Iran’s Alternate 1985: The Future That Should Have Been and Could Still Be
The clock tower strikes again! If Marty McFly had parked his DeLorean in Tehran in mid-June 2025, he’d swear Doc Brown had punched in the wrong timeline coordinates.
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88 Miles Per Hour Into the Alternate Iran
Mid-2025 marked a dramatic escalation of regional tensions as Israeli fighter jets launched a precision strike deep inside Iran, knocking out nuclear enrichment facilities. The raid shattered Iran’s air-defence shield and sent shockwaves across the Middle East.
While Iranian state media downplayed the damage, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed significant disruption. Israeli officials claimed the operation set Iran’s nuclear ambitions back by years and killed senior Quds Force commanders. Tehran denied the deaths, but international media reported the Israeli claims widely.
The attack was part of a longer arc that began with Hamas’s cross-border assault on Israel in October 2023. Intelligence leaks later confirmed Iran’s involvement through its covert Palestine Corps, turning whispers of support into hard evidence.
This time, Israel didn’t wait for consensus. President Trump joined the fray days later, ordering direct U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. For Washington, the era of strategic ambiguity is over. Israel now leads the charge — and Tehran faces a new reality.
A geopolitical reset is underway. Iran must decide: evolve or be left behind.
Proxy Empire in Liquidation
Iran’s web of proxies, once the envy and terror of Middle Eastern geopolitics, unravelled faster than most analysts expected.
Hezbollah, once Iran’s most formidable proxy, was battered by Israel’s sustained northern campaign. Its leadership went into hiding, its strongholds reduced to rubble, and its rocket fire scattered and desperate. Once a quasi-state actor, it is increasingly a guerrilla force — and its regional stature is fading.
Syria has slipped from Tehran’s grasp. Assad’s regime collapsed in late 2024 under pressure from opposition groups backed by shifting coalitions. Iranian military sites were destroyed or seized, and Russia, distracted by Ukraine and unrest at home, offered no rescue. The Damascus-Tehran-Moscow triangle is broken.
In the south, Yemen’s Houthis have been hit hard by Israeli and U.S. strikes. Once a threat to Red Sea shipping, they now resemble a fractured insurgency — isolated, depleted, and increasingly irrelevant.
“They exported revolution like it was oil. Now the market’s collapsed.”
— a Gulf diplomat quipped on the sidelines of a recent international summit.
The once-invisible Quds Force is in disarray. Tehran’s proxy web — from Baghdad to Beirut — is rapidly unravelling.
What remains is a diminished Iran, hemmed in by sanctions, battlefield losses, and eroding regional trust.
The era of Iran as a formidable regional powerbroker is collapsing in the vacuum left by its ‘88 mile per hour’ retreat.
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The Alternate 1985, Persian Edition
History is shaped as much by the paths not taken as by those chosen. In 1979, Iran stood at a crossroads. The Shah, though an autocrat wielding the repressive Savak secret police, presided over a state heavily investing in education, science, women’s rights, and infrastructure. Cities like Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz were vibrant, cosmopolitan hubs pulsating with art, culture, and intellectual discourse. Mini-skirts were a common sight; women held positions in government cabinets, drove cars freely, and attended universities in large numbers.
By the mid-1970s, Iran boasted one of the highest female literacy rates in the Middle East. Women accounted for over 40% of university enrolments. Family law reforms gave women legal avenues in marriage and divorce. Farrokhroo Parsa broke barriers as the first female cabinet minister, serving as Minister of Education. Shirin Ebadi, who would later win a Nobel Peace Prize, was a respected judge.
“Women were visible everywhere: in universities, on television, in parliament. It was not a perfect system, but it was changing fast.”
—Former Tehran MP Mehrangiz Kar.
Many believed Iran might follow the path of South Korea: harnessing oil wealth to build a modern, outward-facing economy aligned strategically with the West. Iranian universities gained global recognition, and an emerging middle class swelled with technocrats, entrepreneurs, and artists.
In this alternate reality, Iran would have become a key regional hub for innovation and cultural exchange — a Muslim-majority country blending tradition and modernity, thriving economically without succumbing to either Soviet-style communism or brutal Islamic theocracy.
Iranian cinema, literature, and music would have flourished on the global stage, from Cannes to Hollywood, while Tehran’s tech sector rose as the region’s Silicon Valley.
