Mohammad Reza I of Iran

Education

In 1931, at the recommendation of Minister of Court Abdolhossein Teymourtash, Reza Shah sent the Crown Prince to Institut Le Rosey, a private boarding school in Switzerland. He left Iran on 7 September 1931 and became the first Iranian heir apparent to be sent abroad for his education. His adjustment to life in Switzerland was initially difficult. Accustomed to the deference afforded to him in Iran, he reportedly demanded that fellow students stand at attention in his presence, but soon adapted to the comparatively egalitarian environment of the school. As a student, Mohammad Reza played football for the school's team. In addition to his native Persian, Mohammad Reza spoke English, French, and German fluently. He developed a lasting interest in French language and culture; writing for the school newspaper in French in 1935 and 1936, he credited Le Rosey with broadening his outlook and introducing him to European civilization. He also befriended Ernest Perron, a teacher who introduced him to French literature and became one of his closest confidants. When Mohammad Reza returned to Iran in 1936, Perron accompanied him and subsequently remained associated with the royal court at the Marble Palace.

After returning to Iran, Mohammad Reza completed his secondary education and enrolled at the Madrasa Nezam, a military academy in Tehran. He graduated as a second lieutenant in 1938 and was subsequently promoted to captain, a rank he held until his accession to the throne. From 1938 to 1941, he served as an army inspector, travelling throughout Iran to examine both civil and military installations.

Education and military

Improvement of the educational system was made through the creation of new elementary schools. In addition, 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 lit. army for promotion and development) as well as in health education and promotion "Sepāh-e Behdāsht" (Persian: سپاه بهداشت lit. "army for hygiene"). 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.

Between 1967 and 1977, the number of universities increased in number from 7 to 22, the number of institutions of advanced learning rose from 47 to 200, and the number of students in higher education soared from 36,742 to 100,000. Literacy rose substantially over the same period, though from a low base and unevenly: national census data put the literacy rate at 39.2 percent for men and 17.4 percent for women in 1966, rising to 47.5 percent and 35.5 percent respectively by 1976.

In the field of diplomacy, Iran realised and maintained friendly relations with Western and East European countries as well as Israel and China and became, especially through its close friendship with the United States, more and more a hegemonial power in the Persian Gulf region and the Middle East.

As to infrastructure and technology, the Shah continued and developed further the policies introduced by his father. His programmes included projects in technologies such as steel, telecommunications, petrochemical facilities, power plants, dams and the automobile industry. The Aryamehr University of Technology was established as a major new academic institution.

Background

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 at the time; it referred to him as a homosexual, a drug addict, and 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 city of Qom, a traditional centre of opposition to the House of Pahlavi.

Relationship with the Western world

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 apologised 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 labelled 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 fervour 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?"

Decline of health

A US doctor, 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 [cell] counts.

The Shah suffered from gallstones that required 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 US but came under pressure from Henry Kissinger, who phoned 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, reportedly prompting Carter more than once to hang up his phone in rage in the Oval Office and shout "Fuck the Shah!". Because many Republicans were attacking the SALT II treaty as a US give-away to the Soviet Union, Carter desired the endorsement of a Republican elder statesman like 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 (14 kg).In September 1979, a doctor sent by David Rockefeller reported to the State Department that Mohammad Reza needed to come to the United States for medical treatment, an assessment not shared by 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 Carter not to admit the former Shah into the US, saying it was likely that the Iranian regime would seize the US embassy in Tehran if that occurred. Milani suggested there was a possible conflict of interest on the part of Rockefeller, noting that his Chase Manhattan Bank had given Iran a $500 million loan under questionable conditions in 1978 (several lawyers had refused to endorse the loan) which placed the money in an account with Chase Manhattan; that the new Islamic Republic had been 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.

Religious beliefs

From his mother, Mohammad 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.

Mohammad 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.

In his biography of the Shah, Marvin Zonis argued that Mohammad Reza really believed in these claims of divine support. Shia Islam has no tradition of describing Shahs being favoured with messages from Allah; very few Shahs had ever claimed that their dreams were divine messages, and most people in the West laughed at Mohammad Reza's claim that his dreams were messages from God. Reza Shah, Mohammad Reza's father, who was less religious, dismissed these visions as nonsense, and told his son to have more common sense.

