With success came the imperial hubris, "I not only make the decisions, I do the thinking too...I ask for advice from the technocrats and then do the exact opposite and that works." - United World International
The Fall of Shah of Iran
By Asif Javed, MD
Williamsport, PA
Raza Shah Pahlavi was once asked, “How does it feel to be the king of Iran?" "Dangerous," he said. He then explained that Iran had been ruled by more than one hundred kings from twelve different dynasties. “Do you know how many died peacefully in their bed? Four.”
The American reporter's surprise was understandable. Iran at the time was the darling of the West and envy of the Third World. The Shah appeared invincible. His country had registered a staggering growth rate of 33% in 1973, only to exceed it the following year at 40%. Sixty thousand citizens had greeted him on a visit to Mashad. Iran’s military had the latest weapons and was fiercely loyal to the sovereign. What could possibly go wrong?
Now fast forward to Jan 16, 1979. The Shah is at Mehrebad Airport. He is being seen off by sobbing members of his staff. One of them, General Badrei, bursts into tears, kneels beside Shah and grabs his shoes. Shah tries to pull the General up, tries to console him. Struggling to control his emotions, he slowly walks to the plane and flies out of his beloved Iran. The Shah had gone into exile once before too in 1953. Then the CIA’s intervention had brought him back. He may have expected the same in 1977. As his valet was packing his clothes that morning, Shah was overheard telling him, "Not too much." But history does not repeat itself that often. This time there was no coming back.
Handsome Raza Shah, who had taken over in 1941 from his father, idolized Charles de Gaulle and was fluent in French, as was his elegant wife. He used to fly his own plane. Punctual to a fault and hardworking, over the years he had created the image of a man of destiny. Helped by the quadrupling of oil prices in the 70s, he transformed Iran from a semi-feudal, poor and backward country into a modern industrial state in a generation. He was well read and well informed. A US ambassador once remarked that the Shah had more knowledge of US weapons than most men in Pentagon. But with success came the imperial hubris, "I not only make the decisions, I do the thinking too...I ask for advice from the technocrats and then do the exact opposite and that works." The royal insiders knew, however, that behind the facade of a confident monarch was a shy, insecure person who had a fatalistic attitude to life. Someone remarked once that Raza Shah was a lamb in lion's clothing.
He was proud of Persia's glorious history and considered Cyrus the Great his hero. The 2500-year celebration of Persian Empire in Persepolis in 1971 was an attempt to connect the Shah with his esteemed predecessor who created the world's first super power and is credited with following the first ever charter of human rights.
Shah never forgot that he had only barely survived the upheaval of 1953 when the popular nationalist PM Mussadaq had nationalized the oil refineries. Shah was forced into exile and only returned after Mussadq had been overthrown by the CIA-sponsored 'Operation Ajax'. The hugely popular Mussadaq spent the rest of his life under house arrest. Naturally many in Iran considered the Shah as an American stooge and traitor.
A visitor to Iran back in the 70s could not fail to notice that the Shah's portrait was visible everywhere. There was a joke in Iran that you could not throw a stone without hitting a portrait of the Shah. And if you did not, the joke said, you will be arrested. All public buildings, and many private residences and businesses were adorned by the pictures of his majesty and his glamorous queen. The newspapers had his portrait on the front page - every day. Iran had made rapid progress under his rule. But this progress had also introduced the Broadway/Piccadilly culture. "In Tehran," writes Andrew Cooper, his biographer:
An exotic dancer had recently been paid a staggering $50,000 to disrobe at a private party, nightclub patrons at Club Vanak looked forward to a smorgasbord of belly dancers, strip teasers, sexy dancers, go-go girls, jugglers and musicians.
The Guardian
The Shah lacked the ruthlessness of contemporaries like Suharto and Saddam Hussain. As the Islamic revolution was gathering momentum in 1977, he sent Farah Diba on a secret visit to Iraq. The Shah was hoping to get a favorable statement from Grand Ayatollah Khoi who resided in Najaf. Khoi had the biggest following among Shia faithful of Iraq and Iran, more than Khomeini's. Before Farah met Khoi, Saddam Hussain asked to see her. Saddam and Farah met in the presence of Hussain Nasr, a renowned scholar who spoke both Persian and Arabic. Saddam was keeping a close eye on the developments in Iran, and, just like the Shah, hated Khomeini to the core. He offered the following unsolicited advice to Farah through Hussain Nasr:
Tell Her Majesty to tell my brother the Shah to take out his tanks and guns and turn them against the revolutionaries. Tell him it is better that a thousand Iranians die now than a million people die later.
Shah's response to the above is revealing: "I cannot sully my hands with the blood of my people." During the final days of the revolution when all seemed lost, the Iranian Military's top brass who remained loyal to the Shah to the very end, pleaded with him to give them a free hand so that they could crush the uprising. He refused saying, "I am no Suharto." Saddam Hussain's advice to the Shah and his prediction, unfortunately, did turn out to be true later. After the Shah's overthrow, Iraq and Iran went to war that turned into a bloody stalemate. Although the war was started by Saddam Hussain, it dragged on for eight years due to the obdurate Khomeini's unwise refusal to accept a ceasefire. He did agree eventually. By then one million had died.
Raza Shah's downfall was multi-factorial: For one, despite enormous popularity at one point, the Shah was isolated from the realities of daily life and from different viewpoints in his country. A rare think tank report that middle class and young Iranians were alienated from monarchy was shown to him once. It should have alarmed him. He passed it on to PM Hoveyda who did -- nothing. Despite international acclaim, the Persepolis extravaganza in 1971, from which ordinary Iranian citizens were excluded, did not go well inside Iran. The grand party was staged at a time when the capital lacked a proper sewage system and cholera as well as malnutrition were still endemic. The rampant corruption of the Royal Family did hurt his image. No serious attempt was made to stop it. Shah's brother-in-law, General Khatami had allegedly amassed a fortune of $100 million through dubious defense dealings. Shah's influential and widely despised sister Princess Ashraf Pahlavi's son had been accused of smuggling priceless treasures and gold artifacts outside Iran by using his mother's name to evade custom inspection.
Farah Diba once made a discreet enquiry about a set of jewels from a jewelry shop in Tehran. The price tag was one million dollars. She was told that the jewels were already sold. The buyer was the wife of a navy commander on a modest pay. Although he was later arrested and found guilty of corruption, it proved that the rot had set in the armed forces too. To the Pak readers, this should sound familiar.
There are pivotal moments in the life of a leader. These are times when he rises to the occasion and does make a painful and unpopular decision that changes the course of history. Think of Charles de Gaulle's decision on Algeria or FW de Klerk's dismantling of apartheid. It is in moments like these that the fate of a sovereign and the nation may be decided. What follows is the one that Raza Shah faced. Andrew Cooper writes:
Farah was sensitive to the widespread perception that her husband's brothers and sisters used their titles and connections to advance their own interests...Iranians considered the numerous members of the Royal Family a shadowy and distasteful group...there was a general image of parasitism, constant corruption, and personal laxness.
Cooper then writes of a meeting that Farah had with Pervaiz Sabeti, an official of Savak:
For five hours Sabeti briefed Farah, providing her with damning evidence within the Imperial Family and at the highest levels of Pahlavi society...By the end of the exhausting session Farah had grasped the magnitude of the problem. She was stunned and cried hard.
Farah then arranged a meeting between the Shah and Sabeti. Here is what happened next:
The Queen helped Sabeti prepare for the meeting, which they both hoped, would focus the Shah on the need to confront his brothers and sisters and purge his inner circle of corrupt elements. But in the end the Shah backed out of the meeting. Shy, averse to bad news, and surrounded by loyalists, he declined his wife's request to meet alone with Sabeti. In so doing he missed a golden opportunity.
