1919 - 1980
Shah of Iran, 1941 - 1979.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was born in Tehran on 26 October 1919 to Brigadier Reza Khan (later Reza Shah Pahlavi). He was designated crown prince in April 1926 and graduated from a special primary military school in Tehran in 1931, from Le Rosey secondary school in Switzerland in 1936, and from Tehran Military College in 1938. In 1939, he married Princess Fawzia, the sister of King Farouk of Egypt; they had a daughter, Shahnaz, in 1940 and were divorced in 1948. In 1950, he married Soraya Esfandiari Bakhtiari; this marriage, too, ended in divorce in 1958 because she was not able to produce a male heir. In 1959, he married Farah Diba, who gave birth to Crown Prince Reza in 1961, and three other children thereafter.
Mohammad Reza Shah's thirty-seven-year reign can be divided into five distinct phases: from the 1941 occupation of Iran by the Allied forces to the 1953 coup d'état; the postcoup period (1953 - 1959); the period of political strife (1960 - 1963); the period of the shah's increasingly autocratic rule (1963 - 1976); and the period of revolutionary crisis that ultimately led to the collapse of the Pahlavi dynasty (1977 - 1979).
From 1941 Occupation to 1953 Coup d'Etat
Mohammad Reza acceded to the throne on 17 September 1941, after Russian and British troops invaded Iran on 25 August, forcing Reza Shah to abdicate. A major crisis in the early years of his reign came in 1945 when the Soviet Union refused to withdraw its forces from northern Iran. Through a combination of international pressures and internal maneuverings by Prime Minister Ahmad Qavam, the Russian force finally left Iran in late 1946, and the pro-Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Kurdistan collapsed. For much of this period, the shah was forced to conform to the will of the majles (parliament), which as a political institution dominated both the young monarch and the cabinet. Following an assassination attempt on 4 February 1949, a Constitutional Assembly was convened on 21 April; it granted him the right to dissolve the majles. In March 1951, the British-dominated Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was nationalized by an act of the majles under the initiative of Mohammad Mossadegh, the leader of the National Front, who subsequently became prime minister. Although 1951 to 1953 were "the worst years" of the shah's reign, he did not take any initiative to dismiss Mossadegh until he was urged to do so by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Dwight Eisenhower, who also urged him to appoint Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi as prime minister. When Mossadegh refused to accept the shah's dismissal order on 16 August, the shah fled the country and went to Rome. On 19 August 1953, he was reinstated to power in a coup conceived by MI-6 (British Military Intelligence) and carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency. The leading ulama, the old-guard politicians, the propertied classes, and a core of army generals supported the shah and the coup.
Post-Coup Period
The period 1953 to 1959 began with the repression of members of the intelligentsia who had supported either the National Front or the pro-Soviet Tudeh party, and saw a gradual increase of the shah's power vis-à-vis the old-guard politicians, the propertied classes, and the ulama. In this period, the government signed an agreement with a consortium of major Western oil companies in August 1954, joined the Baghdad Pact (later the Central Treaty Organization, CENTO) in October 1955, established an effective intelligence agency (SAVAK) in 1957, and launched the 1954 - 1962 development plan.
Political Strife (1960 - 1963)
The period from 1960 to 1963 began with a reactivation of opposition groups and increasing pressures from the administration of John F. Kennedy for reforms. In May 1961, the shah appointed Dr. Ali Amini as prime minister and Hasan Arsanjani as minister of agriculture; the latter became the architect of land reform. The shah, who could not tolerate an independent-minded prime minister, dismissed Amini in July 1962 and asked Amir Asadollah Alam, his closest confidant, to form a new cabinet and continue the reform. The land reform program, which was the centerpiece of the shah's White Revolution, and women's suffrage met with strong resistance from the ulama, who joined the opposition forces and instigated urban riots on 5 June 1963 to protest Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's imprisonment. The shah was indecisive in responding to the situation, but Alam took command and gave the shoot-to-kill order to the security forces; more than 100 were killed, and resistance of religious groups was crushed. This event marked the suppression of all opposition forces and the beginning of increasingly autocratic rule by the shah.
