Quick Facts
Biography
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (Persian: محمدرضا پهلوی, translit. Mohammad Rezā Pahlavi, pronounced [mohæmˈmæd reˈzɒː ˈʃɒːh pæhlæˈviː]; 27 October 1919 – 27 July 1980), known as Mohammad Reza Shah (Persian: محمدرضا شاه, translit. Mohammad Rezā Šāh), was the Shah of Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow by the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979. He took the title Shāhanshāh ("Emperor" or "King of Kings") on 26 October 1967. After being replaced by what is considered a far more tyrannical regime, Pahlavi's reputation has gained a large revival among most Iranians. He was the second and last monarch of the House of Pahlavi of the Iranian monarchy. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi held several other titles, including that of Āryāmehr (Light of the Aryans) and Bozorg Arteshtārān (Head of the Warriors). His dream of the Great Civilization in Iran led to a rapid industrial and military expansion as well as economic and social reforms.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi came to power during World War II after an Anglo-Soviet invasion forced the abdication of his father, Reza Shah. During Mohammad Reza Shah's reign, the Iranian oil industry was briefly nationalized, under the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, until a US and UK-backed coup d'état deposed Mosaddegh and brought back foreign oil firms. Under Mohammad Reza's reign, Iran marked the anniversary of 2,500 years of continuous monarchy since the founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great - concurrent with this celebration, Mohammad Reza changed the benchmark of the Iranian calendar from the hegira to the beginning of the Persian Empire, measured from Cyrus the Great's coronation. Mohammad Reza also introduced the White Revolution, a series of economic, social and political reforms with the proclaimed intention of transforming Iran into a global power and modernising the nation by nationalising certain industries and granting women suffrage.
A secular Muslim, Mohammad Reza gradually lost support from the Shi'a clergy of Iran as well as the working class, particularly due to his strong policy of modernisation, secularisation, conflict with the traditional class of merchants known as bazaari, relations with Israel, and corruption issues surrounding himself, his family, and the ruling elite. Various additional controversial policies were enacted, including the banning of the communist Tudeh Party, and a general suppression of political dissent by Iran's intelligence agency, SAVAK. According to official statistics, Iran had as many as 2,200 political prisoners in 1978, a number which multiplied rapidly as a result of the revolution.
Several other factors contributed to strong opposition to the Shah among certain groups within Iran, the most significant of which were US and UK support for his regime, clashes with Islamists and increased communist activity. By 1979, political unrest had transformed into a revolution which, on 17 January, forced him to leave Iran. Soon thereafter, the Iranian monarchy was formally abolished, and Iran was declared an Islamic republic led by Ruhollah Khomeini. Facing likely execution should he return to Iran, he died in exile in Egypt, whose President, Anwar Sadat, had granted him asylum. Due to his status as the last de facto Shah of Iran, he is often known as simply "the Shah".
Early life
Born in Tehran to Reza Pahlavi and his second wife, Tadj ol-Molouk, Mohammad Reza was the eldest son of the first Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty, Reza Shah, and the third of his eleven children. He was born with a twin sister, Ashraf Pahlavi. However, Shams, Mohammad Reza, Ashraf, Ali Reza, and their older half-sister, Fatemeh, were born as non-royals, as their father did not become Shah until 1925. Nevertheless, Reza Shah was always convinced that his sudden quirk of good fortune had commenced in 1919 with the birth of his son who was dubbed khoshghadam (bird of good omen). Mohammad Reza described his father in his book Mission for My Country as "one of the most frightening men" he had ever known, depicting Reza Khan as a dominating man with a violent temper. A tough, fierce, and very ambitious soldier who became the first Persian to command the elite Russian-trained Cossack Brigade, Reza Khan liked to kick subordinates in the groin who failed to follow his orders; growing up under his shadow, Mohammed Reza was a deeply scarred and insecure boy who lacked self-confidence. The Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński observed in his book Shah of Shahs that looking at old photographs of Reza Khan and his son, he was struck by how self-confident and assured Reza Khan appeared in his uniform while Mohammad Reza appeared nervous and jittery in his uniform standing next to his father. In the 1930s, Reza Khan was an outspoken admirer of Hitler, through this was less because of any racism and anti-Semitism on his part, but rather because Reza Khan saw Hitler as someone much like himself, namely a man who risen from a very humble background to become a great leader. Reza Khan often impressed on his son his belief that history was made by great men such as himself, and that a real leader is an autocrat. Reza Khan was a huge barrel-chested and muscular man towering at over 6'4, leading his son to liken him to a mountain, and throughout his life, Mohammad Reza was obsessed with height and stature, for example wearing elevator shoes to make him look taller than he really was, often boasting that Iran's highest mountain Mount Demavand was higher than any peak in Europe or Japan, and he was always most attracted to tall women. As Shah, Mohammed Reza constantly disparaged his father in private, calling him a thuggish Cossack who achieved nothing as Shah, and most notably the son almost airbrushed his father out of history during his reign, to the point that the impression was given the House of Pahlavi began its rule in 1941 rather than 1925.
Mohammed Reza's mother, Tadj ol-Molouk was an assertive woman who was also very superstitious, believing that dreams were messages from another world, sacrificed lambs to bring good fortune and scare away evil spirits, and who clad her children with protective amulets to ward the power of the evil eye. Tadj ol-Molouk was the main emotional support to her son, cultivating a belief in him that destiny had chosen him for great things as the soothsayers she consulted had explained her dreams as proving just precisely that. Mohammad Reza grew up surrounded by women as the main influences on him were his mother, his older sister Shams and his twin sister Ashraf, leading the American psychologist Marvin Zonis to conclude it was "...from women, and apparently from women alone" that the future Shah" "received whatever psychological nourishment he was able to get as a child". In Iranian culture, males are considered more valuable than females, and as a boy, Mohammed Reza had his ego constantly stoked as his mother and sisters all spoiled him. Mohammed Reza was very close to his twin sister Ashraf as she noted: "It was this twinship and this relationship with my brother that would nourish and sustain me throughout my childhood...No matter how I would reach out in the years to come-sometimes even desperately-to find an identity and a purpose of my own, I would remain inextricably tied to my brother...always, the center of my existence was, and is, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi". From his mother, Mohammed Reza inherited an almost messianic belief in his own greatness and that God was working in his favour, which explained the often passive and fatalistic attitudes that he displayed as an adult. In 1973, Mohammad Reza told the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci:
"A king who does not need to account to anyone for what he says and does is unavoidably doomed to loneliness. However, I am not entirely alone, because a force others can't perceive accompanies me. My mystical force. Moreover, I receive messages. I have lived with God besides me since I was 5 years old. Since, that is, God sent me those visions".
Mohamed Reza often spoke in public and in private from childhood onward of his belief that God had chosen him for a "divine mission" to transform Iran, as he believed that dreams he had as a child of the Twelve Imams of Shia Islam were all messages from God. In his 1961 book Mission for My Country, Mohammad Reza wrote:
"From the time I was six or seven, I have felt that perhaps there is a supreme being, who is guiding me. I don't know. Sometimes the thought disturbs me because then, I ask myself, what is my own personality, and am I possessed of free will? Still, I often reflect, if I am driven-or perhaps I should say supported-by another force, there must be a reason".
Zonis argued that Mohammad Reza really believed in these claims of divine support as Shia Islam has no tradition of Shahs being favored with messages from God, very few Shahs had ever claimed that their dreams were divine messages, and most people in the West laughed and snickered at Mohammad Reza's claim that his dreams were messages from God. The result of his upbringing between a loving, if possessive and superstitious mother and an overbearing martinet father was to make Mohammad Reza in the words in the words of Zonis "...a young man of low self-esteem who masked his lack of self-confidence, his indecisiveness, his passivity, his dependency and his shyness with masculine bravado, impulsiveness, and arrogance", making him into a person of marked contradictions as the Crown Prince was "both gentle and cruel, withdrawn and active, dependent and assertive, weak and powerful". By the time Mohammad Reza turned 11, his father deferred to the recommendation of Abdolhossein Teymourtash, the Minister of Court, to dispatch his son to Institut Le Rosey, an elite Swiss boarding school, for further studies. On his first day as a student at Le Rosey in September 1931, the Crown Prince antagonized a group of his fellow students who were sitting on a bench in a park outside Le Rosey with his demand that they all stand to attention as he walked past, just as everybody did back in Iran, which led to an American student beating up Mohammed Reza, who swiftly learned to accept that no one would stand to attention wherever he went in Switzerland.As a student, Mohammed Reza excelled at football, but the school records indicate his principle problem as a football player was his "timidity" as the Crown Prince was afraid to take risks. The Crown Prince was educated in French at Le Rosey, and his time there left Mohammad Reza with a lifelong love of all things French. In articles he wrote in French for the student newspaper in 1935 and 1936, Mohammed Reza praised Le Rosey for broadening his mind and introducing him to European civilization. During his time in Switzerland, Mohammad Reza befriended Ernest Perron, the son of a gardener who worked at Le Rosey who become his best friend and "twin". Perron, an eccentric, effeminate man who dressed in a campy style, walked with a limp and who did little to hide his homosexuality was often beaten up by the students until one day Mohammad Reza came to his defense. Perron, who fancied himself a poet introduced Mohammad Reza to French poetry and his influence Chateaubriand and Rabelais "become my favorite French authors". The Crown Prince liked Perron so much that when he returned to Iran in 1936, he brought Perron back with him, installing his best friend in the Marble Palace. Perron lived in Iran until his death in 1961 and as the best friend of Mohammed Reza was a man of considerable behind-the-scenes power. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, a best-selling book was published by the new regime Ernest Perron, the Husband of the Shah of Iran by Mohammad Pourkian alleging a homosexual relationship between the Shah and Perron, which remains the official interpretation in the Islamic Republic right down to this time. Zonis wrote that the book is long on assertions and short on evidence of a homosexual relationship between the two, noted that all of the Shah's courtiers denied that Perron was the Shah's lover, and argued that strong-willed Reza Khan, who was very homophobic, would not had allowed Perron to move into the Marble Palace in 1936 if he believed Perron was his son's lover. The Iranian-American historian Abbas Milani argued Perron was Mohammad Reza's "self-object", a person somebody chooses to act as extension of their personality and to booster their self-esteem. Milani argued given the way in the macho Reza Khan had often attacked his son for a lack of manliness and said he wanted his son to have a "manly education" to teach him some machismo, that for the heterosexual Mohammad Reza having an effeminate man like Perron around eased his doubts about his own masculinity. Mohammad Reza would be the first Iranian prince in line for the throne to be sent abroad to attain a foreign education and remained there for the next four years before returning to obtain his high school diploma in Iran in 1936. After returning to the country, the Crown Prince was registered at the local military academy in Tehran where he remained enrolled until 1938. He was a qualified pilot. Throughout his life, Mohammad Reza was fascinated with flying, was always most happy at the helm of an airplane, any insult to him was always an attempt to "clip my wings", was most interested in the technical details of airplanes, tried very hard to buy Pan American Airways in 1974 as he maintained he was always "needed" to own an airline, invested more money in the Imperial Air Iranian Force than any branch of the armored forces and his favorite uniform was that of the Marshal of the Imperial Iranian Air Force. Zonis wrote that Mohammad Reza's obsession with flying reflected an Icarus complex, also known as "ascensionism", a form of narcissism based on "a craving for unsolicited attention and admiration" and the "wish to overcome gravity, to stand erect, to grow tall...to leap or swing into the air, to climb, to rise, to fly...". Besides for an obsession with transcending gravity by flying, men with an Icarus complex tend to see women merely as sexual objects, which fitted in with Mohammad Reza who was well known as a womanizer who often spoke of women as sexual objects who existed only to gratify him, which led to his celebrated exchange with Fallaci in 1973 who vehemently objected to his attitudes towards women.
