There is a particular brand of pathetic that only a state-run media apparatus can achieve, and the Islamic Republic of Iran has just reached the gold medal podium. In a display of technical incompetence that would make a dial-up modem blush, the regime’s propaganda machine was recently hijacked by hackers to broadcast the face of Reza Pahlavi. Because, apparently, when your entire government is built on the foundation of 7th-century theology and 20th-century paranoia, you forget to update the firmware on your broadcast servers. For a brief, flickering moment, the usual diet of stone-faced clerics and 'Death to Everything' chants was replaced by a man whose primary claim to fame is being the son of a guy who lost his job forty-five years ago. It’s a match made in a very specific, very dusty corner of hell: a regime that can’t secure its own airwaves against a group of digital pranksters, and an exiled royal whose political relevance is roughly equivalent to a VHS tape of a wedding from 1978.

The message aired was a desperate plea for the Iranian security forces to join the 'people.' It’s the kind of sentimental drivel that people in expensive suits produce when they’ve spent too much time in the leafy suburbs of Maryland and not enough time being hit with batons in the streets of Tehran. The hackers, presumably feeling quite smug between bites of whatever it is hackers eat when they aren’t dismantling the dignity of theocratic dictatorships, forced the Iranian public to endure clips of the 'Crown Prince.' It is the ultimate irony: the IRGC, an organization that prides itself on being the iron fist of God and the ultimate arbiter of morality, was outsmarted by some kids with keyboards and a penchant for royal nostalgia. One has to wonder if the password to the broadcast booth was simply 'Allah123' or perhaps 'BasijStrong.' Either way, the 'Resistance' has moved from the barricades to the back-end servers, which would be impressive if it weren’t so thoroughly pointless.

Let’s deconstruct the players in this theater of the absurd. On one side, we have the Islamic Republic—a regime so terrified of a satellite dish that they’ll probably execute a toaster for sedition by next Tuesday. They spend billions on ballistic missiles and regional proxies, yet they can’t keep a middle-aged man in a suit off their TV screens. On the other side, we have Reza Pahlavi, the 'Exiled Prince.' He is the ghost of a monarchy that was discarded for very good reasons, now being repackaged as a beacon of hope by people who have clearly forgotten why the 1979 revolution happened in the first place. Pahlavi’s message to the security forces to 'stand with the people' is the kind of toothless rhetoric that populates the memoirs of losers. Does he honestly believe that a Basij officer, currently enjoying the perks of state-sanctioned thuggery, is going to drop his shield because a digital apparition of a deposed king’s son told him to? The delusion is breathtaking. It’s like asking a shark to become a vegan because a hologram of a dolphin asked nicely.

And then, because no global catastrophe or regional embarrassment is complete without the involvement of the world’s most expensive police force, we have the United States Navy. As the screens in Tehran were flickering with the visage of Pahlavi, US ships were dutifully sailing toward the Middle East in a display of 'deterrence'—a word that in Washington-speak means 'spending millions of taxpayer dollars to turn fuel into noise.' It’s the same old dance: Iran does something stupid or suffers an internal embarrassment, and the US sends a carrier strike group to bob around in the water like a very expensive bathtub toy. The military-industrial complex must be thrilled. Every time a hacker breaches a firewall in Tehran, another Admiral gets a shiny new toy to play with in the Persian Gulf. It’s a feedback loop of futility where everyone gets paid except the people actually living under the regime.

The tragedy of the Iranian people is that their choices are currently limited to a group of elderly men who think the internet is black magic and a group of exiled socialites who think the 1970s were a golden age. The hacking of state TV isn’t a revolution; it’s a glitch. It’s a momentary interruption in the regularly scheduled program of misery. While the West cheers for the 'brave hackers' and the Pahlavi fans dust off their old flags, the reality remains that nothing has changed. The regime will tighten its digital grip, the prince will return to his comfortable exile, and the US ships will continue their aimless circles in the sea. It is a spectacle of the highest order, a digital shadow play designed to give the illusion of momentum while everyone involved remains perfectly, tragically stuck in the past. We are watching the collision of two irrelevant forces—the dying gasps of a theocracy and the echoes of a monarchy—while the rest of the world wonders if there’s anything else on another channel.