by the intensity of emotion, slogans, verbal sacrifice, and symbolic competition in proximity to a political figure.

Inside Iran, the cost of political action is extremely high: arrest, torture, deprivation, fabricated charges, and even the risk of execution. This high cost forces activists inside the country to act with caution, collective consultation, tactical concealment, and attention to consequences. Outside Iran, particularly in free Western societies, the cost of error is much lower for many activists. Therefore, performative, emotional, and low-cost action can replace strategic action. This cost gap is one of the reasons for the difference in practical rationality between inside and outside the country.

The case under discussion is the presence of groups of Iranians carrying the Lion and Sun flag and images of the Pahlavi family at a rally that was largely covered by British media through the frame of Tommy Robinson, anti-immigration politics, Islamophobia, and the presence of far-right currents. From a risk-assessment perspective, such participation, even if motivated by opposition to the Islamic Republic and support for Iran, can increase the risk of media framing, reputational harm, damage to moderate coalitions, and the reduction of the Iranian freedom movement to a subset of an internal British dispute.

The strategic conclusion of this article is clear: the Iranian opposition abroad must move from performative loyalty politics toward result-oriented, rational, evidence-based, coalition-building, and media-literate politics. Every action must be assessed by a simple question: does this bring us closer to the freedom of Iran, global support, effective pressure on the Islamic Republic, the protection of prisoners’ lives, and the ballot box, or does it move us further away?

1. The Problem: When Loyalty Replaces Political Rationality

In many Iranian political circles abroad, a dangerous displacement sometimes occurs. The primary objective, which should be the freedom of Iran, transition away from the Islamic Republic, defence of human rights, support for the families of victims, and arrival at a political order based on the people’s vote, moves to the margins. In its place, individuals are assessed according to emotional fervour, intensity of slogans, political purism, and displays of loyalty to a figure or symbol.

This problem is not specific to one political current. As the experience of many activists shows, the same logic can appear among the left, the right, republicans, monarchists, nationalists, religious groups, and anti-religious groups. If someone speaks in a left-wing environment in the language of cost-benefit analysis, they may be accused of right-wing thinking. If the same person speaks in a monarchist or nationalist environment about risk, coalition-building, media, and international consequences, they may be accused of leftism, disloyalty, or insufficient commitment. The common point in both reactions is hostility to critical rationality.

Therefore, the central problem is neither the left nor the right. The problem is the absence of a culture of strategic decision-making. If politics is to produce results, it must be assessed according to objectives, tools, costs, risks, coalition potential, media consequences, and real impact on the field of action. Emotion, affect, and loyalty can be the moral energy of a movement; but if they operate without reasoning and without a think tank, they can become the opposite of the objective.

2. Theoretical Framework: Result-Oriented Pragmatism versus Identity-Performative Politics

The framework proposed in this article may be called result-oriented pragmatism. The value of every political action is measured in relation to the desired outcome. If the objective is the liberation of Iran from the Islamic Republic, the strengthening of civil society, the defence of prisoners, and the achievement of free elections, then every action must be evaluated according to the extent to which it helps this path. Anything that helps this path has practical value; anything that distorts, discredits, isolates, or diverts the movement from the main objective carries negative risk, even if it is undertaken with good intentions.

By contrast, identity-performative politics turns politics into a stage for proving oneself: who is more loyal, who shouts more strongly, who performs more verbal sacrifice, and who accuses others more intensely. In such a situation, rationality and collective consultation become weak, because every critical question is interpreted as betrayal, doubt, or lack of loyalty.

The literature of political science and political psychology shows that group identity can be both a mobilising force and a source of polarisation. When belonging to the group becomes more important than the political objective, individuals become involved in defending group signs instead of assessing reality. This is precisely where the display of loyalty turns from an instrument of mobilisation into an obstacle to rationality.

3. Inside and Outside: The Economy of Risk and Political Rationality

The political activist inside Iran faces a harsh reality: a tactical error may lead to arrest, expulsion from university, torture, confiscation of one’s life, harassment of family members, or even the risk of death. For this reason, political rationality inside the country is often not the product of abstract virtue; it is the product of existential necessity. When a person’s life is at risk, they are forced to think more precisely, display less, consult more, and assess the consequences of every step.

Outside Iran, the direct cost of political action is usually lower. Many activists do not face the risk of prison, torture, or execution. This does not mean there are no costs. For professionals, doctors, academics, managers, entrepreneurs, or those with formal social positions, the costs to reputation, employment, professional licence, and institutional standing may be very heavy. Yet for some activists, a political error may carry limited practical cost, and this can increase performative courage and poorly calculated behaviour.

