Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (26 October 1919 – 27 July 1980) was the last Shah of Iran from 1941 to 1979. He succeeded his father Reza Shah and ruled the Imperial State of Iran until he was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution led by Ruhollah Khomeini, which abolished the Iranian monarchy to establish the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 1967, he took the title Shahanshah (lit. 'King of Kings'), and held several others, including Aryamehr (lit. 'Light of the Aryans') and Bozorg Arteshtaran (lit. 'Grand Army Commander'). He was the second and last ruling monarch of the Pahlavi dynasty.

During World War II, the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran forced the abdication of Reza Shah and succession of Pahlavi. During his reign, the British-owned oil industry was nationalized by the prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who had support from Iran's national parliament to do so; however, Mosaddegh was overthrown in the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, which was carried out by the Iranian military under the aegis of the United Kingdom and the United States. Subsequently, the Iranian government centralized power under the Shah and brought foreign oil companies back into the country's industry through the Consortium Agreement of 1954.

In 1963, Mohammad Reza Shah introduced the White Revolution, a series of reforms aimed at transforming Iran into a global power and modernizing the nation by nationalizing key industries and redistributing land. The regime also implemented Iranian nationalist policies establishing numerous popular symbols of Iran relating to Cyrus the Great. The Shah initiated major investments in infrastructure, subsidies and land grants for peasant populations, profit sharing for industrial workers, construction of nuclear facilities, nationalization of Iran's natural resources, and literacy programs which were considered some of the most effective in the world.

The Shah also instituted economic policy tariffs and preferential loans to Iranian businesses which sought to create an independent Iranian economy. Manufacturing of cars, appliances, and other goods in Iran increased substantially, creating a new industrialist class insulated from threats of foreign competition. By the 1970s, the Shah was seen as a master statesman and used his growing power to pass the 1973 Sale and Purchase Agreement. The reforms culminated in decades of sustained economic growth that would make Iran one of the fastest-growing economies among both the developed world and the developing world. During his 37-year-long rule, Iran spent billions of dollars' worth on industry, education, health, and military spending. Between 1950 and 1979, real GDP per capita nearly tripled from about $2700 to about $7700 (2011 international dollars). By 1977, the Shah's focus on defense spending to end foreign powers' intervention in the country had culminated in the Iranian military standing as the world's fifth-strongest armed force.

As political unrest grew throughout Iran in the late 1970s, the Shah's position was made untenable by the Cinema Rex fire and the Jaleh Square massacre. The 1979 Guadeloupe Conference saw his Western allies state that there was no feasible way to save the Iranian monarchy from being overthrown. The Shah ultimately left Iran for exile in January 1979. Although he had told some Western contemporaries that he would rather leave the country than fire on his own people, estimates for the total number of deaths during the Islamic Revolution range from 540 to 2,000 (figures of independent studies) to 60,000 (figures of the Islamic government). After formally abolishing the Iranian monarchy, Shia Islamist cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini assumed leadership as the Supreme Leader of Iran. Pahlavi died in exile in Egypt, where he had been granted political asylum by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat.

Early life, family and education

Born in Tehran, in the Sublime State of Iran, to Reza Khan (later Reza Shah Pahlavi, first Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty) and his second wife, Tadj ol-Molouk, Mohammad Reza was his father's eldest son and third of his eleven children. His father was of Mazandarani origin and born in Alasht, Savadkuh County, Māzandarān Province. He was a Brigadier-General of the Persian Cossack Brigade, commissioned in the 7th Savadkuh Regiment, who served in the Anglo-Persian War in 1856. Mohammad Reza's mother was a Muslim immigrant from Georgia (then part of the Russian Empire), whose family had emigrated to mainland Iran after Iran was forced to cede all of its territories in the Caucasus following the Russo-Persian Wars several decades prior. She was of Azerbaijani origin, being born in Baku, Russian Empire (now Azerbaijan).

Mohammad Reza was born with his twin sister, Ashraf; however, he, Ashraf, his siblings Shams and Ali Reza, and his older half-sister, Fatimeh, were not royalty by birth, as their father did not become Shah until 1925. Nevertheless, Reza Khan 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"). Like most Iranians at the time, Reza Khan did not have a surname. After the 1921 Persian coup d'état which saw the deposal of Ahmad Shah Qajar, Reza Khan was informed that he would need a surname for his house. This led him to pass a law ordering all Iranians to take a surname; he chose for himself the surname Pahlavi, which is the name for the Middle Persian language, itself derived from Old Persian. On 24 April 1926, the day before his father's coronation, 6-year-old Mohammad Reza was proclaimed Crown Prince.

Family

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 Shah 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, Mohammad Reza was a deeply scared and insecure boy who lacked self-confidence, according to Iranian-American historian Abbas Milani.

Reza Khan believed if fathers showed love for their sons, it caused homosexuality later in life, so to ensure his favourite son was heterosexual, he denied him love and affection when he was young, though he later became more affectionate toward the Crown Prince when he was a teenager. Reza Khan always addressed his son as shoma ("sir") and refused to use the more informal tow ("you"), and in turn was addressed by his son using the same formality. 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 Adolf Hitler, less because of Hitler's racism and anti-Semitism and more because he had risen from an undistinguished background, much like Reza Khan, to become a notable leader of the 20th century. 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. Throughout his life, Mohammad Reza was obsessed with height and stature, wearing elevator shoes to make himself look taller than he really was, often boasting that Iran's highest mountain Mount Damavand was higher than any peak in Europe or Japan, and proclaiming that he was always most attracted to tall women. As Shah, Mohammad Reza constantly disparaged his father in private, calling him a thuggish Cossack who achieved nothing as Shah. In fact, he almost airbrushed his father out of history during his reign, to the point of implying the House of Pahlavi began its rule in 1941 rather than 1925.