Early reign
Deposition of his father
In 1939, Mohammed Reza married Princess Fawzia Fuad of Egypt, the sister of King Farouk of Egypt. The marriage was not a happy one as the Crown Prince was openly unfaithful, often being seen driving around Tehran in one of his expensive cars with one of his girlfriends. Additionally, Mohammed Reza's dominating and extremely possessive mother saw her daughter-in-law as a rival to her son's love, and took to humiliating Princess Fawzia, whose husband sided with his mother. A quiet, shy woman, Fawzia described her marriage as miserable, feeling very much unwanted and unloved by the House of Pahlavi and longed to go back to Egypt. In the midst of World War II in 1941, Nazi Germany began Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union, breaking the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This had a major impact on Iran, which had declared neutrality in the conflict. In the summer of 1941, Soviet and British diplomats passed on numerous messages warning that they regarded the presence of a number of Germans administrating the Iranian state railroads as a threat, implying war if the Germans were not dismissed. Britain wished to ship arms to the Soviet Union via Iranian railroads, and statements from the German managers of the Iranian railroads that they would not co-operate made both Moscow and London insistent that the Germans Reza Khan had hired to run his railroads had to be sacked at once. As his father's closest advisor, the Crown Prince Mohammed Reza did not see fit to raise the issue of a possible Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran, blithely assuring his father that nothing would happen. The Iranian-American historian Abbas Milani wrote about the relationship between the Reza Khan and the Crown Prince: "As his father's now constant companion, the two men consulted on virtually every decision".
Later that year British and Soviet forces occupied Iran in a military invasion, forcing Reza Shah to abdicate. On the second day of the invasion with the Soviet air force bombing Tehran, Mohammed Reza was shocked to see the Iranian military simply collapse with thousands of terrified officers and men all over Tehran taking off their uniforms in order to desert and run away despite the fact they had not seen combat yet. Reflecting the panic, a group of senior Iranian generals called the Crown Prince to receive his blessing to hold a meeting to discuss how best to surrender. When Reza Khan learned of the meeting, he flew into a rage and attacked one of his generals, Ahmad Nakhjavan, striking him with his riding crop, tearing off his medals and was about to personally execute him when his son persuaded him to have him court-martialed instead. The collapse of the Iranian military in the summer of 1941 that his father had worked so hard to build up humiliated his son, who vowed that he would never see Iran defeated like that again, which explained Mohammad Reza's later obsession with military spending. Mohammad Reza replaced Reza Khan on the Peacock Throne on 16 September 1941. The British would have liked to put a Qajar back on the Peacock Throne, but as the House of Qajar was ethnically Turkish, while the House of Pahlavi was Persian and as the principle Qajar claimant to the Peacock Throne was Prince Hamid Mirza, an officer in the Royal Navy who did not speak Farsi, the British had to accept Mohammad Reza as Shah. Subsequent to his succession as king, Iran became a major conduit for British and, later, American aid to the USSR during the war. This massive supply effort became known as the Persian Corridor.
Much of the credit for orchestrating a smooth transition of power from the King to the Crown Prince was due to the efforts of Mohammad Ali Foroughi. Suffering from angina, a frail Foroughi was summoned to the Palace and appointed Prime Minister when Reza Shah feared the end of the Pahlavi dynasty once the Allies invaded Iran in 1941. When Reza Shah sought his assistance to ensure that the Allies would not put an end to the Pahlavi dynasty, Foroughi put aside his adverse personal sentiments for having been politically sidelined since 1935. The Crown Prince confided in amazement to the British Minister that Foroughi "hardly expected any son of Reza Shah to be a civilized human being", but Foroughi successfully derailed thoughts by the Allies to undertake a more drastic change in the political infrastructure of Iran.
A general amnesty was issued two days after Mohammad Reza Shah's accession to the throne on 19 September 1941. All political personalities who had suffered disgrace during his father's reign were rehabilitated, and the forced unveiling policy inaugurated by his father in 1935 was overturned. Despite the young king's enlightened decisions, the British Minister in Tehran reported to London that "the young Shah received a fairly spontaneous welcome on his first public experience, possibly rather [due] to relief at the disappearance of his father than to public affection for himself".
Despite his public professions of admiration in later years, Mohammad Reza had serious misgivings about not only the coarse and roughshod political means adopted by his father, but also his unsophisticated approach to the affairs of the state. The young Shah possessed a decidedly more refined temperament, and among the unsavory developments that "would haunt him when he was king" were the political disgrace brought by his father on Teymourtash; the dismissal of Foroughi by the mid-1930s; and Ali Akbar Davar's decision to commit suicide in 1937. An even more significant decision that cast a long shadow was the disastrous and one-sided agreement his father had negotiated with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) in 1933, one which compromised the country's ability to receive more favourable returns from oil extracted from the country.
The Young Shah
During the late 1940s, Mohammad Reza was widely viewed as a playboy monarch, a man most interested in flying; Italian and German sports cars; horses and women, whom few took seriously. As a regular visitor to the nightclubs of Italy, France and the United Kingdom, Mohammed Reza was linked romantically to several actresses such as Gene Tierney, Yvonne De Carlo and Silvana Mangano. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was the target of at least two unsuccessful assassination attempts. On 4 February 1949, he attended an annual ceremony to commemorate the founding of Tehran University. At the ceremony, Fakhr-Arai fired five shots at him at a range of c. three meters. Only one of the shots hit the king, grazing his cheek. Fakhr-Arai was instantly shot by nearby officers. After an investigation, it was thought that Fakhr-Arai was a member of the Tudeh Party, which was subsequently banned. However, there is evidence that the would-be assassin was not a Tudeh member but a religious fundamentalist member of Fada'iyan-e Islam. The Tudeh was nonetheless blamed and persecuted.
Oil nationalization and the 1953 coup
By the early 1950s, the political crisis brewing in Iran commanded the attention of British and American policy leaders. In 1951, Mohammad Mosaddegh was elected Prime Minister and committed to nationalising the Iranian petroleum industry controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) (as Anglo-Persian Oil Company or APOC had become). Under the leadership of Mosaddegh's democratically elected nationalist movement, the Iranian parliament unanimously voted to nationalise the oil industry—thus shutting out the immensely profitable AIOC, which was a pillar of Britain's economy and provided it political clout in the region.
At the start of the confrontation, American political sympathy was forthcoming from the Truman Administration. In particular, Mosaddegh was buoyed by the advice and counsel he was receiving from American Ambassador in Tehran, Henry F. Grady. However, eventually American decision-makers lost their patience, and by the time a Republican Administration came to office fears that communists were poised to overthrow the government became an all-consuming concern (these concerns were later dismissed as "paranoid" in retrospective commentary on the coup from US government officials). Shortly prior to the 1952 presidential election in the United States, the British government invited CIA officer Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., to London to propose collaboration on a secret plan to force Mosaddegh from office. This would be the first of three "regime change" operations led by Allen Dulles (the other two being the successful CIA-instigated 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état and the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba).
Under the direction of Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., a senior Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer and grandson of former US President Theodore Roosevelt, the American CIA and British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) funded and led a covert operation to depose Mosaddegh with the help of military forces disloyal to the democratically elected government. Referred to as Operation Ajax, the plot hinged on orders signed by Mohammad Reza to dismiss Mosaddegh as prime minister and replace him with General Fazlollah Zahedi – a choice agreed on by the British and Americans. ] Despite the high-level coordination and planning, the coup initially failed, causing the Shah to flee to Baghdad, and then to Rome. During his time in Rome, Mohammad Reza, a British diplomat reported about a monarch who spent most of his time in nightclubs of Rome with Queen Soraya or whoever was his mistress was at the moment: "He hates taking decisions and cannot be relied on to stick to them when taken. He has no moral courage and succumbs easily to fear". To get him to support the coup, his twin sister Princess Ashraf, who was much tougher than him and publicly questioned his manhood several times, visited her brother on 29 July 1953 to berate him into signed a degree dismissed Mossaddegh. After a brief exile in Italy, he returned to Iran, this time through a successful second attempt at a coup. A deposed Mosaddegh was arrested and tried. The king intervened and commuted the sentence to three years, to be followed by life in internal exile. Zahedi was installed to succeed Mosaddegh.
Before the first attempted coup, the American Embassy in Tehran reported that Mosaddegh's popular support remained robust. The Prime Minister requested direct control of the army from the Majlis. Given the situation, alongside the strong personal support of Conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden for covert action, the American government gave the go-ahead to a committee, attended by the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, Kermit Roosevelt, Henderson, and Secretary of Defense Charles Erwin Wilson. Kermit Roosevelt returned to Iran on 13 July 1953, and again on 1 August 1953, in his first meeting with the king. A car picked him up at midnight and drove him to the palace. He lay down on the seat and covered himself with a blanket as guards waved his driver through the gates. The Shah got into the car and Roosevelt explained the mission. The CIA bribed him with $1 million in Iranian currency, which Roosevelt had stored in a large safe – a bulky cache, given the then exchange rate of 1,000 rial to 15 dollars.
The Communists staged massive demonstrations to hijack Mosaddegh's initiatives. The United States actively plotted against him. On 16 August 1953, the right wing of the Army attacked. Armed with an order by the Shah, it appointed General Fazlollah Zahedi as prime minister. A coalition of mobs and retired officers close to the Palace executed this coup d'état. They failed dismally and the Shah fled the country in humiliating haste. Even Ettelaat, the nation's largest daily newspaper, and its pro-Shah publisher, Abbas Masudi, were against him.
During the following two days, the Communists turned against Mosaddegh. Opposition against him grew tremendously. They roamed Tehran, raising red flags and pulling down statues of Reza Shah. This was rejected by conservative clerics like Kashani and National Front leaders like Hossein Makki, who sided with the king. On 18 August 1953, Mosaddegh defended the government against this new attack. Tudeh partisans were clubbed and dispersed.
The Tudeh party had no choice but to accept defeat. In the meantime, according to the CIA plot, Zahedi appealed to the military, and claimed to be the legitimate prime minister and charged Mosaddegh with staging a coup by ignoring the Shah's decree. Zahedi's son Ardeshir acted as the contact between the CIA and his father. On 19 August 1953, pro-Shah partisans – bribed with $100,000 in CIA funds – finally appeared and marched out of south Tehran into the city centre, where others joined in. Gangs with clubs, knives, and rocks controlled the streets, overturning Tudeh trucks and beating up anti-Shah activists. As Roosevelt was congratulating Zahedi in the basement of his hiding place, the new Prime Minister's mobs burst in and carried him upstairs on their shoulders. That evening, Henderson suggested to Ardashir that Mosaddegh be not harmed. Roosevelt gave Zahedi US$900,000 left from Operation Ajax funds.
US actions further solidified sentiments that the West was a meddlesome influence in Iranian politics. In the year 2000, reflecting on this notion, US Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright stated:
"In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. The Eisenhower Administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons; but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs."
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi returned to power, but never extended the elite status of the court to the technocrats and intellectuals who emerged from Iranian and Western universities. Indeed, his system irritated the new classes, for they were barred from partaking in real power.
The Shah asserts himself: from playboy to progressive
In the aftermath of the 1953 coup d'etat, Mohammad Reza was widely viewed as a figurehead monarch, and General Fazlollah Zahedi, the Prime Minister saw himself and was viewed by others as the "strong man" of Iran. Mohammad Reza feared that history would repeat itself, remembering how his father was a general who had seized power in a coup d'état in 1921 and deposed the last Qajar shah in 1925, and his major concern in the years 1953-55 was to neutralize Zahedi. American and British diplomats in their reports back to Washington and London in the 1950s were openly contemptuous of Mohammad Reza's ability to lead, calling the Shah a weak-willed and cowardly man who was incapable of making a decision. The contempt in which the Shah was held by Iranian elites led to a period in the mid 1950s where the elite displayed fissiparous tendencies, feuding amongst themselves now that Mossadegh had been overthrown, which ultimately allowed Mohammad Reza to play off various different factions in the elite to assert himself as the nation's leader. The very fact that Mohammad Reza was considered a coward and something of an airhead turned out be an advantage as the Shah proved to be an adroit politician, playing off the various factions in the elite and the Americans against the British with the aim of being an autocrat in practice as well in theory. Supporters of the banned National Front were persecuted, but in his first important decision as leader, Mohammad Reza intervened to ensure most of the members of the National Front brought to trial such as Mosaddegh himself were not executed as many had expected. Many in the Iranian elite were openly disappointed that Mohammad Reza did not conduct the expected bloody purge and hang Mosaddegh and his followers as they had wanted and expected. In 1954, when 12 university professors issued a public statement criticizing the 1953 coup, all were dismissed from their jobs, but then in the first of his many acts of "magnanimity" towards the National Front, Mohammad Reza intervened to have them restated. Mohammad Reza tried very hard to co-opt the supporters of the National Front by adopting some of their rhetoric and addressed their concerns, for example declaring in several speeches his concerns about the Third World economic conditions and poverty which prevailed in Iran, a matter that had not much interested him before.
Mohammad Reza was determined to copy Mosaddegh who had won popularity by promising broad social-economic reforms and wanted to create a mass powerbase as he did not wish to depend upon the traditional elites, who only wanted him as a legitimizing figurehead. In 1955, Mohammad Reza dismissed General Zahedi as Prime Minister and appointed his archenemy, the technocrat Hossein Ala' as Prime Minister, whom he in turn dismissed in 1957. Starting in 1955, Mohammad Reza began to quietly cultivate left-wing intellectuals, many of whom had supported the National Front and some of whom were associated with the banned Tudeh party, asking them for advice about how best to reform Iran. It was during this period, that Mohammad Reza began to embrace the image of a "progressive" Shah, a reformer who would modernize Iran who attacked in his speeches the "reactionary" and "feudal" social system that was retarding progress, bring about land reform and give women equal rights. Determined to rule as well as reign, it also during the mid 1950s that Mohammad Reza started to promote a state cult around Cyrus the Great, portrayed as a great Shah who had reformed the country and built an empire with obvious parallels to himself. Alongside this change in image, Mohammad Reza started to speak of his desire to "save" Iran, a duty that he had been given by God and promised that under his leadership Iran would reach a Western standard of living in the near-future. During this period, Mohammad Reza sought the support of the ulema, and resumed the traditional policy of persecuting those Iranians who belonged to the Baha'i faith, allowing the chief Baha'i temple in Tehran to be razed in 1955 and bringing in a law banning the Baha'i from gathering together in groups. A British diplomat reported in 1954 that Reza Khan "...must have been spinning in his grave at Rey. To see the arrogance and effrontery of the mullahs once again rampant in the holy city! How the old tyrant must despise the weakness of his son, who allowed these turbulent priests to regain so much of their reactionary influence!". Ultimately, Mohammad Reza fell out with the ulema over his sex life as several ayatollahs condemned the Shah for his private life, saying his "licentiousness" as the womanizing Mohammad Reza was openly faithful to Queen Soraya made him into an unfit Muslim. By this time, the Shah's marriage was under strain as Queen Soraya complained about the power of Mohammad Reza's best friend Ernest Perron whom she called a "shetun" (an insulting Farsi term that translates roughly as a "piece of shit") and a "limping devil". Perron was a man much resented for his power with Mohammad Reza and was often described as a "diabolical" and "mysterious" character, whose position was that of a private secretary, but who was one of the Shah's closest advisors, holding far more power than what his job title suggested. A sign of Mohammad Reza's power came in 1959 when a British company won a contract with the Iranian government that was suddenly cancelled and given to Siemens instead. An investigation by the British embassy soon discovered the reason why; Mohammad Reza wanted to bed the wife of the Siemens sales agent for Iran, and the Siemens agent consented to having wife sleep with the Shah in exchange for winning the contract that he had just lost.
Middle years
The Shah and his Enemies
In 1963, Mohammad Reza launched the White Revolution, a series of far-reaching reforms, which caused much opposition from the ulema. The ulema was enraged that the referendum approving of the White Revolution in 1963 allowed women to vote with the Ayatollah Khomeini railing in his sermons against the fact that women had allowed to vote, saying the fate of Iran should never be allowed to be decided by women. In 1963 and 1964, nation-wide demonstrations against Mohammad Reza's rule took place all over Iran with the center of the unrest being the holy city of Qom. It was students studying to be imams at Qom who were most active in the protests and Ayatollah Khomeini emerged as one of the leaders of the protests, giving sermons calling for the Shah's overthrow. At least 200 people were killed with the police throwing some students to their deaths from high buildings and Khomeini was exiled to Iraq in August 1964.
The second attempt on the Shah's life occurred on 10 April 1965. A soldier shot his way through the Marble Palace. The assassin was killed before he reached the royal quarters. Two civilian guards died protecting the Shah.
According to Vladimir Kuzichkin – a former KGB officer who defected to the SIS – the Shah was also allegedly targeted by the Soviet Union, who tried to use a TV remote control to detonate a bomb-laden Volkswagen Beetle. The TV remote failed to function. A high-ranking Romanian defector Ion Mihai Pacepa also supported this claim, asserting that he had been the target of various assassination attempts by Soviet agents for many years.
Imperial coronation
On 26 October 1967, twenty-six years into his reign as Shah ("King"), he took the ancient title Shāhanshāh ("Emperor" or "King of Kings") in a lavish coronation ceremony held in Tehran. He said that he chose to wait until this moment to assume the title because in his own opinion he "did not deserve it" up until then; he is also recorded as saying that there was "no honour in being Emperor of a poor country" (which he viewed Iran as being until that time).
Imperial symbols
The Pahlavi imperial family employed rich heraldry to symbolize their reign and ancient Persian heritage. The imperial crown image was included in every official state document and symbol—from the badges of the armed forces to paper money and coinage. The crown image was naturally the centerpiece of the imperial standard of the Shah (Shāhanshāh).
The personal standards—for the Shāhanshāh, for his wife the Shahbānū (Shahbanu) and for the eldest son who was his designated successor (Crown Prince)—had a field of pale blue (the traditional colour of the Iranian Imperial Family) at the centre of which was placed the heraldic motif of the individual. The Imperial Iranian national flag was placed in the top left quadrant of each standard. The appropriate Imperial standard was flown beside the national flag when the individual was present.
As part of his efforts to modernize Iran and give the Iranian people an non-Islamic identity, Mohammad Reza quite consciously started to celebrate Iranian history before the Arab conquest with a special focus on the Achaemenid period. At the celebration at Persepolis in 1971, the Shah had an elaborate fireworks show put on together with a sound and light show transmitted by hundreds of hidden loudspeakers and projectors intended to send a dual message; that Iran was still faithful to its ancient traditions and that Iran had transcended its past to become a modern nation, that Iran was not "stuck in the past", but as a nation that embraced modernity had chosen to be faithful to its past. The message was further reinforced the next day when the "Parade of Persian History" was performed at Persepolis when 6, 000 soldiers dressed in the uniforms of every dynasty from the Achaemenids to the Pahlavis marched past Mohammed Reza in a grand parade that many contemporaries remarked "surpassed in sheer spectacle the most florid celluloid imaginations of Hollywood epics". To complete the message, Mohammed Reza finished off the celebrations by opening a brand new museum in Tehran, the Shahyad Aryamehr that was housed in a very modernistic building and attended another parade in the newly opened Aryamehr Stadium, intended to give a message of "compressed time" between antiquity and modernity. A brochure put up by the Celebration Committee explicitly stated the message: "Only when change is extremely rapid, and the past ten years have proved to be so, does the past attain new and unsuspected values worth cultivating", going on to say the celebrations were held because "Iran has began to feel confident of its modernization".
Foreign relations
In 1961, the Francophile Mohammed Reza visited Paris to meet his favourite leader, General Charles de Gaulle of France. Mohammed Reza saw height as the measure of a man and a woman (the Shah had a marked preference for tall women) and the 6'5 de Gaulle was his most admired leader. Mohammed Reza loved to be compared to his "ego ideal" of General de Gaulle, and his courtiers constantly flattered him by calling Iran's de Gaulle. During the French trip, Queen Farah, who shared her husband's love of French culture and language befriended the culture minister André Malraux, who arranged for the exchange of cultural artifacts between French and Iranian museums and art galleries, a policy that remained a key component of Iran's cultural diplomacy until 1979. Many of the legitimizing devices of the regime such as the constant use of referendums were modelled after de Gaulle's regime. Intense Francophiles, Mohammed Reza and Farah preferred to speak French rather than Persian to their children. Mohammed Reza built the Niavaran palace which took up 9, 000 square feet and whose style was a blend of Persian and French architecture.
The Shah's diplomatic foundation was the United States' guarantee that they would protect him, which was what enabled him to stand up to larger enemies. While the arrangement did not preclude other partnerships and treaties, it helped to provide a somewhat stable environment in which Pahlavi could implement his reforms. Another factor guiding Pahlavi in his foreign policy was his wish for financial stability which required strong diplomatic ties. A third factor in his foreign policy was his wish to present Iran as a prosperous and powerful nation; this fuelled his domestic policy of Westernisation and reform. A final component was his promise that communism could be halted at Iran's border if his monarchy was preserved. By 1977, the country's treasury, Pahlavi's autocracy, and his strategic alliances seemed to form a protective layer around Iran.
Although the United States was responsible for putting the Shah in power, he did not always act as a close US ally. In the early 1960s, when a policy planning staff that included William R. Polk encouraged the Shah to spread around Iran's growing revenues more equitably, slow the rush toward militarisation, and open the government to political processes, he became furious and identified Polk as "the principal enemy of his regime." In July 1964, the Shah, Turkish President Cemal Gürsel and Pakistani President Ayub Khan announced in Istanbul the establishment of the Regional Cooperation for Development (RCD) organisation to promote joint transportation and economic projects. It also envisioned Afghanistan's joining some time in the future. The Shah of Iran was the first regional leader to recognise the State of Israel as a de facto state, although when interviewed on 60 Minutes by reporter Mike Wallace, he criticised American Jews for their presumed control over US media and finance. In 1967, the American Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara in a memo to President Lyndon Johnson wrote that "our sales [to Iran] have created about 1.4 million man-years of employment in the US and over $1 billion in profits to American industry over the last five years", which led McNamara to conclude that Iran was an arms market the United States could not do without. When the Americans proved reluctant to sell Mohammad Reza some of the weapons he asked for, in June 1965 the Shah visited Moscow where the Soviets agreed to sell some $110 million dollars worth of weaponry; the threat of Iran pursuing the "Soviet option" caused the Americans to give in on selling Iran weapons. Additionally, British, French and Italian arms firms were willing to sell Iran weapons, thus giving Mohammed Reza considerable leverage in his talks with the Americans, who sometimes worried that the Shah was buying more weapons than what Iran could handle or needed.
Concerning the fate of Bahrain (which Britain had controlled since the 19th century, but which Iran claimed as its own territory) and three small Persian Gulf islands, the Shah negotiated an agreement with the British, which, by means of a public consensus, ultimately led to the independence of Bahrain (against the wishes of Iranian nationalists). In return, Iran took full control of Greater and Lesser Tunbs and Abu Musa in the Strait of Hormuz, three strategically sensitive islands which were claimed by the United Arab Emirates. During this period, the Shah maintained cordial relations with the Persian Gulf states and established close diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia. Mohammad Reza saw Iran as the natural dominant power in the Persian Gulf region, and that no challenges to Iranian hegemony would be tolerated, a claim that was supported by a gargantuan arms buying spree that started in the early 1960s. Mohammad Reza Shah supported the Yemeni royalists against republican forces in the Yemen Civil War (1962–70) and assisted the sultan of Oman in putting down a rebellion in Dhofar (1971). In 1971, Mohammed Reza told a journalist: "World events were such that we were compelled to accept the fact that sea adjoining the Oman Sea-I mean the Indian Ocean-does not recognize borders. As for Iran's security limits-I will not state how many kilometers we have in mind, but any one who is acquainted with geography and the strategic situation, and especially with the potential air and sea forces, know what distances from Chah Bahar this limit can reach".
Relations with Iraq, however, were often difficult due to political instability in the latter country. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was distrustful of both the Socialist government of Abd al-Karim Qasim and the Arab nationalist Baath party. Mohammed Reza resented the internationally border on the Shatt al-Arab river, which in 1937 fixed the border on the low watermark on the Iranian side, giving Iraq control of most of the Shatt al-Arab. On 19 April 1969, Mohammad Reza abrogated the 1937 Iranian-Iraqi treaty over control of the Shatt al-Arab, and as such, Iran ceased paying tolls to Iraq when its ships used the Shatt al-Arab, costing Iraq a lucrative source of income. He justified his move by arguing that almost all river borders all over the world ran along the thalweg (deep channel mark), and by claiming that because most of the ships that used the Shatt al-Arab were Iranian, the 1937 treaty was unfair to Iran. Iraq threatened war over the Iranian move, but when on 24 April 1969 an Iranian tanker escorted by Iranian warships sailed down the Shatt al-Arab without paying tolls, Iraq being the militarily weaker state did nothing. The Iranian abrogation of the 1937 treaty marked the beginning of a period of acute Iraqi-Iranian tension that was to last until the Algiers Accords of 1975. On 7 May 1972, Mohammed Reza told a visiting President Richard Nixon that the Soviet Union was attempting to dominate the Middle East via its close ally Iraq, and to check Iraqi ambitions would also be to check Soviet ambitions. Nixon agreed to support Iranian claims to have the thalweg in the Shatt al-Arab as the border and to generally back Iran in its confrontation with Iraq. Mohammad Reza financed Kurdish separatist rebels in Iraq, and to cover his tracks, armed them with Soviet weapons which Israel had seized from Soviet-backed Arab regimes, and then handed over to Iran at the Shah's behest. The initial operation was a disaster, but the Shah continued attempts to support the rebels and weaken Iraq. Then in 1975, the countries signed the Algiers Accord, which granted Iran equal navigation rights in the Shatt al-Arab river as the thalweg was now the new border, while Mohammad Reza Pahlavi agreed to end his support for Iraqi Kurdish rebels. The Shah also maintained close relations with King Hussein of Jordan, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and King Hassan II of Morocco. Starting in 1970, Mohammad Reza formed an unlikely alliance with the militantly left-wing regime of Colonel Qaddhafi of Libya as both leaders wanted higher oil prices for their nations, leading to Iran and Libya to join forces to press for the "leapfrogging" of oil prices.
The US-Iran relationship grew more contentious when the US became dependent on him to be a stabilising force in the Middle East. In July 1969, President Richard Nixon announced the Nixon Doctrine during a visit to Guam, where he declared the United States would honor its treaty commitments in Asia, but "as far as the problems of international security are concerned...the United States is going to encourage and has a right to expect that this problem will increasingly be handled by, and the responsibility for it taken by, the Asian nations themselves". The particular Asian nation the Nixon Doctrine was aimed at was South Vietnam, but Mohamed Reza seized upon the Nixon Doctrine with its message that Asian nations should be responsible for their own defence to argue that the Americans should sell him arms without limitation, a suggestion that Nixon embraced. A particular dynamic was established in American-Iranian relations from 1969 onward where the Americans gave in to whatever Mohammed Reza wanted as they felt they needed a strong Iran as an pro-American force in the Middle East and could not afford to lose Iran as an ally. The often very anti-American tone of the Iranian press was ignored because Mohammed Reza supported the United States in the Vietnam War and likewise the Americans ignored the Shah's efforts to raise oil prices, despite the fact it cost many American consumers more. After 1969, a process of "reverse leverage" set in when Mohammad Reza began to dictate to the United States as the Americans needed him more than he needed the Americans. The American National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger wrote because of the Vietnam War, it was not politically possible in the 1970s for the United States to fight a major war, writing in 1982: "There was no possibility of assigning any American forces to the Indian Ocean in the midst of the Vietnam War and its attendant trauma. Congress would have tolerated no such commitment; the public would not have supported it. Fortunately, Iran was willing to play this role". As such, the Americans needed Iran as an ally very badly, which allowed Mohammad Reza to dictate to them, an experience that greatly boosted his ego, imposing his will on the world's most powerful nation. When Nixon and Kissinger visited Tehran in May 1972, the Shah convinced them to take a larger role in what had, up to then, been a mainly Israeli-Iranian operation to aid Iraqi Kurds in their struggles against Iraq, against the warnings of the CIA and State Department that the Shah would ultimately betray the Kurds. He did this in March 1975 with the signing of the Algiers Accord that settled Iraqi-Iranian border disputes, an action taken without prior consultation of the US, after which he cut off all aid to the Kurds and prevented the US and Israel from using Iranian territory to provide them assistance.
The Shah also manipulated America's dependence of Middle Eastern oil; although Iran did not participate in the 1973 oil embargo, he purposely increased production in its aftermath to capitalise on the higher prices. In December 1973, only two months after oil prices were raised by 70 percent, he urged OPEC nations to push oil prices even higher, which they agreed to and more than doubled the price. Oil prices increased 470 percent over a 12-month period, which also increased Iran's GDP by 50 percent. Upon personal pleas from President Richard Nixon, the Shah ignored any complaints, claimed the US was importing more oil than any time in the past, and proclaimed that "the industrial world will have to realise that the era of their terrific progress and even more terrific income and wealth based on cheap oil is finished."
Modernization and evolution of government
With Iran's great oil wealth, the Shah became the pre-eminent leader of the Middle East, and self-styled "Guardian" of the Persian Gulf. In 1961, he defended his style of rule, saying "When Iranians learn to behave like Swedes, I will behave like the King of Sweden."
During the last years of his regime, Shah's government became more autocratic. In the words of a US Embassy dispatch, "The Shah's picture is everywhere. The beginning of all film showings in public theaters presents the Shah in various regal poses accompanied by the strains of the National anthem...The monarch also actively extends his influence to all phases of social affairs...there is hardly any activity or vocation which the Shah or members of his family or his closest friends do not have a direct or at least a symbolic involvement. In the past, he had claimed to take a two-party system seriously and declared, "If I were a dictator rather than a constitutional monarch, then I might be tempted to sponsor a single dominant party such as Hitler organised".
However, by 1975 he had abolished the multi-party system of government in favour of a one-party state under the Rastakhiz (Resurrection) Party. The Shah justified his actions by declaring: "We must straighten out Iranians' ranks. To do so, we divide them into two categories: those who believe in Monarchy, the constitution and the Six Bahman Revolution and those who don't...A person who does not enter the new political party and does not believe in the three cardinal principles will have only two choices. He is either an individual who belongs to an illegal organisation, or is related to the outlawed Tudeh Party, or in other words a traitor. Such an individual belongs to an Iranian prison, or if he desires he can leave the country tomorrow, without even paying exit fees; he can go anywhere he likes, because he is not Iranian, he has no nation, and his activities are illegal and punishable according to the law". In addition, the Shah had decreed that all Iranian citizens and the few remaining political parties become part of Rastakhiz.
The Image and Self-Image of Mohammad Reza in the 1970s
By the 1970s, Mohammad Reza was considered one of the world's most successful and able leaders. From 1973 onward, Mohammad Reza had proclaimed his aim as that of the tamaddon-e-bozorg, the "Great Civilization", a turning point not only in Iran's history, but also the history of the entire world, a claim that was taken seriously for a time in the West. On 2 December 1974, the New Yorker magazine published an article by Paul Erdman that was a conjectural future history entitled "The Oil War of 1976: How The Shah Won the World The World as We Knew It Came to an End When the Shah Of Iran Decided to Restore The Glory of Ancient Persia with Western Arms". In 1975, the Vice President of the United States Nelson Rockefeller declared in a speech: "We must take His Imperial Majesty to the United States for a couple of years so that he can teach us how to run a country". In the 1970s, Iran had an economic growth rate equal to that of South Korea, Turkey and Taiwan, and Western journalists all regularly predicated that Iran would become a First World nation within the next generation. In 1976 a pulp novel by Alan Williams was published in the United States under the title A Bullet for the Shah: All They Had To Do Was Kill the World's Most Powerful Man, a title that reveals much about the American people viewed the Shah (the original British title was the more prosaic Shah-Mak). The great wealth generated by Iran's oil encouraged a sense of nationalism at the Imperial Court. The Empress Farah recalled of her days as an university student in 1950s France about being asked where she was from:
"When I told them Iran...the Europeans would recoil in horror as if Iranians were barbarians and loathsome. But after Iran became wealthy under the Shah in the 1970s, Iranians were courted everywhere. Yes, Your Majesty. Of course, Your Majesty. If you please, Your Majesty. Fawning all over us. Greedy sycophants. Then they loved Iranians".
Mohammed Reza shared the Empress's sentiments as Westerners came begging to his court looking for his largess, leading him to remark in 1976:
"Now we are the masters and our former masters are our slaves. Everyday they a beat a track to our door begging for favors. How can they be of assistance? Dow we want arms? Do we want nuclear power stations? We have only to answer, and they will fulfill our wishes".
Because the House of Pahlavi were a parvenu house as Reza Khan had began his career as a private in the Persian Army, rising up to the rank of general, taking power in a coup d'état in 1921, and making himself Shah in 1925, Mohammad Reza was keen to gain the approval of the older royal families of the world, and was prepared to spent large sums of money to gain that social acceptance. Among the royalty that came to Tehran looking for generosity from a Shah known for his lavish spending were King Hussein of Jordan, the former King Constantine II of Greece, King Hassan II of Morocco, the princes and princesses of the Dutch House of Orange and the Italian Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy, whom the Shah had once courted in the 1950s. As an Iranian, Mohammad Reza greatly enjoyed supporting the Greek branch of the House of Glücksburg, knowing the Greeks still celebrated their victories over the Persians in the 5th and 4th centuries BC.
In an era of high oil prices, Iran's economy boomed while the economies of the Western nations after the oil shock of 1973-74 were trapped in stagflation (economic stagnation and inflation), which seemed to prove the greatness of Mohammad Reza both to himself and to the rest of the world. In 1975, both the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and the French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing made pleading phone calls to Mohammad Reza, asking him for loans, which ultimately led the Shah to give a $1 billion US loan to the United Kingdom and another $1 billion US to France. In a TV speech in January 1975 explaining why he was lending Britain a sum equal to $1 billion US dollars, Mohammad Reza declared in his usual grandiose style: "I have known the most dark hours when our country was obliged to pass under the tutelage of foreign powers, among them England. Now I find that England has not only become our friend, our equal, but also the nation to which, should we be able, we will render assistance with pleasure", going on to say that since he "belonged to this [European] world", he did not want Europe to collapse economically. As Britain had often dominated Iran in the past, the change in roles was greatly gratifying to Mohammad Reza.
The courtiers of the Shah's court were devoted to stoking his ego, competing about who could be the most sycophantic with Mohammad Reza being regularly assured he was a greater leader than his much admired General de Gaulle, that democracy was doomed, and based on Rockefeller's speech that the American people wanted Mohammad Reza to be their leader as well as he doing such a great job as Shah of Iran. All of this praise boosted Mohammed Reza's ego, who went from being a merely narcissistic man to a megalomaniac, believing himself a man chosen by Allah Himself to transform Iran and create the "Great Civilization". Befitting all this attention and praise, Mohammad Reza started to make increasing outlandish claims for the "Great Civilization", telling the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci in a 1973 interview:
"Halfway measures, compromises, are unfeasible. In other words, either one is a revolutionary or one demands law and order. One can't be a revolutionary with law and order. And even less with tolerance...when Castro came to power, he killed at least 10, 000 people...in a sense, he was really capable, because he's still in power. So am I, however! And I intend to say there, and to demonstrate that one can achieve a great many things by the use of force, show even that your old socialism is finished. Old, obsolete, finished...I achieve more than the Swedes...Huh! Swedish socialism! It didn't even nationalize forests and water. But I have...my White Revolution...is a new original kind of socialism and...believe me, in Iran we're far more advanced than you and we really have nothing to learn from you".
In an interview with Der Spiegel published on 3 February 1974, Mohammad Reza declared: "I would like you to know that in our case, our actions are not just to take vengeance on the West. As I said, we are going to be a member of your club". On March 31 1974, Mohammad Reza predicated in a press conference what Iran would be like in 1984, saying:
"In the cities, electric cars would replace the gas engines and mass transportation systems would be switched to electricity, monorail over the ground or electric buses. And, furthermore, in the great era of civilization that lies ahead of our people, there will be least two or three holidays a week."
In 1976, Mohammad Reza told the Egyptian journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal in an interview: "I want the standard of living in Iran in ten years' time to be exactly on a level with that in Europe today. In twenty years' time we shall be ahead of the United States". These exaggerated claims of what the White Revolution and the Great Civilization were going to achieve in the near-future alienated many Iranians when the Shah failed to achieve them, and moreover reduced everything down to economic terms, having almost nothing to say about the intellectual, artistic, emotional, or spiritual needs of the Iranian people. Reflecting his need to have Iran seen as "part of the world" (by which Mohammad Reza meant the western world), all through the 1970s he sponsored conferences in Iran at his expense, with for example in a one week in September 1975 the International Literacy Symposium meeting in Persepolis, the International Congress of Philosophy meeting in Mashhad and the International Congress of Mithraic Studies meeting in Tehran. For most ordinary Iranians, struggling with inflation, poverty, air pollution (Iranian cities were infamous in the 1970s as being among the most polluted in the world), having to pay extortion payments to the police who demanded money from even those performing legal jobs such as selling fruits on the street, and daily traffic jams, the Shah's sponsorship of international conferences were just a waste of money. and time. In particular, headlines in the newspapers such as "Under the Patronage of Empress Farah One of the Largest Contemporary Iranology Conferences Will Be Opened in Tehran Today with Empress Farah's Message. Historical Summary Regarding the Cult of Mithra" on 1 September 1975 caused much offense and alarm for the piously Muslim. Mithra was a god worshiped in ancient Iran, and the attention paid to the Mithra cult by the Empress sparked rumors that the Shah was planning on abolishing Islam and restoring the worship of Mithra. Through Mohammad Reza envisioned the "Great Civilization" of a modernized Iran whose standard of living would be higher than those of the United States and at the forefront of modern technology, he did not envision any political change, making it clear that Iran would remain an autocracy.
Achievements
In his "White Revolution" starting in the 1960s, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi made major changes to modernise Iran. He curbed the power of certain ancient elite factions by expropriating large and medium-sized estates for the benefit of more than four million small farmers. He took a number of other major measures, including extending suffrage to women and the participation of workers in factories through shares and other measures. In the 1970s the governmental program of a free of charge nourishment for children at school known as Taghziye Rāyegan (Persian:تغذیه رایگان) was implemented. Under the Shah's reign, the national Iranian income showed an unprecedented rise for an extended period.
Improvement of the educational system was made through new elementary schools and additionally literacy courses were set up in remote villages by the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces, this initiative being called "Sepāh-e Dānesh" (Persian:سپاه دانش) meaning "Army of Knowledge". The Armed Forces were also engaged in infrastructural and other educational projects throughout the country "Sepāh-e Tarvij va Ābādāni" (Persian:سپاه ترویج و آبادانی) as well as in health education and promotion "Sepāh-e Behdāsht" (Persian:سپاه بهداشت). The Shah instituted exams for Islamic theologians to become established clerics. Many Iranian university students were sent to and supported in foreign, especially Western countries and the Indian subcontinent.
In the field of diplomacy, Iran realised and maintained friendly relations with Western and East European countries as well as the state of Israel and China and became, especially through the close friendship with the United States, more and more a hegemonial power in the Persian Gulf region and the Middle East. The suppression of the communist guerrilla movement in the region of Dhofar in Oman with the help of the Iranian army after a formal request by Sultan Qaboos was widely regarded in this context.
As to infrastructural and technological progress, the Shah continued and developed further the policies introduced by his father. As part of his programs, projects in several technologies, such as steel, telecommunications, petrochemical facilities, power plants, dams and the automobile industry may be named. The Aryamehr University of Technology was established as a major new academic institution.
In terms of cultural activities, international cooperations were encouraged and organised, such as the Shiraz Arts Festival. As part of his various financial support programs in the fields of culture and arts, the Shah, along with King Hussein of Jordan donated an amount to the Chinese Muslim Association for the construction of the Taipei Grand Mosque.
Revolution
The spark
The overthrow of the Shah came as a surprise to almost all observers. The first militant anti-Shah demonstrations of a few hundred started in October 1977, after the death of Khomeini's son Mostafa. On 7 January 1978, an article Iran and Red and Black Colonization was published in the newspaper Ettela'at attacking Ruhollah Khomeini, who was in exile in Iraq as a homosexual, a drug addict, a British spy and claimed he was an Indian, not an Iranian. Khomeini's supporters had brought in audio tapes of his sermons, and Mohammad Reza was angry with one sermon, alleging corruption on his part, and decided to hit back with the article, despite the feeling at the court, SAVAK and Ettela'at editors that the article was an unnecessary provocation that was going to cause trouble. The next day, protests against the article began in the holy city of Qom, a traditional center of opposition to the House of Pahlavi.
The cancer patient
From the spring of 1978, Mohammad Reza who was dying of cancer stopped appearing in public with the official explanation being he was suffering from a "persistent cold". In May 1978, Mohammad Reza suddenly cancelled a long planned trip to Hungary and Bulgaria and disappeared from view. Mohammad Reza spent the entire summer of 1978 by his resort on the Caspian Sea, where he was treated for his cancer by two of France's most able doctors, Dr. Jean Bernard and Dr. Georges Flandrin. To try to stop his cancer, Dr. Bernard and Dr. Flandrin had Mohammad Reza take prednisone, an anti-cancer drug that damages the brain by slowing one's reaction time and ability to think clearly while inducing depression. As the country was swept up with nation-wide protests and strikes, the court found it impossible to get decisions from Mohammad Reza, who in his prednisone induced mental paralysis was utterly passive and indecisive, content to spend hours listlessly staring into space as he rested by the Caspian Sea while the revolution raged. The seclusion of the Shah who normally loved the limelight sparked all sorts of rumors all over Iran about the state of his health and damaged the imperial mystique as the man who had been presented as a god-like ruler was revealed to be fallible after all. An attempt in July 1978 to deny the rumors of Mohammad Reza's declining health by publishing a crudely doctored photograph in the newspapers of the Emperor and Empress walking on the beach on the Caspian Sea instead further damaged the imperial mystique as most people realized that the two beach clogs on either side of the Shah were merely substitutes inserted for his airbrushed aides who were holding him up as he now had difficulty walking by himself. In June 1978, Mohammad Reza's French doctors first revealed to the French government how serious his cancer was, and in September 1978 the French government informed the American government that the Shah was dying of cancer, who until then had no idea that Mohammad Reza had been diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1974. Mohammad Reza had created a very centralized system in he was the key decision-maker on all issues, and as the Iranian-American historian Abbas Milani noted when the Shah was mentally crippled in the summer of 1978 owning to his tendency to be indecisive when faced with a crisis, which combined with his cancer and the effects of the drugs like prednisone made his mood "...increasingly volatile and unpredictable. One day, he was full of verve and optimism and the next day or hour he fell into a catatonic stupor", bringing the entire government to a halt. Milani wrote the Shah was in 1978 "beset with depression, indecision and paralysis, and his indecision led to the immobilization of the entire system". The Empress Farah grew so frustrated with her husband that she suggested numerous times that he leave Iran for medical treatment and appoint her regent, saying she would handle the crisis and save the House of Pahlavi, an idea that the macho Mohammad Reza vetoed saying he did not Farah to be "Joan of Arce" and it was too humiliating for him as a man to flee Iran and leave a woman in charge.
Black Friday
The Shah-centered command structure of the Iranian military, and the lack of training to confront civil unrest, was marked by disaster and bloodshed. There were several instances where army units had opened fire, the most notorious one being the events of 8 September 1978. On this day, which later became known as "Black Friday", thousands had gathered in Tehran's Jaleh Square for a religious demonstration. With people refusing to recognise martial law, the soldiers opened fire, killing and seriously injuring a large number of people. Black Friday played a crucial role in further radicalising the protest movement. This massacre seriously reduced the chances for reconciliation to the level that Black Friday is referred to as "point of no return" for the revolution. On 2 October 1978, the Shah declared and granted an amnesty to dissidents living abroad, including Ayatollah Khomeini.