This difference in cost creates a behavioural gap. Inside the country, because risk is high, political conduct moves toward emergency rationality and collective wisdom. Outside the country, because of relative safety, it may move toward performative competition, purism, personality-centred politics, and slogans that are costly for the movement as a whole but low-cost for the individual.

4. The Left and the Right Are Not Monoliths: The Need to Distinguish Between Political Spectrums

One of the common mistakes in Iranian political debate is the simplification of “left” and “right.” The right is not a single thing: liberal-conservative right, capital-oriented right, nationalist right, religious right, populist right, far right, fascism, and racism are not the same. Likewise, the left is not a single thing: social democracy, labour left, liberal human-rights left, anti-capitalist left, anarchist left, anti-imperialist left, and authoritarian left differ fundamentally from one another.

For this reason, linking a national Iranian movement to any group merely because that group is opposed to political Islam, opposed to the Islamic Republic, or supportive of similar slogans is strategically dangerous. Sharing an enemy does not mean sharing a worldview, method, credibility, political ethics, or coalition potential. Just as institutional conservative right must not be conflated with street far right, human-rights left must not be conflated with authoritarian or anti-Western left.

For the Iranian movement, the objective should be to build a broad coalition with the main and legitimate forces in host societies: moderate parties, human-rights institutions, academics, credible media, trade unions, civil institutions, and responsible politicians across different political spectrums. This objective is incompatible with attachment to extremist fringes, whether on the right or the left.

5. Case Study: The 16 May 2026 Rally and the Problem of Media Framing

On 16 May 2026, the “Unite the Kingdom” rally was held in London around Tommy Robinson. Reuters described the rally alongside a large pro-Palestinian march as one of the two major demonstrations in London that day, reporting that police deployed around 4,000 officers and that 43 arrests were reported by the end. Reuters also described Robinson as an anti-Islam activist and referred to the banning of 11 foreign far-right figures from speaking at the rally. In the same report, the British Prime Minister accused the organisers of promoting hatred and division. [1]

The Guardian described the gathering as a “far-right Glastonbury” and wrote that among the Union flags and St George’s flags, the Israeli flag and the pre-revolutionary Iranian Lion and Sun flag were more visible than before. The report also referred to the presence of white nationalist and far-right groups on the margins of the rally and noted that some British Iranians attended with the Lion and Sun flag and images of the late Shah and Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. [2]

The key point for risk assessment is this: the intention of the Iranian participants may have been the defence of Iran, opposition to the Islamic Republic, and protest against political Islam. But the media, public opinion, and political institutions do not necessarily see intention. They see the overall frame of the event. If the dominant frame of an event is “far right,” “anti-immigration,” “Islamophobic,” or “fringe,” the presence of Iranian symbols within that frame can connect the entire Iranian movement, in the mind of an unfamiliar audience, to that same frame.

In media politics, being seen is not enough. What matters is how we are seen, next to whom we are seen, under what headline we are seen, and which enemies or rivals will use our image. The Islamic Republic and lobbies aligned with it seek exactly these opportunities in order to portray the Iranian freedom movement as “extremist,” “right-wing,” “dependent,” or “non-popular.”

6. Risk Assessment of the Presence of Monarchist Symbols at the Tommy Robinson Rally

7. From “Proving Loyalty” to the “Think Tank”

The Islamic Republic, despite all its corruption, violence, and illegitimacy, uses institutional networks, think tanks, narrative-building, media influence, management of fear, and psychological engineering. Against such a structure, emotional and scattered politics is not enough. If the opposition does not have a think tank, decision-making system, professional spokesperson, media analysis, international public relations, and mechanisms for resolving disputes, it cannot turn the people’s moral energy into sustainable political capital.

The fundamental problem is that in part of our political culture, rational thinking is not valued as highly as loyalty. Someone who asks questions, writes scenarios, assesses risk, and calculates consequences is sometimes treated as a nuisance to collective enthusiasm. Yet successful political history, from ancient empires to modern states, has been built on consultation, think tanks, division of labour, calm decision-making, and testing consequences.

The account attributed to ancient Iranians that important decisions were reconsidered both in a state of enthusiasm and in sobriety, even if historically debatable, contains an important symbolic lesson: political decisions must not be the product of the moment, emotion, anger, or collective intoxication. Political decisions must pass through two stages: emotional energy and rational testing.

