The Shah

by Abbas Milani

  Page ninety-six of a war-consumed Life showed the Beaton pictures of the Iranian royal family. In spite of the clear attempt by Life’s editors to show a happy family, the pictures inadvertently revealed fissures and tensions that would soon break out into the open.

  There was a photo of a debonair Shah, sitting on a bench in the palace garden, his daughter on his lap and Queen Fawzia sitting a few noticeable inches away. Their dour expressions betrayed what was by then an open secret in Tehran. The Queen was unhappy. Compared with her family’s almost hundred-fifty-year-old history of kingship, the Pahlavi royal pedigree was thin, and thus many in the Shah’s family construed Fawzia’s natural reserve and shyness as a haughty and dismissive demeanor.

  The article described Iran as “the threatened supply link between Russia and the Allies.” Of the royal marriage, it ventured the guess that “Few marriages have weathered as much. . . . Fawzia’s dynasty is a hundred years old and rich. The Shah’s only 17 years and poor. The two are different sects of Islam.” And finally, alluding to some of the machinations in the Court, it said, “Iranians come to say she had a bad foot (bad luck) as she produced only a daughter.”1 Many years later, in 1961, when the Shah published his memoirs, he claimed for the first time that her failure to produce a male heir was the factor in the breakup of their marriage.2

  The Life article ended by referring to the Shah as a king “on probation.” While the Soviet and British governments may have viewed him this way, in reality the Shah was surprisingly active and assertive. In 1941, around the time he took the oath of office, he was busy at the Court, remaking it in his own image. One of his first steps was to dismiss his chief of staff, Moadeb Naficy, who had earlier accompanied him on his Le Rosey journey and was, according to the British Embassy, “a useless yes-man.”3 The new Court minister was Hussein Ala, a seasoned politician who was also the preferred British candidate for the job.4 According to Ann Lambton, it was “more than anyone else Ala who convinced” the British “that the Crown Prince should be given a chance.”5 Ala was considerably older than the Shah and soon developed a kind of avuncular disposition toward the young monarch. He tried to educate the Shah by giving him useful books to read, including the works of Bernard Shaw. Ala was not the only person trying to educate the young Shah. The British ambassador, Sir Reader Bullard, was also active in this pedagogical effort and, in his own words, “managed to excite the interest of the Shah in Thucydides.”6 In return, the Shah sent Bullard a painted Persian box full of Persian nuts, and the Ambassador lamented that, financially, he was the loser in the deal.7

  Of the educators, the earliest, of course, was Ernest Perron, who was after Reza Shah’s abdication a constant presence at the Court and continued the practice of sharing books and poems with the Shah. The Shah also used him in some of the most sensitive missions, from deciding Court protocol and insisting on courtiers emulating the ways of European courts to acting as the Shah’s emissary in contacting foreign embassies, or resolving some of the tensions in the quarrelsome royal family.

  By the time a nervous Shah8 entered the Majlis around 4:30 in the afternoon on September 17, 1941, and took the oath of office, his father was already on his way out of the country. Another request of the Allies, particularly the British, was that the new Shah expel from Iran Reza Shah’s many sons from his four marriages.9 Most would leave the country with Reza Shah, but the Shah reassured the British that he would also “send away the two remaining members of the royal family, viz his mother and his sister [Princess Ashraf who] is said to hanker after a career in Hollywood.”10 Though the biting tone of the rest of the report is indicative of the embassy’s troubled relationship with the Princess, hobnobbing with Hollywood celebrity remained, all her life, something of a passion.11 Within five years of the Shah’s making that promise, every member of the royal family was back in Iran, and before long, Princess Ashraf and the Queen Mother once again took on increasingly powerful and controversial roles in Iran’s domestic politics and in the Shah’s private life. Within thirty years, Princess Ashraf even found her way to a career in Hollywood, not as an actress but as a producer. But in 1941, the Shah was in no position to “defend” his family’s desire to live in Iran.