And so this is how Arya Mehr Raza Shah Pahlavi, the king of kings, put the final nail in the coffin of his dynasty. There is a painful analogy here between Pakistan and Iran: Farah played Asif Zardari in reverse in Iran. While a talented and internationally admired BB allowed a cunning and corrupt to the core Mr 10% to essentially destroy her legacy in Pakistan, in Iran the Shah was also guilty of inaction. It is ironic that while Zardari succeeded in his sinister schemes, Farah's valiant efforts failed. The results have been tragic for both countries.
Replacing the Islamic Hijra calendar with the Persian Imperial calendar was an unwise decision made by a sovereign who was out of touch with the core values of his people. Shah's policy of rapid westernization was ill-timed for a deeply religious society. Iran was not a democracy in the true sense. But there was a semblance of one in the form of two nominal political parties. Neither appeared to be a threat to the Shah. And then one day both were abolished and replaced by a single party--read Ayub Khan's Convention League. The Shah was also a poor judge of character. This writer's generation remembers Amir Abbas Hoveyda as the PM of Iran who just refused to go away. Andrew Cooper describes Heyveda as "intelligent, charming, and erudite, but also servile, and well versed in the Persian art of flattery...By finessing the royal ego, lauding each of His Majesty's new initiatives, dismissing legitimate criticism, and offering assurances that all was well despite his own reservations to the contrary, Hoveyda did the Shah and the monarchy a grave disservice." Years earlier, Shah's personal insecurities had led to the dismissal followed by exile of General Zahedi, the hugely popular, and talented PM who had rescued Shah in 1953. Reminds one of insecure Ayub's dismissal of Gen Azam Khan in East Pakistan.
Dr Akhtar Hussain Raipuri spent several years in Iran as regional director of UNESCO and had the opportunity to see Iranian society at close quarters. His analysis of Pahlavi's Iran is penetrating:
Tomb of Shah of Iran, Cairo - TripAdvisor
The Pahlavi family paid hardly any attention to Islam or to the cultural heritage of Iran. It was this basic weakness that led Pahlavis to copy the West to a degree that ordinary people and the intelligentsia both turned against them. Shah's younger sister Fatima married an American while his older sister Shamas married an Armenian doctor...There were rumors that Shah's twin sister had converted to Bihai faith...Shah used to treat religious minorities and foreigners in a preferential way...The secret service's torture did a lot of harm to the image of Pahlavi era...The arrogance of the Royal Family did not spare even the dignitaries. I was once invited to a dinner by a cabinet member where the chief guest was Shah's daughter Princess Shahnaz. Majority of the attendees were ambassadors and other high-ranking officials. Everyone was ready at 8:30 PM. The royal protocol demanded that no one should be sitting when Her Royal Highness arrives. The whole gathering waited for hours-on their feet-until the Princess turned up around midnight. And when she did, not a word of regret to the host and no greetings exchanged with the tired guests some of whom were about to faint with exhaustion. She appeared not to notice any of that. One should not expect cultured behavior from new rich...Despite comfortable living standards, I could feel that Iranians were a restless lot. Even those close to me would never discuss politics. Any indication of a political question, they would immediately stop me by whispering, "Walls have ears too." I was advised not to visit South Tehran where the poor lived. Savak was everywhere. A Savak agent was posted in my own staff as well.
The Shah had been diagnosed with incurable Lymphoma in 1974 by a physician in Vienna. The diagnosis was kept a secret. The Austrian physician used to fly to Tehran in secret every few weeks to administer chemo to the Shah. He had been told that his time was limited. In 1978, he told his doctor that he needed two more years. He was expecting the crown prince to take over by 1980. As fate would have it, the Crown Prince was ready in 1980 but there was no country left for him to govern. The number of Kings of Iran who died peacefully in their beds still stands at four.
References : The Fall of Heaven by Andrew Cooper; Gerd-e-Rah by Dr. Akhtar Hussain Raipuri.
The writer is a physician in Williamsport, PA and may be reached at asifjaved@comcast.net
