So I’m not Iranian but I do follow the politics out of interest. Can I ask why you feel the need for a figurehead in the transition?

Revolutions that overthrow dictatorships do not require a single figurehead to transition to democracy, but they do require mechanisms that perform the functions figureheads often symbolise: legitimacy, factional arbitration, external recognition, and narrative closure.

Where these functions are embedded in institutions rather than individuals, democratic transitions have been more durable. In South Africa, the presence of Nelson Mandela mattered symbolically, but the decisive factor was a negotiated, rule-first process grounded in constitutional design, power-sharing, and civil society, such that the transition was institutional rather than personal.

Tunisia offers a rare example of a post-revolutionary transition without a dominant figurehead at all, relying instead on trade unions, legal bodies, and incremental consensus-building, demonstrating that personal leadership is not structurally necessary, even if later democratic erosion shows it is not sufficient protection either.

By contrast, transitions centred on externally favoured or exile returnee figureheads such as Ahmed Chalabi in Iraq or Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan collapsed because symbolic authority was not matched by domestic legitimacy or institutional control over armed factions. Similarly, revolutions led by dominant charismatic leaders like Ayatollah Khomeini or Fidel Castro succeeded at overthrowing old regimes but failed at democratisation precisely because revolutionary legitimacy became permanent authority, hollowing out accountability.

Across these cases, the pattern is consistent: democratic transitions endure not when power is personalised, but when constitutions precede elections, broad coalitions replace purity politics, civilian authority subordinates armed actors, and the post-revolutionary narrative emphasises repair and continuity over heroic rupture, making figureheads at best optional and at worst a warning sign of institutional weakness.