But then came Ayatollah Khomeini. The Islamic Revolution overthrew not only the Shah but Iran’s entire developmental trajectory. The clerics established the velayat-e faqih — a system of absolute theocratic rule masquerading as republicanism. Oil revenues were redirected to regional proxy wars rather than domestic development. Women were forced into veils and segregated spaces. Music, once a cherished art form, was suppressed. Dissent was crushed under heavy-handed security apparatuses. The dream of joining the First World was abandoned in favour of a revolutionary bunker mentality.
The consequences have been severe: a massive brain drain, economic stagnation worsened by sanctions and corruption, and a profound alienation among Iran’s youth.
The Women, Life, Freedom protests in 2022 and 2023 — sparked by the tragic killing of Mahsa Amini in custody — were not spontaneous riots but a profound cry for dignity and human rights.
Had Iran taken the South Korean path, it would today boast a GDP multiple times its current size, diversified industries, a flourishing arts scene, and far less reliance on geopolitical brinkmanship. Instead, Iran is trapped in a self-imposed isolation, holding onto a myth of resistance while its youth dream of escape.
Some analysts believe the revolution erased more than reform. It erased a potential future timeline for entire generations.
Other nations in the region, once far less developed than Iran in the mid-1970s, have instead filled the void it left behind. The United Arab Emirates, for instance, has transformed from dusty Gulf outposts into high-tech cities of glass and ambition.
Dubai and Abu Dhabi boast world-class infrastructure, thriving financial sectors, and a brand of state-directed capitalism that markets itself with cosmopolitan flair. Qatar has parlayed its gas wealth into global media influence via Al Jazeera and soft power diplomacy through sports and culture. Even Saudi Arabia, long the poster child for religious conservatism, is now attempting a radical modernisation under Vision 2030 — legalising music festivals, empowering women, and courting foreign investment.
None of these states are democratic. But they have grasped a simple truth: legitimacy in the 21st century is earned not through ideological purity or military adventurism, but through prosperity, stability, and international integration.
Iran, once the region’s intellectual and cultural lodestar, has found itself outpaced by its neighbours, not because it lacked potential, but because the Islamic zealots chose revolution over reform, dogma over development.
Tehran’s June 2025: Daylight After Shockwaves
With bombs falling ever closer, Iran has faced a reckoning. The June 2025 Israeli strikes were both precise and symbolic. Iran’s nuclear programme (long a national obsession and technological stand-in for sovereignty and deterrence) was exposed as vulnerable. The destruction inflicted with minimal resistance was not only a military humiliation, but also a profound psychological blow.
Regional powers watch cautiously. Gulf monarchies, particularly the UAE and Saudi Arabia, publicly condemn escalation but privately welcome the weakening of their main rival. Russia, preoccupied with Ukraine and internal challenges, has failed to assist either Syria or Tehran. China hedges its bets, balancing strategic interests against regional instability while eyeing infrastructure investments opportunistically.
Inside Iran, the economic outlook is bleak. Inflation is hovering around 35–40%, youth unemployment stands at approximately 22%, and corruption remains endemic throughout government.
The Associated Press and Reuters have reported the rial’s plunge to record lows in unofficial markets, while a recent Financial Times analysis noted longstanding weakness amid sanctions and parallel-market clampdowns. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has entrenched itself across critical sectors of the economy, including telecommunications, petrochemicals, construction, and illicit oil exports.
Reuters reporting confirms that the Guards now control large portions of Iran’s export economy, bypassing official state structures and redirecting revenue into a shadow economy.
This entrenchment is not just about profit: it’s about regime preservation.
The Islamic Republic remains a state at war with its own citizenry.
An underground Persian poll leaked in mid-2024 showed over 75% of respondents favouring “major constitutional change.” The regime responded with swift arrests of poll organisers. The Islamic Republic’s legitimacy is rapidly eroding.
Iran’s domestic turmoil compounds its geopolitical setbacks. Faced with rising street protests, economic implosion, and now external military pressure, the regime’s survival instincts become increasingly erratic. Crackdowns intensify, but the more repression mounts, the louder the calls for reform grow. This is not simply a regime vs. people conflict; it is a civilisational clash between a generation shackled by clerical decrees and a youth yearning for a digital future.
The DeLorean Moment — Still Possible?
Despite its troubles, Iran’s future is not written in stone. Nearby examples offer hope. The UAE, once a desert backwater, evolved into a global commercial and tourism hub by blending economic liberalism with political control. Iran, endowed with a rich culture, youthful population, and strategic geography, could surpass that trajectory.
Its diaspora boasts Silicon Valley–level capital and influence. Iranian youth are highly educated and tech savvy, plugged into global networks and ideas. Its intellectual traditions, from Persian poetry to philosophy, remain profound and enduring.
