One of the most frequently made claims about cycles of protest and the Iranian opposition, both within and outside Iran, is that the opposition and the protesters are leaderless, therefore lacking the focus and persistence needed to bring down the regime.
An analysis of Google Trends shows that this is no longer the case. The data indicate both overwhelming recognition of Reza Pahlavi as the most important opposition figure – and that this support is embedded in a broader context of severe and long-term loss of legitimacy facing Iran’s incumbent theocratic regime.
These conclusions are based on Google searches in Farsi of four leading personalities and one ideological concept: Velayat-e faqih (“Guardianship of the Jurist” in the absence of the infallible Imam), the most important doctrine legitimizing theocratic rule in Iran under the leadership of the ayatollahs. Google Trends allows comparisons of up to five terms.
People search for terms they consider important and with which they identify. Since Google accounts for more than 90% of internet searches in most countries, it reflects a wide swath of public opinion. The database plots the relative number of searches for each term over time, ranging from the past hour to searches dating back to 2004, when Google Trends was launched.
Measuring legitimacy and leadership
To gauge the relative popularity of the regime compared to leading opposition figures inside and outside Iran, two regime-related terms were examined:
Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader since 1989 and Ayatollah Khomeini’s successor, and Velayat-e faqih. Three opposition leaders were also selected:
- Reza Pahlavi, son of the last Pahlavi shah who was overthrown in the 1978-79 revolution. Reza has been based in the US since 1981;
- Maryam Rajavi, a long-standing member of the Mujahidin al-Khalq (MEK), a former revolutionary organization that fought both the shah and later the Islamic Republic and now calls for a secular republic based on the separation of mosque and state; and
- Mir Hussein Mousavi, a former Iranian prime minister in the early years of the Islamic Republic who, since the protests of 2022-23 following the murder of Mahsa Amini, has called for the regime’s replacement. Amini was beaten to death by Iranian security officers for wearing the mandatory scarf improperly, triggering the most intense wave of protest since 2009.
Analysis of search curves for these terms since 2004 shows, overwhelmingly, both the steep decline in the regime’s legitimacy and the growing popularity and salience of Reza Pahlavi. Khamenei has never been popular in Iran, especially when compared to Pahlavi. The average search score for Khamenei since 2004 is less than one, compared to nine for Pahlavi.
Following the curve over time for the term Velayat-e faqih is even more revealing in gauging the regime’s popularity. Among the five terms examined, it ranks second after Reza Pahlavi. This is evident from columns plotting the average relative search scores. The highest column reflects average searches for Reza Pahlavi (9), compared with six for the ideological concept.
The key difference lies in their respective trends over time. While searches for Pahlavi over the past decade remained steady and even increased, searches for Velayat-e faqih declined by half or more. This suggests that Iran is governed by an unpopular figure whose ideological appeal is rapidly eroding.
Examining a more recent and shorter time frame – the past year – brings these findings into even sharper focus. The average search score for Pahlavi rises to 12, compared with an average of nine for the entire period since 2004, while searches for the ideological concept plunge from nine to one.
As for the presumed lack of leadership in the protests, analysis of both curves, but especially the latter, shows that most Iranians overwhelmingly searched for Reza Pahlavi over other opposition figures. Removing the aforementioned figures and inserting alternative opposition members to address the five-term comparison limit – such as union activist Reza Shihabi and Canadian-Iranian social activist and author Hamed Esmaeilion – produced the same substantial gap.
The curve tracking searches for Pahlavi over the past year not only reflects his rising popularity as a focal point of protest, but also highlights the connection between this trend and the 12-day war in June between Israel and Iran. That war, which Pahlavi supported to the chagrin of many other opposition figures, caused his popularity to surge, a level exceeded only in the most recent spike less than a month ago since late December 2025.
The ayatollah regime – led by an unpopular supreme leader, suffering ideological erosion, and facing a widely acknowledged opposition leader among Iranians inside Iran – is likely to fall sooner rather than later.
The writer is professor emeritus at Bar-Ilan University and a senior researcher at The Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS).