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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; |
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Princess Farahnaz Pahlavi (born 12 March 1963); |
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Prince Ali Reza Pahlavi (28 April 1966 – 4 January 2011); |
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Princess Leila Pahlavi (27 March 1970 – 10 June 2001). |
One of Mohammad Reza's favourite activities was watching films, and his favourites were light French comedies and Hollywood action films, much to the disappointment of Farah, who tried hard to interest him in more serious films. Mohammad Reza was frequently unfaithful towards Farah, and his right-hand man Asadollah Alam regularly imported tall European women for "outings" with the Shah, though Alam's diary also mentions that if women from the "blue-eyed world" were not available, he would bring the Shah "local product". Mohammad Reza had an insatiable appetite for sex, and Alam's diary has the Shah constantly telling him he needed to have sex several times a day, every day, or otherwise he would fall into depression. When Farah learned about his affairs in 1973, Alam blamed the prime minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda, while the Shah thought it was the KGB. Milani noted that neither admitted it was the Shah's "crass infidelities" that caused this issue. Milani further wrote that "Alam, in his most destructive moments of sycophancy, reassured the Shah—or his 'master' as he calls him—that the country was prosperous and no one begrudged the King a bit of fun". He also had a passion for automobiles and aeroplanes, and by the mid-1970s, the Shah had amassed one of the world's largest collections of luxury cars and planes. His visits to the West were invariably the occasions for major protests by the Confederation of Iranian Students, an umbrella group of far-left Iranian university students studying abroad, and Mohammad Reza had one of the world's largest security details as he lived in constant fear of assassination. |
Milani described Mohammad Reza's court as open and tolerant, noting that his and Farah's two favourite interior designers, Keyvan Khosrovani and Bijan Saffari, were openly gay, and were not penalised for their sexual orientation, with Khosrovani often advising the Shah about how to dress. Milani noted the close connection between architecture and power, as architecture is the "poetry of power" in Iran. In this sense, the Niavaran Palace, with its mixture of modernist style, heavily influenced by current French and traditional Persian styles, reflected Mohammad Reza's personality. Mohammad Reza was a Francophile whose court had a decidedly French ambiance. |
Mohammad Reza commissioned a documentary from the French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse meant to glorify Iran under his rule. But he was annoyed that the film focused only on Iran's past, writing to Lamorisse there were no modern buildings in his film, which he charged made Iran look "backward". Mohammad Reza's office was functional, with ceilings and walls decorated with Qajar art. Farah began collecting modern art and by the early 1970s owned works by Picasso, Gauguin, Chagall, and Braque, which added to the modernist feel of the Niavaran Palace. |
Imperial coronation |
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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. |
2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire |
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As part of his efforts to modernise Iran and give the Iranian people a non-Islamic identity, Mohammad Reza quite consciously started to celebrate Iranian history before the Arab conquest with a special focus on the Achaemenid period. In October 1971, he marked the anniversary of 2,500 years of continuous Persian monarchy since the founding of the Achaemenid Empire by Cyrus the Great. Concurrent with this celebration, Mohammad Reza changed the benchmark of the Iranian calendar from the Hijrah to the beginning of the First Persian Empire, measured from Cyrus the Great's coronation. |
At the celebration at Persepolis in 1971, the Shah had an elaborate fireworks show 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 Mohammad 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, Mohammad 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 begun to feel confident of its modernization". Milani noted it was a sign of the liberalization of the middle years of Mohammad Reza's reign that Hussein Amanat, the architect who designed the Shahyad was a young Baháʼí from a middle-class family who did not belong to the "thousand families" that traditionally dominated Iran, writing that only in this moment in Iranian history such a thing was possible. |
Role at OPEC |
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Prior to the 1973 oil embargo, Iran spearheaded OPEC's aim for higher oil prices. When raising oil prices, Iran would point out the rising inflation as a means to justify the price increases. |
In the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War, Arab states employed an oil embargo in 1973 against Western nations. Although the Shah declared neutrality, he sought to exploit the lack of crude oil supply to Iran's benefit. The Shah held a meeting of Persian Gulf oil producers, declaring they should double the price of oil for the second time in a year. The price hike resulted in an "oil shock" that crippled Western economies while Iran saw a rapid growth of oil revenues. Iranian oil incomes doubled to $4.6 billion in 1973–1974 and spiked to $17.8 billion in the following year. As a result, the Shah had established himself as the dominant figure of OPEC, having control over oil prices and production. Iran experienced an economic growth rate of 33% in 1973 and 40% the next year, and GNI expanded 50% in the next year. |
The Shah's oil coup signaled that the United States had lost the ability to influence Iranian foreign and economic policy. Under the Shah, Iran dominated OPEC and Middle Eastern oil exports. |
Nationalist Iran |
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By the 19th century, the Persian word Vatan began to refer to a national homeland for many intellectuals in Iran. The education system was controlled mainly by Shiite clergy who utilized a Maktab system in which open political discussion of modernization was prevented. However, a number of scholarly intellectuals, including Mirzā FathʿAli Ākhundzādeh, Mirzā Āqā Khān Kermāni, and Mirzā Malkam Khān began to criticize Islam's role in public life while promoting a secular identity for Iran. Over time, studies of Iran's glorious history and present reality of a declined Qajar period led many to question what led to Iran's decline. Iranian history was categorized into pre-Islamic and Islamic periods. Iran's pre-Islamic period was seen as prosperous, while the Arab invasions were seen as "a political catastrophe that pummelled the superior Iranian civilization under its hoof". Therefore, as a result of the growing number of Iranian intellectuals in the 1800s, the Ancient Persian Empire symbolized modernity and originality, while the Islamic period brought by Arab invasions imposed on Iran a period of backwardness. |
Ultimately, these revelations in Iran would lead to the rise of Aryan nationalism in Iran and the perception of an "intellectual awakening", as described by Homa Katouzian. In Europe, many concepts of Aryan nationalism were directed at the anti-Jewish sentiment. In contrast, Iran's Aryan nationalism was deeply rooted in Persian history and became synonymous with an anti-Arab sentiment instead. Furthermore, the Achaemenid and Sasanian periods were perceived as the real Persia, a Persia which commanded the respect of the world and was void of foreign culture before the Arab invasions. |
Thus, under the Pahlavi state, these ideas of Aryan and pre-Islamic Iranian nationalism continued with the rise of Reza Shah. Under the last Shah, the tomb of Cyrus the Great was established as a significant site for all Iranians. The Mission for My Country, written by the Shah, described Cyrus as "one of the most dynamic men in history" and stated that "wherever Cyrus conquered, he would pardon the very people who had fought him, treat them well, and keep them in their former posts .... While Iran at the time knew nothing of democratic political institutions, Cyrus nevertheless demonstrated some of the qualities which provide the strength of the great modern democracies". The Cyrus Cylinder also became an important cultural symbol and Pahlavi successfully popularized the decree as an ancient declaration of human rights. |
The Shah employed titles like Āryāmehr and Shāhanshāh in order to emphasize Iranian supremacy and the kings of Iran. |
The Shah continued with his father's ideas of Iranian nationalism, treating Arabs as the utmost other. Nationalist narratives, which were widely accepted by a majority of Iranians, portrayed Arabs as hostile to Pahlavi's revival of "modern" and "authentic" Iran. |
Economic growth |
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In the 1970s, Iran had an economic growth rate equal to that of South Korea, Turkey, and Taiwan; Western journalists regularly predicted that Iran would become a First World nation within the next generation. Significantly, a "reverse brain drain" had begun with Iranians who had been educated in the West returning home to take up positions in government and business. The firm of Iran National, run by the Khayami brothers, had become by 1978 the largest automobile manufacturer in the Middle East, producing 136,000 cars every year while employing 12,000 people in Mashhad. Mohammad Reza had strong étatist tendencies and was deeply involved in the economy, with his economic policies bearing a strong resemblance to the same étatist policies being pursued simultaneously by General Park Chung-hee in South Korea. Mohammad Reza considered himself a socialist, saying he was "more socialist and revolutionary than anyone". Reflecting his self-proclaimed socialist tendencies, although unions were illegal, the Shah brought in labour laws that were "surprisingly fair to workers". Iran in the 1960s and 70s was a tolerant place for the Jewish minority with one Iranian Jew, David Menasheri, remembering that Mohammad Reza's reign was the "golden age" for Iranian Jews when they were equals, and when the Iranian Jewish community was one of the wealthiest Jewish communities in the world. The Baháʼí minority also did well after the bout of persecution in the mid-1950s ended, with several Baháʼí families rising to prominence in the world of Iranian business. |
Under his reign, Iran experienced over a decade of double-digit GDP growth coupled with major investments in military and infrastructure. Elementary school education was made free and mandatory; in 1974, $16 billion was spent on building new schools and hospitals. The same year, Iran agreed to purchase more arms from the United States than did the rest of the world combined in any other preceding year. |
The Shah's first economic plan was geared towards large infrastructure projects and improving the agricultural sector, which led to the development of many major dams, particularly in Karaj, Safīdrūd, and Dez. The next economic plan was directed and characterized by an expansion in the credit and monetary policy of the nation, which resulted in a rapid expansion of Iran's private sector, particularly in construction. From the period 1955–1959, real gross fixed capital formation in the private sector saw an average annual increase of 39.3%. The private sector credit rose by 46 percent in 1957, 61 percent in 1958, and 32 percent in 1959 (Central Bank of Iran, Annual Report, 1960 and 1961). By 1963, the Shah had begun a redistribution of land offering compensation to landlords valued on previous tax assessments, and the land obtained by the government was then sold on favorable terms to Iranian peasants. The Shah also initiated the nationalization of forests and pastures, female suffrage, profit-sharing for industrial workers, privatization of state industries, and formation of literacy corps. These developments marked a turning point in Iranian history as the nation prepared to embark on a rapid and aggressive industrialization process. |
The years 1963–1978 represented the longest period of sustained growth in per capita real income that the Iranian economy ever experienced. During the 1963–77 period, gross domestic product (GDP) grew by an average annual rate of 10.5% with an annual population growth rate of around 2.7% placing Iran as one of the fasted growing economies in the world. Iran's GDP per capita was $170 in 1963, rising to $2,060 by 1977. The growth was not just a result of increased oil revenues. In fact, the non-oil GDPs grew by an average annual rate of 11.5 percent, which was higher than the average annual rate of growth experienced in oil revenues. By the fifth economic planning, oil GDP rose to 15.3% strongly outpacing growth rates in oil revenue, which only saw 0.5% growth. From 1963 to 1977, the industrial and the service sectors experienced annual growth rates of 15.0% and 14.3%, respectively. The manufacturing of cars, television sets, refrigerators, and other household goods increased substantially in Iran. For instance, from 1969 to 1977, the number of private cars produced in Iran increased steadily from 29,000 to 132,000, and the number of television sets produced rose from 73,000 in 1969 to 352,000 in 1975. |
The growth of industrial sectors in Iran led to substantial urbanization of the country. The extent of urbanization rose from 31 percent in 1956 to 49 percent in 1978. By the mid-1970s, Iran's national debt was paid off, turning the nation from a debtor to a creditor nation. The balances on the nation's account for the 1959–78 period resulted in a surplus of approximately $15.17 billion. The Shah's fifth five-year economic plan sought to achieve a reduction in foreign imports through the use of higher tariffs on consumer goods, preferential bank loans to the industrialists, maintenance of an overvalued rial, and food subsidies in urban areas. These developments led to a new large industrialist class in Iran, and the nation's industrial structure was extremely insulated from threats of foreign competition. |
In 1976, Iran saw its largest-ever GDP uptick, largely thanks to the Shah's economic policies. According to the World Bank, when valued in 2010 dollars, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi improved the country's per-capita GDP to $10,261, the highest at any point in Iran's history. |
According to economist Fereydoun Khavand: |
During these 15 years, the average annual growth rate of the country fluctuated above 10%. The total volume of Iran's economy increased nearly fivefold during this period. In contrast, during the past 40 years, Iran's average annual economic growth rate has been only about two percent. Considering the growth rate of Iran's population in the post-revolution period, the average per capita growth rate of Iran in the last 40 years is estimated between zero percent and half a percent. Among the main factors hindering the growth rate in Iran are a lack of a favorable business environment, severe investment weakness, very low levels of productivity, and constant tension in the country's regional and global relations. |
Many European, American, and Japanese investment firms sought business ventures and to open up headquarters in Iran. According to one American investment banker, "They are now dependent on Western technology, but what happens when they produce and export steel and copper, when they reduce their agricultural problems? They'll eat everybody else in the Middle East alive." |
Relationship with the Western world |
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By the 1960s and 1970s, Iranian oil revenues experienced rapid growth. By the mid-1960s, Iran saw "weakened U.S. influence in Iranian politics" and a strengthening in the power of the Iranian state. According to Homa Katouzian, the perception that the US was the instructor of the Shah's regime due to their support for the 1953 coup contradicted the reality that "its real influence" in domestic Iranian politics and policy "declined considerably". In 1973 the Shah initiated an oil price hike with his control of OPEC further demonstrating the US no longer had influence over Iranian foreign and economic policies. In response to American media outlets critical of him, the Shah claimed that Iran's oil price hikes did little to contribute to the rising inflation in the United States. Pahlavi also implied criticism of the US for not taking the lead on anti-communist efforts. |
In 1974, during the oil crisis, the Shah began an atomic nuclear energy policy, prompting US Trade Administrator William E. Simon to denounce the Shah as a "nut." In response, US President Nixon publicly apologized to the Shah through a letter in order to disassociate the president and the United States from the statement. Simon's statement illustrated the growing American tensions with Iran over the Shah's raising of oil prices. Nixon's apology covered up the reality that the Shah's ambitions to become the leader in the Persian Gulf Area and the Indian Ocean basin were placing a serious strain on his relationship with the United States, particularly as India had tested its first atomic bomb in May 1974. |
Many critics labeled the Shah as a Western and American "puppet", an accusation that has been disproven as unfounded by contemporary scholars due to the Shah's strong regional and nationalist ambitions, which often led Tehran to disputes with its Western allies. In particular, the Carter administration which took control of the White House in 1977 saw the Shah as a troublesome ally and sought change in Iran's political system. |
By the 1970s, the Shah had become a strongman. His power had dramatically increased both in Iran and internationally, and on the tenth anniversary of the White Revolution, he challenged The Consortium Agreement of 1954 and terminated the agreement after negotiations with the oil consortium resulting in the establishment of 1973 Sale and Purchase Agreement. |
Khomeini accused the Shah of false rumors and employed Soviet methods of deception. The accusations were amplified by international media outlets, which widely propagated the information, and protests were widely shown on Iranian televisions. |
Many Iranian students studied across Western Europe and the United States, where ideas of liberalism, democracy, and counterculture flourished. Among left-leaning Westerners, the Shah's reign was seen as equivalent to that of right-wing hate figures. Western anti-Shah fervor broadcast by European and American media outlets was ultimately adopted by Iranian students and intellectuals studying in the West, who accused the Shah of Westoxification when it was the students themselves who were adopting Western liberalism they experienced during their studies. These Western ideas of liberalism resulted in utopian visions for revolution and social change. In turn, the Shah criticized Western democracies and equated them to chaos. |
Furthermore, the Shah chastised Americans and Europeans as being "lazy" and "lacking discipline" and criticized their student radicalism as being caused by Western decline. President Nixon expressed his concern to the Shah that Iranian students in the United States would similarly become radicalized, asking the Shah: "Are your students infected?" and "Can you do anything?" |
Foreign relations and policies |
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France |
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