The regime falls apart
By October 1978, strikes were paralysing the country, and in early December a "total of 6 to 9 million"—more than 10% of the country—marched against the Shah throughout Iran. In October 1978, after flying over a huge demonstration in Tehran in his helicopter, Mohammad Reza accused the British ambassador Sir Anthony Parsons and the American ambassador William H. Sullivan of organizing the demonstrations, screaming he was being "betrayed" by the United Kingdom and the United States. Most Iranians did not understand the idea of editorial independence, and the fact that BBC's journalists who tended very sympathetic towards the revolution was viewed by most Iranians, including Mohammad Reza as a sign that Britain was supporting the revolution, which turned out to be crucial as the Iranian people had a very exaggerated idea about Britain's capacity to "direct events" in Iran. In a subsequent internal inquiry, the BBC found many of its more left-wing journalists disliked Mohammad Reza as a "reactionary" force, and sympathized with a revolution seen as "progressive". Mohammad Reza spent much of his time working out various conspiracy theories about who was behind the revolution with his favorite candidates being some combination of Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union. Milani wrote that Mohamad Reza's view of the revolution as a gigantic conspiracy organized by foreign powers suggested that there was nothing wrong with Iran, and the millions of people demonstrating against him were just dupes being used by foreigners, a viewpoint that did not encourage concessions and reforms until it was too late. For much of 1978, Mohammad Reza saw his enemies as "Marxist" revolutionaries rather than Islamists. In October 1978, the oil workers went on strike, shutting down the oil industry and with it, Mohammad Reza's principle source of revenue. The Iranian military had no plans for such an event, and the strike pushed the regime to the economic brink.
The revolution had attracted support from a broad coaltion ranging from secular, left-wing nationalists to Islamists on the right, and Khomeini who was now based in Paris chose to present himself a moderate able to rally together all of the different factions leading the revolution. On 5 November 1978, Mohammad Reza went on Iranian television to say "I have heard the voice of your revolution" and to promise major reforms. In a major concession to the opposition, on 7 November 1978, Mohammad Reza freed many political prisoners while ordering the arrest of the former prime minister Amir-Abbas Hoveyda and several senior officials of his regime, a move that both emboldened his opponents and demoralized his supporters. On 21 November 1978, the Treasury Secretary of the United States Michael Blumenthal visited Tehran to meet Mohammad Reza and reported back to President Carter: "This man is a ghost" as by now the ravages of his cancer could not longer be concealed. In late December 1978, the Shah learned many of his generals were making overtures to the revolutionary leaders and the loyalty of the military could not longer be counted upon. In a sign of desperation, Mohammad Reza reached in December 1978 out to the National Front, asking if one of their leaders were willing to become Prime Minister.
The End of the Peacock Throne
On 16 January 1979, Mohammad Reza made a contract with Farboud and left Iran at the behest of Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar (a longtime opposition leader himself), who sought to calm the situation. As Mohammad Reza boarded the plane to take him out of Iran, many of the Imperial Guardsmen wept while Bakhtiar did little to hide his distain and dislike for the Shah. Spontaneous attacks by members of the public on statues of the Pahlavis followed, and "within hours, almost every sign of the Pahlavi dynasty" was destroyed. Bakhtiar dissolved SAVAK, freed all political prisoners, and allowed Ayatollah Khomeini to return to Iran after years in exile. He asked Khomeini to create a Vatican-like state in Qom, promised free elections, and called upon the opposition to help preserve the constitution, proposing a "national unity" government including Khomeini's followers. Khomeini rejected Bakhtiar's demands and appointed his own interim government, with Mehdi Bazargan as prime minister, stating that "I will appoint a state. I will act against this government. With the nation's support, I will appoint a state." In February, pro-Khomeini revolutionary guerrilla and rebel soldiers gained the upper hand in street fighting, and the military announced its neutrality. On the evening of 11 February, the dissolution of the monarchy was complete.
Criticism of reign and causes of his overthrow
At the Federation of American Scientists, John Pike writes:
In 1978 the deepening opposition to the Shah erupted in widespread demonstrations and rioting. Recognising that even this level of violence had failed to crush the rebellion, the Shah abdicated the Peacock Throne and fled Iran on 16 January 1979. Despite decades of pervasive surveillance by SAVAK, working closely with CIA, the extent of public opposition to the Shah, and his sudden departure, came as a considerable surprise to the US intelligence community and national leadership. As late as 28 September 1978 the US Defense Intelligence Agency reported that the Shah "is expected to remain actively in power over the next ten years."
Explanations for why Mohammad Reza was overthrown include his status as a dictator put in place by a non-Muslim Western power, the United States, whose foreign culture was seen as influencing that of Iran. Additional contributing factors included reports of oppression, brutality, corruption, and extravagance. Basic functional failures of the regime have also been blamed – economic bottlenecks, shortages and inflation; the regime's over-ambitious economic program; the failure of its security forces to deal with protest and demonstration; the overly centralised royal power structure. International policies pursued by the Shah in order to increase national income by remarkable increases of the price of oil through his leading role in the Organization of the Oil Producing Countries (OPEC) have been stressed as a major cause for a shift of Western interests and priorities and for an actual reduction of their support for him reflected in a critical position of Western politicians and media, especially of the administration of US President Jimmy Carter, regarding the question of human rights in Iran, and in strengthened economic ties between the United States of America and Saudi Arabia in the 1970s.
In October 1971, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi celebrated the twenty-five-hundredth anniversary of the Iranian monarchy. The New York Times reported that $100 million was spent. Next to the ancient ruins of Persepolis, the Shah gave orders to build a tent city covering 160 acres (0.65 km2), studded with three huge royal tents and fifty-nine lesser ones arranged in a star-shaped design. French chefs from Maxim's of Paris prepared breast of peacock for royalty and dignitaries around the world, the buildings were decorated by Maison Jansen (the same firm that helped Jacqueline Kennedy redecorate the White House), the guests ate off Limoges porcelain and drank from Baccarat crystal glasses. This became a major scandal as the contrast between the dazzling elegance of celebration and the misery of the nearby villages was so dramatic that no one could ignore it. Months before the festivities, university students went on strike in protest. Indeed, the cost was so sufficiently impressive that the Shah forbade his associates to discuss the actual figures. However he and his supporters argued that the celebrations opened new investments in Iran, improved relationships with the other leaders and nations of the world, and provided greater recognition of Iran.
Other actions that are thought to have contributed to his downfall include antagonising formerly apolitical Iranians — especially merchants of the bazaars — with the creation in 1975 of a single party political monopoly (the Rastakhiz Party), with compulsory membership and dues, and general aggressive interference in the political, economic, and religious concerns of people's lives; and the 1976 change from an Islamic calendar to an Imperial calendar, marking the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus as the first day, instead of the migration of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina. This supposed date was designed that the year 2500 would fall on 1941, the year when his own reign started. Overnight, the year changed from 1355 to 2535. During the extravagant festivities to celebrate the 2500th anniversary, the Shah was quoted as saying at Cyrus's tomb: "Rest in peace, Cyrus, for we are awake".
It has been argued that the White Revolution was "shoddily planned and haphazardly carried out", upsetting the wealthy while not going far enough to provide for the poor or offer greater political freedom. In 1974, Mohammad Reza learned from his French doctors that he was suffering from the cancer that was kill him six years later. Through this was a carefully guarded secret that not even the Americans were aware of (as late as 1977 the CIA submitted a report to President Carter describing the Shah as being in "robust health"), the knowledge of his impeding death left Mohammad Reza depressed and passive in his last years, a man no longer capable of acting.
Some achievements of the Shah—such as broadened education—had unintended consequences. While school attendance rose (by 1966 the school attendance of urban seven- to fourteen-year-olds was estimated at 75.8%), Iran's labor market could not absorb a high number of educated youth. In 1966, high school graduates had "a higher rate of unemployment than did the illiterate", and educated unemployed often supported the revolution.
Exile
During his second exile, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi traveled from country to country seeking what he hoped would be temporary residence. First he flew to Aswan, Egypt, where he received a warm and gracious welcome from President Anwar El-Sadat. He later lived in Marrakesh, Morocco as a guest of King Hassan II. Mohammad Reza loved to support royalty during his time as Shah and one of those who benefitted had been Hassan, who received an interest-free loan of $110 million US dollars from his friend Mohammad Reza. Mohammad Reza expected Hassan to return the favor, but he soon learned Hassan had other motives. Richard Parker, the American ambassador to Morocco reported "The Moroccans believed the Shah was worth about $2 billion dollars, and they wanted to take their share of the loot". After leaving Morocco, Mohammad Reza lived in Paradise Island, in the Bahamas, and in Cuernavaca, Mexico, near Mexico City, as a guest of José López Portillo. Richard Nixon, the former president, visited the Shah in summer 1979 in Mexico. An American doctor, Dr. Benjamin Kean who examined Mohammad Reza in Cuernavaca later wrote:
"There was no longer any doubt. The atmosphere had changed completely. The Shah's appearance was stunningly worse...Clearly he had obstructive jaundice. The odds favored gallstones, since his fever, chills and abdominal distress suggested an infection of the biliary tract. Also he had a history of indigestion. Besides the probable obstruction-he now had been deeply jaundiced for six to eight weeks-he was emaciated and suffering from hard tumor nodes in the neck and a swollen spleen, signs that his cancer was worsening, and he had severe anemia and very low white blood counts".
The Shah suffered from gallstones that would require prompt surgery. He was offered treatment in Switzerland, but insisted on treatment in the United States. President Carter did not wish to admit Mohammad Reza to the United States, but came under pressure from many quarters with Dr. Kissinger phoning Carter to say he would not endorse the SALT II treaty that Carter had just signed with the Soviet Union unless the former Shah was allowed into the United States, promoting him more than once to hang his phone in rage in the Oval Office and shout "Fuck the Shah!". As many Republicans were attacking the SALT II treaty as an American give-away to the Soviet Union, Carter was anxious to have the endorsement of a Republican elder statesmen like Dr. Kissinger to fend off this criticism. Mohammad Reza had decided not to tell his Mexican doctors he had cancer, and the Mexican doctors had misdiagnosed his illness as malaria, giving him a regime of anti-malarial drugs that did nothing to treat his cancer, which caused his health to go into rapid decline as he lost 30 pounds. In September 1979, a doctor sent by David Rockefeller reported to the State Department Mohammad Reza needed to come to the United Stater for medical treatment, an assessment not shared by Dr. Kean who stated that the proper medical equipment for treating Mohammad Reza's cancer could be found in Mexico and the only problem was the former Shah's unwillingness to tell the Mexicans he had cancer. The State Department warned not to admit the former Shah into the US, saying it was likely that the Iranian regime would seize American embassy in Tehran if that occurred. Milani suggested there was a possible conflict of interest on the part of Rockefeller, noting the Chase Manhattan bank had given Iran a $500 million loan under questionable conditions in 1978 (several lawyers refused to endorse the loan) which placed the money in an account with Chase Manhttan, that the new Islamic republic had making "substantial withdrawals" from its account with Chase Manhattan, and that Rockefeller wanted Mohammad Reza in the US, knowing full well it was likely to cause the Iranians to storm the US embassy, which in turn would cause the US government to freeze Iranian financial assets in America, such as the Iranian account at Chase Manhattan.