  A photo of the Shah entering the parliament building to take the oath of office captures the frailties of his personality and position. Though dressed in a full military uniform and knee-high boots, with the ornate sword of power dangling from his waist—much like his father in official ceremonies—the young Shah looked tentative, almost sunken and shrunken in his uniform. He had more the defensive pose of an anxious officer than the joyful defiance of a prince bent on putting his seal of authority on a shaky Peacock Throne. A large crowd had gathered outside the parliament to show their support for the King. Why and how they had come there remains the subject of some controversy. The Shah says it was all the spontaneous exhibition of love by his people. In his memoirs, he writes of being “confirmed on the throne by popular support.”12 Some embassies, however, believed the people gathered on the few streets between the Court and the parliament were part of a “rented crowd” gathered by royalists to breathe a whiff of confidence into the Shah’s badly shaken resolve. No sooner had the Shah taken the oath of office than he was faced with a plethora of problems. His first challenge was the fate of his father.

  The young Shah’s first speech after taking the oath of office reflected the precarious position in which his father had left him. He promised to pay “full attention to the principles of a constitutional government” and to the separation of the three branches mandated by law. Every citizen in the country, he said, must be vigilant about our responsibilities and must never lose sight of the limits of governmental power. “I have ordered all government employees,” he went on to say, “to make sure that they follow the letter of the law.”13 These promises to abide by the constitution in the future were a clear, albeit tacit, confirmation that his father had acted in breach of those very laws.

  As the Shah was making his speech, his father was on his way to Isfahan, his first stop on the way to an uncertain destination. The sight of the “plume-plucked” Reza Shah carrying a suitcase was, for his family, unfathomable. It has never been clear what was in the suitcase. Three decades later, in his Daily Journals, Assadollah Alam referred to “certain documents” inherited from Reza Shah, kept in those days by the Shah in a safe, and “so sensitive” that Alam felt he could still not talk about them. Are these documents the same material Reza Shah so carefully guarded while on his journey of banishment?

  When he got out of an old, unmarked car to meet his family, having already been ensconced in Isfahan for some time, Reza Shah looked old and pale. During his days as a king or a Cossack commander, he was never seen carrying anything other than his staff; now he carried around a suitcase from which he never parted. To his family, he seemed a tragically broken man. “After leaving Tehran,” Fereydoon Jam, Reza Shah’s son-in-law, remembered, “there was never any life in his eyes. The joy of life seemed to slip away from him with every passing day.”14 Reza Shah’s mantra in those days was “I would rather die in Iran than go abroad.”15 His once-intimidating gravitas and charisma turned rapidly to grief and despair.

  A bitter reminder of his fallen state was the fact that it was not even clear whether he stopped at Isfahan of his own volition, or, as suggested by the American Embassy, “the British held him for negotiations as to the disposition of his properties.” Newspapers in the country were by then filled with rumors and stories about his allegedly fantastic and illicit fortune. A few members of the parliament and many opposition papers even alleged that on his way out of Iran, Reza Shah had taken some of the Crown Jewels—a vast collection of thousands of rare jewels, and some other gems brought back by Nadir Shah after he invaded India.

  Early in his tenure, Reza Shah established the Iranian National Bank (Melli) and by 1931 ordered the bank to take over the power of mintage for the Iranian currency, until then in the hands of the Bri
tish. The jewels were at the time used as the main backing for this currency. But as the Iranian currency was rapidly losing its value, the new Shah was busy trying to convince the people and the parliament that his father had not pilfered the royal jewels. In Isfahan, Reza Shah, at the apparent urging of the British, was begrudgingly transferring all of his assets to his oldest son, the Shah.