Fereydoon Hoveyda, a veteran diplomat who served as the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations (1971–1979), and the brother of Amir-Abbas Hoveyda, the Prime Minister under the Shah (1965–1977) executed after the Islamic revolution, and himself a critic of the régime who died in exile, says that "when it comes to religion and spirituality, many passages of the monarch's and Khomeini's publications are interchangeable", which he perceives as the continuity of the Iranian civilization, where the religion changes but the spirit remains.

Wealth

Mohammad Reza 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 their 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 toman ($500,000) to each of his siblings. By 1958, it was estimated that the companies possessed by Mohammad Reza had a value of $157 million (in 1958 USD) with an estimated additional $100 million saved outside Iran. Rumours of his and his family's corruption began to surface which greatly damaged his reputation. This formed one of the reasons for the creation of the Pahlavi Foundation and the distribution of additional land to the people of some 2,000 villages inherited by his father, often at very low and discounted prices. In 1958, using funds from inherited crown estates, Mohammad Reza established the Pahlavi Foundation, which functioned as a tax-exempt charity and held all his assets, including 830 villages spanning a total area of 2.5 million hectares (6.2 million acres). According to Business Insider, Mohammad Reza had set up the organisation "to pursue Iran's charitable interests in the U.S." At its height, the organisation was estimated to be worth $3 billion; however, on numerous occasions, the Pahlavi Foundation was accused of corruption. Despite these charges, in his book Answer to History Pahlavi affirms that he "never made the slightest profit" out of the Foundation.

In a 1974 interview which was shown in a documentary titled Crisis in Iran, Mohammad Reza told Mike Wallace that the rumours of corruption were "the most unjust thing that I have heard," calling them a "cheap accusation" whilst arguing the allegations were not as serious as those regarding other governments, including that of the United States. In November 1978, after Pahlavi dismissed Prime Minister Jafar Sharif-Emami and appointed a military government, he pledged in a televised address "not to repeat the past mistakes and illegalities, the cruelty and corruption." Despite this, the royal family's wealth can be seen as one of the factors behind the Iranian revolution. This was due to the oil crises of the 1970s which increased inflation resulting in economic austerity measures which made lower class workers more inclined to protest.

Mohammad Reza's wealth remained 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 which claimed 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 amongst 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. It also stated that a document submitted to the ministry of justice, in protest of the royal family's activity in many sectors of the nation's economy, detailed the Pahlavis dominating role in 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 per cent 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; the Pahlavis also had major interests in real estate. Mohammad Reza 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. The first Maserati 5000 GT was named the Shah of Persia, and was built for Mohammad Reza, who had been impressed by the Maserati 3500 and requested Giulio Alfieri, Maserati's chief engineer, to use a modified 5-litre engine from the Maserati 450S on the 3500GT's chassis. There was also a 2019 car named in his honour.

Change of Calendar

In October 1971, Mohammad Reza celebrated the twenty-five-hundredth anniversary of the Iranian monarchy; The New York Times reported that $100 million was spent on the celebration. 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 59 lesser ones arranged in a star-shaped design. French chefs from Maxim's of Paris prepared breast of peacock for royalty and dignitaries from 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 the 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 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 so 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 2,500th 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 to kill him six years later. Though this was such a carefully guarded secret that not even the Americans were aware of it (as late as 1977, the CIA submitted a report to President Carter describing the Shah as being in "robust health"), the knowledge of his impending death left Mohammad Reza depressed and passive in his last years, a man no longer capable of acting.

Human rights violations

Pahlavi's government has been described by critics as an "oppressive police state". The state's secret police, SAVAK, carried out large-scale torture against thousands of political prisoners. Methods included "not only electric shock and beatings, but also the insertion of bottles in the rectum, hanging weights from testicles, rape, and such apparatus as a helmet that, worn over the head of the victim, magnifies his own screams." Such methods were used against many intellectuals, artists, writers, and other perceived dissidents. Pahlavi has been described as "autocratic" and "deeply unpopular".