On 22 October 1979, President Jimmy Carter reluctantly allowed the Shah into the United States to undergo surgical treatment at the New York–Weill Cornell Medical Hospital. While in Cornell Medical Center, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi used the name "David D. Newsom", Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs at that time, as his temporary code name, without Newsom's knowledge. The Shah was taken later by U.S. Air Force jet to Kelly Air Force Base in Texas and from there to Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base. It was anticipated that his stay in the United States would be short; however, surgical complications ensued, which required six weeks of confinement in the hospital before he recovered. His prolonged stay in the United States was extremely unpopular with the revolutionary movement in Iran, which still resented the United States' overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddegh and the years of support for the Shah's rule. The Iranian government demanded his return to Iran, but he stayed in the hospital. Mohammad Reza's time in New York was highly uncomfortable as he was under a heavy security detail as everyday Iranian students studying in the United States gathered outside his hospital to shout "Death to the Shah!", a chorus that Mohammad Reza heard. The former Shah was obsessed with watching news from Iran, and was greatly upset at the new order being imposed by the Islamic Republic. Mohammad Reza could not longer walk by this time, and for security reasons had to moved in his wheelchair under the cover of darkness when he went to the hospital while covered in a blanket as the chances of his assassination were too great.
There are claims that this resulted in the storming of the US Embassy in Tehran and the kidnapping of American diplomats, military personnel, and intelligence officers, which soon became known as the Iran hostage crisis. In the Shah's memoir, Answer to History, he claimed that the United States never provided him any kind of health care and asked him to leave the country. From the time of the storming of the American embassy in Tehran and the taking of the embassy staff as hostages, Mohammad Reza's presence in the United States was viewed by the Carter administration as a handicap for the release of the hostages and as Zonis noted "...he was, in effect, expelled from the country".
He left the United States on 15 December 1979 and lived for a short time in the Isla Contadora in Panama. This caused riots by Panamanians who objected to the Shah being in their country. General Omar Torrijos, the dictator of Panama kept Mohammad Reza as a virtual prisoner at the Paitilla Medical Center, an hospital condemned by the former Shah's American doctors as "an inadequate and poorly staffed hospital" and in order to hasten his death allowed only Panamanian doctors to treat his cancer. General Torrijos, a populist left-winger had only taken in Mohammad Reza under heavy American pressure, and he made no secret of his dislike of Mohammad Reza, whom he called after meeting him "the saddest man he had ever met". When he first met Mohammad Reza, Torrijos taunted him by telling him "it must be hard to fall off the Peacock Throne into Contadora" and called him a "chupon", a Spanish term meaning an orange that has all the juice squeezed out of it, which is slang for someone who is finished. Torrijos added to Mohammad Reza's misery by making his chief bodyguard a militantly Marxist sociology professor who spent much time lecturing Mohammad Reza how he deserved his fate because he been a tool of the "American imperialism" that was oppressing the Third World, and charged Mohammad Reza a monthly rent of $21, 000 US dollars, made him pay for all his food and the wages of the 200 National Guardsmen assigned as his bodyguards. The new government in Iran still demanded his and his wife's immediate extradition to Tehran. A short time after Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's arrival in Panama, an Iranian ambassador was dispatched to the Central American nation carrying a 450-page extradition request. That official appeal alarmed both the Shah and his advisors. Whether the Panamanian government would have complied is a matter of speculation among historians. The only consolation for Mohammad Reza during his time in Panama were letters from Princess Soraya saying that she still loved him and wanted to see him one last time before he died. Mohammad Reza in his letters he sent to Paris declared he wanted to see Soraya one last time as well, but said that the Empress Farah could not be present, which presented some complications as Farah was continually by his deathbed.
After that event, the Shah again sought the support of Egyptian president Anwar El-Sadat, who renewed his offer of permanent asylum in Egypt to the ailing monarch. He returned to Egypt in March 1980, where he received urgent medical treatment, including a splenectomy performed by Michael DeBakey. On 28 March 1980, Mohammad Reza's French and American doctors finally performed an operation meant to have been performed in the fall of 1979. Dr. Kean recalled:
"The operation went beautifully. That night, however, was terrible. The medical team-American, Egyptian, French-was in the pathology lab. The focus was on the Shah's cancerous spleen, grotesquely swollen to 20 times normal. It was one-foot long, literally the size of a football. But I was drawn to the liver tissues that had also been removed. The liver was speckled with white. Malignancy. The cancer had hit the liver. The Shah would soon die...The tragedy is that a man who should have had the best and easiest medical care had, in many respects, the worse".
By that point, it was arranged by President Sadat that Soraya would quietly visit Mohammad Reza on his deathbed in Egypt without Farah present, but Milani noted the two were "star-crossed lovers" and Mohammad Reza died before Soraya could come to Egypt from her home in Paris.
Death
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi died from complications of Waldenström's macroglobulinemia (a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma) on 27 July 1980, aged 60. Egyptian President Sadat gave the Shah a state funeral. In addition to members of the Pahlavi family, Anwar Sadat, Richard Nixon and Constantine II of Greece attended the funeral ceremony in Cairo.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is buried in the Al Rifa'i Mosque in Cairo, a mosque of great symbolic importance. The last royal rulers of two monarchies are buried there, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran and King Farouk of Egypt, his former brother-in-law. The tombs lie to the left of the entrance. Years earlier, his father and predecessor, Reza Shah had also initially been buried at the Al Rifa'i Mosque.
Legacy
In 1969, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi sent one of 73 Apollo 11 Goodwill Messages to NASA for the historic first lunar landing. The message still rests on the lunar surface today. He stated in part, "we pray the Almighty God to guide mankind towards ever increasing success in the establishment of culture, knowledge and human civilisation". The Apollo 11 crew visited Mohammad Reza Shah during a world tour.
Shortly after his overthrow, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi wrote an autobiographical memoir Réponse à l'histoire (Answer to History). It was translated from the original French into English, Persian (Pasokh be Tarikh), and other languages. However, by the time of its publication, the Shah had already died. The book is his personal account of his reign and accomplishments, as well as his perspective on issues related to the Iranian Revolution and Western foreign policy toward Iran. He places some of the blame for the wrongdoings of SAVAK, and the failures of various democratic and social reforms (particularly through the White Revolution), upon Amir Abbas Hoveyda and his administration.
Hussein-Ali Montazeri, who was once the designated successor to Ruhollah Khomeini, said that the Shah did not kill even 10 percent of what Ruhollah Khomeini's regime had killed.
Recently, the Shah's reputation has experienced something of a revival in Iran, with some people looking back on his era as a time when Iran was more prosperous and the government less oppressive. Journalist Afshin Molavi reported that some members of the uneducated poor—traditionally core supporters of the revolution that overthrew the Shah—were making remarks such as, "God bless the Shah's soul, the economy was better then", and found that "books about the former Shah (even censored ones) sell briskly", while "books of the Rightly Guided Path sit idle". On 28 October 2016, thousands of people in Iran celebrating Cyrus Day, chanted slogans in support of him, and against the current Iran regime and Arabs, and many were subsequently arrested.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi published several books in the course of his kingship and two later works after his downfall. Among others, these include:
- Mission for My Country (1960)
- The White Revolution (1967)
- Toward the Great Civilisation. Persian version: Imperial 2536 (1977); English version (1994).
- Answer to History (1980)
- The Shah's Story (1980)
Women's rights
Under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi's father, the government supported advancements by women against child marriage, polygamy, exclusion from public society, and education segregation. However, independent feminist political groups were shut down and forcibly integrated into one state-created institution, which maintained many paternalistic views. Despite substantial opposition from Shiite religious jurists, the Iranian feminist movement, led by activists such as Fatemah Sayyeh, achieved further advancement under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. His regime's changes focused on the civil sphere, and private-oriented family law remained restrictive, although the 1967 and 1975 Family Protection Laws attempted to reform this trend. During the reign of Shah, women gained the right to freely choose any profession, for example first female Iranian ministers such as Farrokhroo Parsa and judges such as Shirin Ebadi, while Mehrangiz Dowlatshahi became the first female cabinet member and ambassador of Iran.
Marriages and children
Pahlavi married three times:
Fawzia of Egypt
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk suggested to Reza Shah during the latter's visit to Turkey that a marriage between the Iranian and Egyptian courts would be beneficial for the two countries and their dynasties. In line with this suggestion, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Princess Fawzia married. Dilawar Princess Fawzia of Egypt (5 November 1921 – 2 July 2013), a daughter of King Fuad I of Egypt and Nazli Sabri, was a sister of King Farouk I of Egypt. They married on 15 March 1939 in the Abdeen Palace in Cairo. Reza Shah did not participate in the ceremony. They were divorced in 1945 (Egyptian divorce) and in 1948 (Iranian divorce). Together they had one child, a daughter, HIH Princess Shahnaz Pahlavi (born 27 October 1940).
Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiari
His second wife was Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiari (22 June 1932 – 26 October 2001), a half-German half-Iranian woman and the only daughter of Khalil Esfandiary, Iranian Ambassador to West Germany, and his wife, the former Eva Karl. They married on 12 February 1951, when Soraya was 18 according to the official announcement; however, it was rumoured that she was actually 16, the Shah being 32. As a child she was tutored and brought up by Frau Mantel, and hence lacked proper knowledge of Iran, as she herself admits in her personal memoirs, stating, "I was a dunce—I knew next to nothing of the geography, the legends of my country, nothing of its history, nothing of Muslim religion." The Shah and Soraya's controversial marriage ended in 1958 when it became apparent that, even through help from medical doctors, she could not bear children. Soraya later told the New York Times that the Shah had no choice but to divorce her, and that he was heavy-hearted about the decision.
However, even after the marriage, it is reported that the Shah still had great love for Soraya, and it is reported that they met several times after their divorce and that she lived her post-divorce life comfortably as a wealthy lady, even though she never remarried; being paid a monthly salary of about $7,000 from Iran. Following her death in 2001 at the age of 69 in Paris, an auction of the possessions included a three-million-dollar Paris estate, a 22.37 carat diamond ring and a 1958 Rolls-Royce.
Pahlavi subsequently indicated his interest in marrying Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy, a daughter of the deposed Italian king, Umberto II. Pope John XXIII reportedly vetoed the suggestion. In an editorial about the rumors surrounding the marriage of a "Muslim sovereign and a Catholic princess", the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, considered the match "a grave danger", especially considering that under the 1917 Code of Canon Law a Roman Catholic who married a divorced person would be automatically, and could be formally, excommunicated.
Farah Diba
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's third and final wife was Farah Diba (born 14 October 1938), the only child of Sohrab Diba, a captain in the Imperial Iranian Army (son of an Iranian ambassador to the Romanov Court in St. Petersburg, Russia), and his wife, the former Farideh Ghotbi. They were married in 1959, and Queen Farah was crowned Shahbanu, or Empress, a title created specially for her in 1967. Previous royal consorts had been known as "Malakeh" (Arabic: Malika), or Queen. The couple remained together for twenty one years, until the Shah's death. Farah Diba bore him four children:
- HIH Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi (born 31 October 1960), heir to the now defunct Iranian throne. Reza Pahlavi is the founder and leader of National Council of Iran, a government in exile of Iran.