  To assuage public fears about the allegedly missing Crown Jewels, a committee of trusted public servants and twelve members of the Majlis were chosen to take a reliable inventory of the jewels and to establish whether any were actually missing. After several visits to the National Bank depository, where the jewels were held, the committee concluded that none of the jewels were missing and cleared Reza Shah of any wrongdoing.16

  While it has been something of a favorite national pastime in Iran to see the “British hand” behind every political turn of event, and while the Shah and his father both attributed much of what happened to them at least partially to the British hand, the decision to raise the issue of the Crown Jewels against Reza Shah was one of the cases where the British were indeed involved. When the British Embassy learned of the committee’s findings, and of the planned appearance by Iran’s Acting Minister of Finance before a session of the Majlis to “swear that Crown Jewels are still in the bank,” Sir Reader Bullard sent an urgent telegram to the Foreign Office, saying “it is probably true that such jewels as were deposited were still there, but I believe that many of the most valuable had been taken by the Shah and made up into tiaras etc. and that these were in fact sent away when ladies of the royal family left.” The Ambassador then offered the draft of what should be broadcast over the BBC. The broadcast, Bullard suggested, should declare, “It is alleged that Crown Jewels are still in the banks of Tehran. What public want to know is whether all the Crown Jewels were ever deposited in the bank? Were some kept back? Was it these that were taken away from Tehran recently by the chief of Police who made a mysterious journey? There must be a list of the Crown Jewels. Public enquiry is essential.”17

  Even in recent years, critics of Reza Shah have continued to insist that “the best parts” of the jewels “had already been taken by Reza Shah” before a full inventory was even taken. The evidence for these later allegations, as well as for those made by the British Embassy, is little more than guesswork and innuendo.18

  The British had two apparent motives for their unusual “interest” in Iran’s Crown Jewels. The British wanted a free hand in running Iran, and a self-assured Shah was the last thing they wanted. Moreover, in those days, the British government was engaged in a tug of war with Iranian officials over the rate of exchange between the two countries’ currencies. Hoping to lessen the cost of keeping their soldiers in Iran, the British pressured Iranian officials to devalue the Iranian currency. Surely if the Crown Jewels, as the Iranian currency’s main backing, were pilfered, then the value of the Iranian currency would fall.

  In Isfahan, one of Reza Shah’s biggest concerns was obviously the fate of his fortune. Not long after his arrival, lawyers and notaries carrying files and forms began arriving at his residence—the house of the Kazeruni family, successful Iranian textile manufacturers who had greatly benefited from Reza Shah’s policy of support for domestic industries. Moreover, a tailor was called to make Reza Shah a civilian suit. Ever since joining the Cossack Brigade as a boy, and all through his days as a king, he had usually never worn anything other than his military uniforms, most of them made from fabric manufactured by the Kazeruni industries. Even the socks he wore were those made of coarse wool and used by soldiers. When in exile, he needed new socks, and Fereydoon Jam bought him some from the local store. Reza Shah, shocked at the price paid for them, rejected the whole package, asking instead for the rough-woven wool socks of his past.19 Knowing his taste, Jam said, “I had not even bought him fancy socks. Nevertheless he refused to wear them.”20 Reza Shah was also uncomfortable in the new suits that were hurriedly tailored for him. His shrunken power, maybe the weight of his grief, seemed to have shrunken his body. In every picture after he was “un-kinged,” his body seems barely able to hold up his drooping suits.

  Having surrendered his power, he was now forced to surrender his wealth. In a terse note, he transferred the ownership of all his properties, whether in cash or in real estate, stocks, or bonds, to his oldest son, the new Shah. A key “facilitator” of this transfer was Ebrahim Qavam—nominally his daughter’s father-in-law and the same man who had “negotiated” on his behalf in Tehran on the eve of the country’s occupation. By then all semblance of a relationship between Gavam’s son, Ali, and Reza Shah’s daughter, Ashraf, had ended. Even in signing the “deed of donation” that transferred his wealth, Reza Shah tried to justify his virtual confiscation of about 2,000 of the country’s most fertile and beautiful villages at a nominal price throughout his tenure. He wrote that since ascending the throne, he aimed only at the development, prosperity, and growth of the country, and he took over the properties “as an example, and model for the landlords.”

