The recent spectacle in Regensburg, Germany, where supporters of Reza Pahlavi marched with banners and T-shirts bearing the insignia of SAVAK, should unsettle anyone who values democracy, human rights, and historical memory. Displaying the emblem of the Shah’s secret police is not mere nostalgia. It signals, more troublingly, a willingness to rehabilitate one of the most feared instruments of repression in modern Iranian—and indeed global—history.

For millions of Iranians, SAVAK was synonymous with terror. Established in 1957 under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the organization became the backbone of the monarchy’s authoritarian rule. Armed with sweeping powers and bolstered by foreign intelligence assistance, SAVAK infiltrated universities, labor unions, newspapers, political parties, and even private gatherings. By the 1970s, it had evolved into a vast machinery of surveillance, intimidation, and torture that touched nearly every politically conscious Iranian family.

Its victims came from across the political spectrum: liberals, leftists, nationalists, religious dissidents, intellectuals, students, and members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). Amnesty International and numerous historians documented the brutality of SAVAK interrogations, detailing electric shocks, cable whippings, nail extraction, savage beatings, mock executions, and sustained psychological torment. Prisoners described being burned on metal frames and subjected to devices engineered to maximize pain and humiliation. One of the regime’s darkest episodes occurred in April 1975, when political prisoners were executed near Evin Prison after being taken from their cells in handcuffs and blindfolds.

These atrocities permanently stained the monarchy, eroding its moral legitimacy. SAVAK stood at the center of the anger that erupted during the 1979 revolution. Many Western observers continue to portray that revolution primarily as a religious uprising led by Ayatollah Khomeini. That framing obscures the depth of rage fueled by years of political repression. Under the Shah, peaceful dissent was crushed. Political parties were hollowed out or dismantled. Independent journalism withered. Elections lost all credibility. Torture became institutionalized.

In such an environment, opposition movements radicalized almost inevitably. Many Iranians who would later come to despise clerical rule nonetheless joined the anti-Shah movement, convinced that no nation could endure a secret police apparatus like SAVAK indefinitely. The Shah possessed military strength, oil wealth, and foreign backing, but his regime lacked public legitimacy. SAVAK embodied that deficit more clearly than any speech or ideology ever could.

That history makes today’s rehabilitation of SAVAK all the more disturbing. How did Iran arrive at a moment where supporters of Reza Pahlavi find it acceptable—perhaps even politically advantageous—to wear shirts bearing the SAVAK emblem? How do symbols once associated with torture chambers and political executions appear in democratic Europe as if they represent freedom?

Part of the answer lies in historical amnesia. Another lies in deliberate political marketing. In recent years, segments of the monarchist movement have sought to recast the Pahlavi era as one defined by stability, prosperity, and national pride. Within this revisionist narrative, SAVAK is reframed as a patriotic security institution rather than what it was: a machinery of repression.

This whitewashing has grown increasingly explicit. During protests, royalist activists have displayed images of Parviz Sabeti, one of SAVAK’s most notorious public figures. Sabeti wielded immense power in the final years of the Pahlavi regime, overseeing internal security operations. Former prisoners and historians alike have consistently linked his name to systematic torture and political repression.

Today, Sabeti lives in the United States, far removed from the scrutiny that once surrounded him. Yet his past persists. Former Iranian political prisoners have filed a multi-million-dollar civil lawsuit against him in U.S. federal court, seeking roughly $225 million in damages and alleging his command responsibility over torture and abuses carried out by SAVAK interrogators. That such a figure is now elevated as an icon within parts of the monarchist movement reveals a deeper and more unsettling trend: the normalization of authoritarianism under the banner of nationalism.

Equally concerning are Reza Pahlavi’s own public statements. Rather than directly confronting the abuses of his father’s regime, he often expresses pride in it. In interviews, he has dismissed questions about repression as a fixation on the past. More troubling still, he has acknowledged maintaining contact with senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), arguing that their cooperation would be necessary to stabilize Iran in a post-regime scenario.

This raises a fundamental question: what kind of future is being envisioned? If the same security logic persists—whether through revived monarchist structures or alliances with elements of the IRGC—many Iranians fear they are being offered a choice between competing authoritarian systems rather than a genuine democratic transformation. A democratic republic demands accountability, pluralism, civilian governance, and respect for human rights. Secret police networks, military coercion, and hereditary power point in precisely the opposite direction.

Modern Iranian history reveals a grim cycle. The Shah’s repression helped pave the way for Khomeini’s rise. The brutality of the Islamic Republic now fuels nostalgia for the monarchy. But nostalgia cannot erase memory. No society seeking liberty can afford to romanticize its torturers.

Germany learned this lesson in the aftermath of World War II. Any attempt to rehabilitate the Gestapo or display its insignia would provoke widespread outrage, because those symbols are inseparable from fear, cruelty, and state terror.

Restoring SAVAK in a post-mullah Iran would carry the same moral weight. It would revive the very institution that helped derail Iran’s democratic development decades ago. Iran does not need a recycled dictatorship draped in nationalism, nor continued religious authoritarianism cloaked in ideology. It needs something far more difficult and far more necessary: a democratic republic grounded in accountability, human rights, political pluralism, and the rule of law.

Any movement that glorifies SAVAK, embraces its former commanders, or relies on alliances with repressive military structures undermines that democratic promise long before it has a chance to take power.