- HIH Princess Farahnaz Pahlavi (born 12 March 1963)
- HIH Prince Ali-Reza Pahlavi (28 April 1966 – 4 January 2011)
- HIH Princess Leila Pahlavi (27 March 1970 – 10 June 2001)
- ^ Gholam Reza Afkhami (27 October 2008). The Life and Times of the Shah. University of California Press. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-520-25328-5. Retrieved 4 November 2012.
- Abbas Milani, The Shah (2011), page 156
- Abbas Milani, The Shah (2011), page 155
- "Soraya Arrives for US Holiday" (PDF). The New York Times. 23 April 1958. p. 35. Retrieved 23 March 2007.
- "Princess Soraya, 69, Shah's Wife Whom He Shed for Lack of Heir". The New York Times. 26 October 2001. Retrieved 31 October 2012.
- Abbas Milani, The Shah (2011), page 215
- Abbas Milani, The Shah (2011), p. 214
- Paul Hofmann, Pope Bans Marriage of Princess to Shah, The New York Times, 24 February 1959, p. 1.
Wealth
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi inherited the wealth built by his father Reza Shah who preceded him as king of Iran and became known as the richest person in Iran during his reign, with his wealth estimated to be higher than 600 million rials and including vast amounts of land and numerous large estates especially in the province of Mazandaran obtained usually at a fraction of its real price. Reza Shah, facing criticism for his wealth, decided to pass on all of his land and wealth to his eldest son Mohammad Reza in exchange for a sugar cube, known in Iran as habbe kardan. However shortly after obtaining the wealth Mohammad Reza was ordered by his father and then king to transfer a million tooman or 500,000 dollars to each of his siblings. By 1958 it was estimated that the companies possessed by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had a value of $157 million (in 1958 USD) with an estimated additional 100 million saved outside Iran. The rumours and constant talk of his, and his family's corruption greatly damaged his reputation and led to the creation of the Pahlavi Foundation in the same year and the return to the people of some 2,000 villages inherited by his father, often at very low and discount prices. It can be argued, however, that this was too little too late, as the royal family's wealth and corruption can be seen as one of the factors behind the Iranian revolution in 1979. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi's wealth was even considerable during his time in exile. While staying in the Bahamas he offered to purchase the island that he was staying on for $425 million (in 1979 USD), however his offer was rejected by the Bahamas claiming that the island was worth far more. On 17 October 1979, again in exile and perhaps knowing the gravity of his illness, he split up his wealth between his family members, giving 20% to Farah, 20% to his eldest son Reza, 15% to Farahnaz, 15% to Leila, 20% to his younger son, in addition to giving 8% to Shahnaz and 2% to his granddaughter Mahnaz Zahedi.
On 14 January 1979, an article titled "Little pain expected in exile for Shah" by The Spokesman Review newspaper found that the Pahlavi dynasty had amassed one of the largest private fortunes in the world; estimated then at well over $1 billion. A list submitted to the ministry of justice in protest of the royal family's penetration of every corner of the nation's economy detailed that the then Pahlavi dynasty dominated the economy of Iran. The list showed that the Pahlavi dynasty had interests in, amongst other things, 17 banks and insurance companies, including a 90 percent ownership in the nation's third-largest insurance company, 25 metal enterprises, 8 mining companies, 10 building materials companies, including 25 percent of the largest cement company, 45 construction companies, 43 food companies, and 26 enterprises in trade or commerce, including a share of ownership in almost every major hotel in Iran. According to another source, the Pahlavis owned 70 percent of the then hotel capacity in the country. Much of the Pahlavi dynasty fortune was required to be transferred to the "Pahlavi Foundation", a charitable organisation and the families' trust. The organisation refuses to give any value of its assets or an annual income but a published book in Iran by Robert Graham, a British journalist, calculates that on the basis of its known holdings, the then foundation assets totalled over $2.8 billion.
The Pahlavi foundation was said to have owned in Iran four leading hotels: the Hilton, the Vanak, the Evin and the Darband. The foundation gained international attention for purchasing the DePinna building on Fifth Avenue, New York, valued in 1975 at $14.5 million. Such investment in a foreign market by the Pahlavi foundation gained media attention because in order to do such foreign investment the foundation had to register as an American charitable foundation with the declared aim of using the rental to pay for Iranian students studying in America. The advantage of such charitable status was that the US authorities could not investigate the books of the Pahlavi Foundation in Iran.
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi was also known for his interest in cars and had a personal collection of 140 classic and sports cars including a Mercedes-Benz 500K Autobahn cruiser, one of only six ever made.
Honours
National dynastic honours
House of Pahlavi: 6th Sovereign Knight Grand Cordon of the Order of Zolfaghar- House of Pahlavi: 2nd Sovereign Knight Grand Cordon with Collar of the Order of Pahlavi
- House of Pahlavi: 6th Sovereign Sardar Knight Grand Cordon of the Order of Aqdas
- House of Pahlavi: 1st Sovereign Knight of the Order of the Light of the Aryans
- House of Pahlavi: 6th Sovereign of the Order of Aftab
- House of Pahlavi: 8th Sovereign Knight Grand Cordon of the Order of the Lion and the Sun
- House of Pahlavi: 3rd Sovereign Knight Grand Cordon with Collar of the Order of the Crown
- House of Pahlavi: 1st Sovereign of the Order of the Pleiades
- House of Pahlavi: 2nd Sovereign Knight Grand Cordon of the Order of Homayoun
- House of Pahlavi: 2nd Sovereign Knight Grand Cordon of the Order of the Red Lion and the Sun
- House of Pahlavi: 2nd Sovereign Knight Commander of the Order of Glory, 1st Class
- House of Pahlavi: 2nd Sovereign Knight Commander of the Order of Service, 1st Class
- House of Pahlavi: 2nd Sovereign Knight Commander of the Order of the Hero, 1st Class
- House of Pahlavi: 2nd Sovereign Knight Commander of the Military Order of Merit, 1st Class
- House of Pahlavi: 2nd Sovereign Knight Commander of the Order of Honour, 1st Class
- House of Pahlavi: 2nd Sovereign Knight Commander of the Order of Pas, 1st Class
- House of Pahlavi: 2nd Sovereign Knight of the Imperial Family Decoration of Emperor Reza Shah I
- House of Pahlavi: 1st Sovereign Recipient of the Land Reform Medal
- House of Pahlavi: 1st Sovereign Recipient of the Scout Medal
- House of Pahlavi: 1st Sovereign Recipient of the Sport Medal
- House of Pahlavi: Sovereign Recipient of the Emperor Reza Shah I Coronation Medal
- House of Pahlavi: Sovereign Recipient of the Persepolis Medal
- House of Pahlavi: Sovereign Recipient of the Commemorative Medal of the 2,500 year Celebration of the Persian Empire
- House of Pahlavi: Sovereign Recipient of the 1953 Coup d'état Medal
- House of Pahlavi: Sovereign Recipient of the Emperor Reza Shah I Centennial Medal
Foreign honours
Afghani Royal Family: Knight Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of the Supreme Sun
Argentina: Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of the Liberator General San Martin
Austria: Grand Cross of the Decoration for Services to the Republic of Austria, Grand Star
Bahrain: Knight Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of Al-Khalifa
Belgium: Knight Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold
Brazil: Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of the Southern Cross
Brunei: Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Family Order of the Crown of Brunei
Czechoslovakia: Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of the White Lion
Republic of China: Grand Cross of the Order of Propitious Clouds
Denmark: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Elephant- Egypt
Egyptian Royal Family: Knight Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of Muhammad Ali
Egypt: Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of the Nile- Egypt: Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of the Republic
Ethiopian Imperial Family: Knight Grand Collar of the Order of Solomon- Ethiopian Imperial Family: Knight Grand Cordon of the Order of the Seal of Solomon
Finland: Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of the White Rose of Finland
France: Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour- France: Recipient of the Cross of War Medal 1939 - 1945
Greek Royal Family: Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Order of the Redeemer
Hungary: Grand Cross of the Order of the Flag of the Republic of Hungary
Iraqi Royal Family: Knight Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of the Hashemites
Italy: Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of Merit of the Republic
Holy See: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Golden Spur
Japan: Knight Grand Cordon with Collar of the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum- Japan: Golden Pheasant Award of the Scout Association of Japan
Jordan: Knight Grand Cordon with Collar of the Order of al-Hussein bin Ali- Jordan: Knight Grand Cordon of the Supreme Order of the Renaissance, Special Class
Kuwait: Knight Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of Mubarak the Great
Lebanon: Grand Cross of the Order of Merit, Extraordinary Class
Libyan Royal Family: Knight Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of Idris I
Malaysia: Honorary Recipient of the Order of the Crown of the Realm
Mexico: Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of the Aztec Eagle
Monaco: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Charles
Morocco: Knight with Collar of the Order of Muhammad, Special Class
Nepal: Member of the Mahendra Chain- Nepal: Member Grand Cross of the Order of Honour
- Nepal: Member Grand Cross of the Order of Ojaswi Rajanya
Netherlands: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Netherlands Lion- Netherlands: Recipient of the Silver Wedding Anniversary Medal of Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard
Norway: Knight Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of St. Olav
Oman: Knight Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of Al-Said- Oman: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Oman, 3rd Class
Pakistan: Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of Pakistan
Qatar: Knight Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of Independence
Saudi Arabia: Knight of the Great Badr Chain- Saudi Arabia: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Abdulaziz al Saud
- Spain
Spain: Knight Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of Charles III
Francoist Spain: Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of the Yoke and Arrows
Sudan: Grand Cross with Chain of the Order of Honour
Sweden: Knight Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of the Seraphim
Thailand: Knight Grand Cordon with Collar of the Order of the Rajamitrabhorn
Tunisia: Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of Independence
United Kingdom: Recipient of the Royal Victorian Chain
United States: Chief Commander of the Legion of Merit
West Germany: Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic, Special Class
Yugoslavia: Grand Cross of the Order of the Yugoslav Star, Grand Star
- ^ Wiki Commons, Decorations worn in the image
- ^ FarahPahlavi.org, Photo in which Mohammed Reza wears the Zolfaghar Star and Jordanian Orders
- ^ Royal Ark, List of Orders
- Farahpahlavi.org
- Farahpahlavi.org
- "Iran Politics Club: Mohamad Reza Shah Pahlavi Photo Album - Ahreeman X / Alahazrat at diplomatic visit.jpg".
- Pix.avaxnews.com
- Farahpahlavi.org
- Farahpahlavi.org
- Farahpahlavi.org
- "Iran Politics Club: Mohamad Reza Shah Pahlavi Photo Album - Ahreeman X / Shah of Iran, early days.JPG".
- Cache1.asset-cache.net
- 2.bp.blogspot.com
- Wearing the 1st Class/Commander Necklet
- Farm9.staticflickr.com
- Wearing the Order of Pas medal at the end of medal bars
- 3.bp.blogspot.com
- 4.bp.blogspot.com
- "Reply to a parliamentary question" (PDF) (in German). p. 97. Retrieved 5 October 2012.
- Farm2.staticflickr.com
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