  By the time the Crown Prince returned home from Switzerland, his father, the once-poor soldier who had lived in a rented house when his first son was born, had become the richest man in Iran. The U.S. Ambassador in Tehran at the time, reporting on Reza Shah’s economic activities, wrote, “There was little of value in the country, in fact, in which he was not interested. His greed knew no bounds and in addition to acquiring a large part of Mazandaran, he bought city properties, built hotels and operated factories. . . . [He] took any and all lands he wanted to his avaricious bosom under formal or implied threat of some kind of harm to the owners. He paid whatever pleased him to pay, usually a tenth or twentieth part of the value.” After Reza Shah’s abdication, when the issue of his wealth became the subject of a heated national debate, the Iranian Prime Minister told the parliament that Reza Shah had cash deposits in Iranian banks amounting to “the unbelievable sum of 68 million rials (4.25 million dollars).”21 This amounted to 46 percent of the entire liquidity of the Iranian government. Other scholars have offered even larger figures for the total amount of money amassed by Reza Shah in his accounts in Iran. One source, for example, claims that the $4.25 million figure referred only to Reza Shah’s savings account, and that there was another 85 million rials ($5.3 million) in his checking account.22 This fantastic but contested fortune now belonged to the young Shah.

  In the “deed of donation” prepared in the “office of the public Notary no. 17” in the city of Isfahan, with Mahmoud Jam acting as a witness, Reza Shah offered as “gift and present” to his eldest son all his “properties and chattels, whether moveable, immovable, factories, etc. whatsoever,” in return for “10 grams of sugar” that he may apply them “in charitable, national education etc. in such manner as he may deem it expedient.”23 In the parlance of Shiite legalese, this practice, common in Iran, was called habe kardan—making a coerced transfer of property legitimate by making it appear as a voluntary sale in exchange for the payment of a cube of sugar.

  In monarchies, political primogeniture is the norm; but this was a case of economic primogeniture, in which millions of dollars were bequeathed to one son, and everyone else in the large, sometimes bickering family of his three living wives, was left virtually penniless. At the time the transfer took place, the Shah’s siblings did not complain about their father’s decision. After a few months, when the political dust of succession had settled, Reza Shah’s other sons and daughters as well as his other living wives began to grumble about the arrangement, demanding their share of the inheritance. Reza Shah retracted, and ordered the young Shah to transfer to each sibling a million tooman (about $500,000) and the deed to their individual palace within the Sa’ad Abad compound.24 The rest of Reza Shah’s vast fortunes remained in the Shah’s hands and, as he learned the hard way, the specter of the fortune continued to haunt him for the rest of his political life.

  By the time of Reza Shah’s abdication, the issue of this fortune had become so
controversial that the Shah ascended the throne only after promising, first to the British and Soviet governments and then to the people of Iran, that he would return all properties illegally confiscated by his father back to their lawful owners. The political landscape of Iran had in those days been changed by the plethora of newly formed opposition groups and papers that had burst onto the political scene. The British Embassy estimated the number of new parties to be more than a hundred. The most powerful of these parties was as much the creation of the Soviet occupying forces as the result of the newfound freedoms. It was called the Tudeh Party—the Party of the Masses. It was, in every aspect, Iran’s de facto new Communist party.

  Stalin was now an ally of the West and did not want to disturb the sensitive alliance between the socialist Soviet Union and its capitalist allies. As a result, he ordered the new Communist parties, as well as those already established, to pursue the policy of forging a united anti-Fascist front with all forces willing to resist Hitler and his allies. In Iran, one manifestation of this strategy was the new party’s decision to eschew any overt affiliation with the Communist name, lest it frighten away religious and moderate forces who could come together in the coveted united front. The fact that Reza Shah had passed a law banning any organization that espoused “a collective creed” added to the urgency of avoiding an overtly Communist collectivist ideology.