Increased Autocratic Rule (1963 - 1976)
In the period 1963 to 1976, the shah emerged as the sole policymaker; he allocated oil revenues among various agencies and projects and directly supervised the armed forces and security organizations, foreign policy and oil negotiations, nuclear power plants, and huge development projects. In this period, Iran's gross domestic product grew in real terms by an average annual rate of around 10 percent. Meantime, public services substantially expanded and modernized, and the enrollment at all educational levels increased rapidly. The shah also dramatically expanded the military and security forces and equipped them with advanced weapon systems. In the early 1970s he played a key leadership role in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and helped the organization to raise the price of oil sharply. Meanwhile, he emerged as the leading figure in the Persian Gulf after the withdrawal of British forces in 1971. Furthermore, he signed an agreement with the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 1975, ending the two countries' border disputes. By the mid-1970s, the shah managed to establish close ties not only with the United States, Western Europe, and Muslim countries but also with the Communist bloc countries, South Africa, and Israel.
The many diplomatic and economic achievements of the shah led to ostentatious displays of royal hubris. For example, in October 1971 he celebrated the 2,500th anniversary of the foundation of the Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great and formed, in March 1975, a one-party system. Both acts were resented by the intelligentsia and middle classes. He also replaced powerful, independent-minded politicians with more accommodating and submissive aides, a strategy that cost him dearly at times of international and domestic crisis. Concurrently, the shah's White Revolution had undermined the traditional foundation of his authority - the ulama, the bazaar merchants, and the landowning classes. They were replaced by the entrepreneurs, the young Western-educated bureaucratic elites, and new middle classes who had developed uneasy relations with the shah. The intelligentsia resented the lack of political freedom and violations of human rights, the rigged elections, corruption, and close ties with the United States. The old religious groups and the bazaar merchants and artisans resented the un-Islamic Western lifestyle promoted by the shah's modernization policies. The entrepreneurial and political elites were discontented with the shah's autocratic rule, and with the lack of their own political power and autonomous organizational base. Under these circumstances the nucleus of an anti-shah revolutionary coalition was formed by a large group of liberal and radical intelligentsia, and a small group of militant ulama and their important followers in the bazaar.
Pahlavi Dynasty Collapse (1977 - 1979)
The opportunity for the opposition to challenge the shah came after the victory of Jimmy Carter in the U.S. presidential race of November 1976 and the ensuing active support given by his administration to the cause of human rights. When the political upheavals began (1977), the shah's weak and indecisive character contributed to the collapse of the Pahlavi regime and the rise of the Islamic Republic under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a charismatic figure with a strong will to power. Despite the mass-based nature of the Iranian Revolution, however, not all sectors of the population opposed the shah. The peasantry, for example, constituting over half of the population at the time, continued to support him, though passively. Even labor and the majority of public-sector employees and the middle and lower-middle classes did not join the uprising until the last phases of the revolution, when the shah's regime was on the verge of collapse. After a series of mass demonstrations, mass strikes, and clashes between the shah's security forces and opposition groups in the latter half of 1978, the shah left the country in January 1979; he died of cancer in Cairo on 27 July 1980.
For the shah the ideal model of the imperial persona was the Persian image of the "benevolent autocrat," as exemplified by great Persian monarchs, including his father, Reza Shah. Although this model implied that he should be determined, self-confident, and brave, in reality he was gentle, timid, and indecisive. The shah's inherently fragile character became evident particularly during periods of instability and crisis, whereas his "benevolent autocrat" tendencies came up during periods of stability and success. Furthermore, he was not immune to conspiracy theories. He therefore often saw the secret hands of foreign powers, specifically those of the British, behind virtually every international and domestic incident. He believed, for example, that the Anglophobic Mohammad Mossadegh and the xenophobic Ayatollah Khomeini were British agents. Referring to an Anglo-Russian conspiracy, the shah attributed the Islamic revolution to the "unholy alliance of Red and Black." Belief in conspiracy theories further intensified his inherent vulnerability during periods of crisis. As a result, in the critical periods of 1941 to 1953 and 1960 to 1963, Mohammad Reza showed considerable indecisiveness. On the other hand, in the post-coup period (1953 - 1959) he began to show more determination, and in the stable period of 1963 - 1976, he emerged as a "benevolent autocrat," who devoted himself, in his own way, to the welfare of his people. Finally, during the period of revolutionary crisis (1977 - 1979), the shah, for the third time during his reign, turned indecisive, once again embraced conspiracy theories, and displayed a mood of withdrawal - traits and reactions that may have contributed significantly to his downfall.
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— AHMAD ASHRAF