All that is lacking is leadership with the courage to trade ideological rigidity for pragmatic ambition — and to see the past four decades not as sacred, but as a costly detour into an alternate reality that should never have been.
Nuclear weapons will not secure Iran’s future, nor will endless proxy wars. The country needs economic stability, political legitimacy, and reintegration into the international community.
That change may arise from grassroots movements or a regime willing to reform before collapse becomes inevitable.
“The Islamic Republic isn’t immortal. It’s just heavily armed and out of ideas,” said a Tehran-based academic, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Even some establishment figures quietly speculate about constitutional reform.”
As young Iranians learn more about the country’s pre 1979 history — not the Shah’s propaganda, but a flawed yet modernising society — they increasingly see the current regime as a detour rather than destiny.
In private conversations with reformist figures, one cleric urged Iranians to consider Indonesia, often cited for its “Islam Nusantara” tradition balancing piety, pluralism, and democracy, as an aspirational model.
Enter Reza Pahlavi: the eldest son of the last shah, now based in the United States, who has positioned himself as a leadership alternative. In late June, during an extended media push that included remarks to Western journalists in Washington and Paris, Pahlavi declared the Islamic Republic’s end “near”, calling this a potential “Berlin Wall moment”. At a press conference in Paris on 23 June, he urged a democratic transition and argued that dismantling Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was insufficient.
“Only a democratic transition in Iran can ensure lasting peace”.
A coalition presented at the Munich Convergence Summit in February 2025 has endorsed him as the leader of a proposed transitional government, to take shape should the regime fall. Since the June airstrikes between Israel and Iran, Pahlavi has intensified his messaging: encouraging domestic uprisings, claiming Iran’s Supreme Leader is in hiding, and stating that a 100-day roadmap is in place and ready for implementation.
His supporters point to his organisational readiness and increasingly public role in international diplomacy. Sceptics, meanwhile, question his legitimacy within Iran itself, noting that decades of exile have left him disconnected from the realities on the ground. Still, Pahlavi’s growing prominence signals something deeper: a readiness among segments of the diaspora — and even some internal reformists — to revisit the notion of monarchy, or at least transitional stewardship, not as nostalgia but as a mechanism for national repair.
Whether that route will be taken remains uncertain, but the shift in narrative is itself a form of DeLorean-style time travel: a rewriting of what the future might plausibly contain.
Iran’s vast underground economy, creative entrepreneurial spirit, and burgeoning tech hubs hint at an alternative reality just beneath the surface. In that sense, the “DeLorean moment,” a leap back to reclaim a lost trajectory, is both a metaphor and a possibility. It requires reengaging with a modernity that embraces pluralism and openness rather than exile and dogma.
Flux Capacitor Energised: Persia’s DeLorean Awaits
Back to the Future ends with a jolt and a choice. Marty McFly sets the time circuits to 21 October 2015 — a date that became pop culture shorthand for imagined futures, hoverboards, and the tantalising idea that timelines can be rewritten.
The Hill Valley clock tower was struck by lightning on 11 November 1955, while Iran’s own clock stopped on 11 February 1979, when the Islamic Revolution seized control and rerouted the nation’s trajectory. That was when the time circuits jammed: futures erased, and a generation’s dreams consigned to black-and-white television, war, and theocratic rule.
In an alternate 1985 — Persian edition — the DeLorean never came. But now, in the wake of the June 2025 airstrikes and decades of squandered potential, a different kind of time machine hums beneath the surface. Iran’s youth — educated, connected, and disillusioned — aren’t waiting for Doc Brown. They’re rewriting the future themselves — not with plutonium and flux capacitors, but with defiance, bootleg cinema, VPNs, and a quiet conviction that change, however fragile, is inevitable.
Tehran’s rulers may double down on repression, but the people watch and whisper.
Because a generation raised on Instagram yearns not for martyrdom, but for Wi-Fi, dignity, and opportunity.
Iran squandered one future in 1979. A second chance now flickers amid the rubble — a shot at a future that trades ideology for ingenuity, fatwas for fibre optics, martyrdom for meritocracy.
Now more than ever, Iran needs its own Marty McFly — a courageous figure willing to slide across the hood into the driver’s seat, engage the time circuits for a leap beyond dogma, and pilot the nation toward a modern, inclusive destiny.
Time circuits ready. Destination: 21 October, year? TBA — but this time, forward!
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Angelino Schintu is a veteran journalist, broadcaster, and filmmaker based in Japan. He is Editor-in-Chief of The Fushigi Times — an independent Slow Media platform offering bold, reality-grounded perspectives on global affairs, cultural explorations, and creative thought.