8. A Practical Criterion for Every Political Action

To move beyond fragmentation, a single criterion must be defined. Every movement, slogan, rally, flag, interview, letter, alliance, or campaign must be tested against the following questions:

1. Does this action amplify the voice of the victims of the Islamic Republic, the families of those killed, political prisoners, and those sentenced to death?

2. Does this action increase or decrease the support of mainstream parties, credible media, and human-rights institutions in host countries?

3. Does this action further isolate the Islamic Republic, or does it provide propaganda material to it?

4. Does this action help create a credible path toward the ballot box, a new constitution, and a free choice between constitutional monarchy and democratic republic?

5. Does this action bring Iranians of different tendencies under the common umbrella of freedom, human rights, and territorial integrity, or does it set them against one another?

6. If tomorrow the British, German, French, or American media use the image of this action as a headline, can we defend it with pride and logic?

9. Strategic Recommendations

• Establish a multi-spectrum think tank: monarchists, democratic republicans, liberals, social democrats, conservatives, human-rights activists, media specialists, lawyers, and security experts should work within an advisory structure with one shared criterion: the interests of the people of Iran.

• Adopt a code of conduct for demonstrations: every public presence must be assessed in advance. Participation in gatherings whose dominant frame is far right, racism, violence, religious hatred, or anti-immigration should be prohibited or at least severely limited and conditional on public distancing.

• Shift the axis from personality-centred politics to objective-centred politics: if Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi is to play a national and reconciliatory role, he must stand above competitions of loyalty. Support for him must not turn into an emotional contest; it must help build a credible political path for transition, the people’s vote, and national reconciliation.

• Design a global message: the message of the movement must be clear to Western audiences: not hatred of migrants, not hatred of Muslims, not Britain’s internal cultural war; rather, defence of the people of Iran, the women of Iran, political prisoners, victims of execution, and the right of Iranians to determine their destiny.

• Build alliances with the mainstream of the host country: in Britain, the effective path runs through parliamentary institutions, human-rights committees, credible media, universities, trade unions, mainstream parties, and respected politicians, not through attachment to fringe and high-risk figures.

• Build institutional memory: every error must be recorded and analysed, rather than forgotten through accusation. A professional movement learns from its mistakes and turns them into protocols.

• Protect activists and families: given the pattern of transnational repression by the Iranian regime, every public action must be accompanied by digital-security training, protection of privacy, and assessment of consequences for families. Freedom House defines transnational repression as including digital threats, pressure on families, kidnapping, illegal extradition, and even assassination, and has examined Iran among the regimes active in this field. [3][4]

10. Conclusion

Iranians today are in a historic phase. Through repression, executions, torture, and intimidation of society, the Islamic Republic seeks to silence the people’s voice. In 2026, Amnesty International warned of the risk of execution for dozens of people connected with protests and expedited grossly unfair trials. [5] Therefore, the task of Iranians abroad is to produce a professional, ethical, and trustworthy image of the Iranian freedom movement: an image with which the world can sympathise, not an image that can easily be placed within a frame of extremism.

Loyalty, if it serves rationality, is an asset; but if it replaces rationality, it becomes a risk. National emotion, if translated into organisation, media, alliances, and programme, creates power; but if it turns into display, competition, and accusation, it wastes the moral capital of the nation.

The Iranian movement must transfer the same sense of urgency and rationality that exists inside the country to the outside. Every step must be calculated, every image must carry a message, every alliance must be assessed, every slogan must be defensible, and every action must bring the movement closer to the final objective: the freedom of Iran, the end of the Islamic Republic, defence of human rights, establishment of the ballot box, and entrusting the future form of government to the free choice of the people.

Selected Sources

[1] Reuters, “Tens of thousands march in London in separate immigration, pro-Palestinian protests,” 16 May 2026.

[2] The Guardian, “Tommy Robinson’s ‘far-right Glastonbury’: a distinctly lower energy affair,” 16 May 2026.

[3] Freedom House, “Collaboration and Resistance: Tracking Transnational Repression in 2025,” 2026.

[4] Freedom House, “From Awareness to Action: Combating Transnational Repression in the United Kingdom,” 2025.

[5] Amnesty International, “Iran: Children among 30 people at risk of the death penalty amid expedited grossly unfair trials connected to uprising,” 20 February 2026.

[6] CREST, “Understanding Transnational Diaspora Politics,” thematic report, 2018.

[7] CREST, “Social Movement Theory Perspectives on Group Mobilisation, Radicalisation, and Violent Extremism,” 2025.