Why do some Pahlavi supporters react so aggressively to minorities ?
Honestly, a lot of hardcore Pahlavi supporters come across as straight-up racists to me. Yes, the Islamic Republic is awful, but that doesn’t magically make Persian ultranationalism any better.
The Pahlavi state heavily pushed a Persian-centered identity while suppressing minority cultures. Reza Shah even admired Atatürk’s model of centralized nationalism, and we know what happened to Kurds in Turkey under that system: assimilation, cultural suppression, and massacres. Iran followed a similar mindset toward minorities, even if not to the exact same extent.
And even today, whenever Kurds, Baluch, Arabs, or others ask for basic cultural or linguistic rights, some monarchists instantly scream “separatist” and act like Persians are the only “real” Iranians. The way many Iranians also treat Afghans like garbage honestly reinforces that impression for me.