European governments often frame their approach to Iran as a binary choice between engagement and isolation. At different moments, this has meant prioritising diplomacy and negotiations, or emphasising sanctions and so-called "maximum pressure" against the Islamic Republic.
This framing, however, obscures a more fundamental issue: whether continued recognition of the Islamic Republic remains credible under international law, and whether it aligns with the democratic principles the EU claims to uphold.
Both engagement and isolation, as they have been practised, implicitly assume the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic as Iran's governing authority. Yet in modern democratic terms, legitimacy derives from the consent of the governed — and that consent has been repeatedly and visibly withdrawn by Iranians at extraordinary personal risk.
Despite a near-total internet blackout, videos emerging from nationwide protests, especially on 8 and 9 January, showed unprecedented crowds across the country, dominated by slogans rejecting the entire regime, including "death to [ayatollah Ali] Khamenei" or "this is the final message, the entire regime is the target".
A regime that remains in power primarily through violence and terror, with credible reports estimating between 12,000 and 20,000 people killed during recent waves of protest, cannot plausibly claim popular legitimacy.
Moreover, international law does not treat legitimacy as a mere technicality. Grave violations of international law, including crimes against humanity, fundamentally undermine a regime's claim to lawful authority and strengthen the case for withdrawing recognition.
The UN Fact-Finding Mission on Iran has already concluded that the Islamic Republic committed crimes against humanity during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests.
Today, despite severe information constraints caused by the ongoing communications blackout, multiple human rights organisations describe the violence of the past three weeks as unprecedented in scale, with mass killings and detentions that may again amount to crimes against humanity.
Continuing to extend international legitimacy under these conditions risks normalising illegality rather than enforcing accountability.
The case of Myanmar also illustrates that withholding recognition from a regime ruling through force is neither unprecedented nor equivalent to external regime change.
In theory, Europe's reluctance to act with moral clarity in the case of Iran is rooted in a fear of "foreign intervention". Yet, in practice, European governments, through continued recognition of the Islamic Republic, have conferred legitimacy on the regime without succeeding in making it accountable.
Such recognition is no longer a neutral diplomatic stance: it grants access to international institutions, resources, and political standing, while decades of experience show that it has failed to produce meaningful accountability or compliance with international law.
The result is a situation in which the bestowed legitimacy has immensely benefited the regime without protecting Iranian citizens, or even European citizens regularly taken hostage by the Islamic Republic.
In this sense, continuing to recognise a regime that its own people have explicitly rejected is arguably a worse and more damaging form of interventionism.
Once the question of legitimacy is openly raised, then the inevitable follow-up emerges: if not the Islamic Republic, then who? And how would a political vacuum be avoided? These concerns are understandable, but they do not justify the inaction.
Withdrawal of recognition need not stop at isolating the regime; it can and must be paired with structured, conditional engagement with Iranian opposition actors, to help overcome risks of instability and unmanaged transition.
Although the Iranian opposition remains to a certain extent fragmented and past efforts at formal coalition-building have struggled, two factors suggest that this may nonetheless be a critical moment for engagement.
First, the urgency of the situation — marked by a horrifying and still rising death toll and escalating risk of persecution — has pushed a wide range of opposition actors toward a shared conclusion: that immediately ousting the Islamic Republic supersedes all other competing political priorities and internal disagreements.
Second, signals emerging from inside Iran indicate that many protesters are already thinking beyond resistance toward political alternatives.
Slogans from the streets reflect not only rejection of the regime, but also tentative support for Reza Pahlavi, who has come to be viewed by many as a unifying transitional figure. This support appears to be linked to collective memory and enduring national identity rather than consent to a predetermined political outcome.
Crucially, engagement also creates accountability. Bringing a central transitional figure and opposition actors into the international political arena makes it possible to set clear conditions: inclusion of diverse political currents, ethnic and religious minorities, and women in decision-making, alongside a commitment to a time-bound transition toward democratic processes.
Concerns that engagement with Iranian politician and dissident in exile in the United States, Reza Pahlavi, risks endorsing monarchy or non-democratic authority should be addressed precisely through such conditionality.
International engagement provides leverage to demand transparency, pluralism, and explicit limits on power — obligations that continued recognition of the current regime has never secured.
This is not about deciding what Iran should become, but about ensuring that Iranians obtain the possibility to decide for themselves.
Europe will not, and should not, determine Iran's future, but its choices now will affect the conditions under which Iranians attempt to reclaim their right to self-determination.
These choices will indeed reveal to what extent European institutions are serious about the fundamental democratic principles they claim to uphold.
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Iranian academic Mahya Ostovar is a lecturer in Business Information Systems at JE Cairnes School of Business and Economics. She is also a member of the Afghan and Iranian Women's Coalition launched by IRI's Women's Democracy Network.
Iranian academic Mahya Ostovar is a lecturer in Business Information Systems at JE Cairnes School of Business and Economics. She is also a member of the Afghan and Iranian Women's Coalition launched by IRI's Women's Democracy Network.