by Abbas Milani
Some of these efforts were contrary to the pledge the Shah had made to the nation and to the Allies. He had promised to forgo the authoritarian political habits of his father and become instead a constitutional monarch. During those early years, the Shah would often repeat the idea that democracy and the rule of law were the best form of government for Iran. The “most suitable form of government,” the Shah said on more than one occasion, “is democracy,” where “the spiritually rejuvenating winds of freedom blow.”41 In his first speech after taking the oath of office, he declared, “I find it necessary to strictly adhere to the principles of the constitution and the separation of power.”42
In spite of these pledges, about four weeks after taking the oath of office, the Shah sent a secret message to the British Ambassador, “saying that he would like to see [him] fairly often, alone, and without the knowledge of politicians. . . . He wished he said to have the support of the British empire and to work in close agreement with His Majesty’s Legation with greatest discretion.”43 The ambassador, Sir Reader Bullard, rejected the offer, saying “it would not be possible for him to be received without the knowledge of the Persian cabinet, and of my Soviet colleagues.”44 A few days earlier, on October 9, the Shah had tried to form a de facto alliance with the British against the Soviet Union. In both of these meetings, another aspect of the Shah’s mature political style began to manifest itself, as in both discussions, the young Shah “showed a preoccupation with army matters.” The conversations, according to Bullard, were “far too much about the army.”45
The Shah’s attempt to form a discreet alliance with the British must be understood in the context of his mental state in those days. The British reminded him, more than once, that the humiliating fate of his father could easily happen to him, and many of his advisors whispered into his ears that “the British [had] already brought about the abdication of three Shahs: Muhammad Ali, Ahmad Shah and Reza Shah.”46 The British government’s continued humiliation of Reza Shah, a man who cast a giant shadow on the mind of the Shah, was in those days another reminder of Britain’s intimidating power.
The Shah next tried the same tactic with the American Ambassador, offering to establish discreet ties with his embassy, against the Soviet and British influence, and without the knowledge of the Iranian cabinet. Once again, he was politely brushed off, and reminded that he must stay within the confines of the constitution. These early efforts, and many more in the course of the 1940s, strongly contradict the common perception that the Shah was, in the first twelve years of his rule, simply a shy and timid constitutional monarch, happy with his ceremonial role. In fact, from the moment he ascended the throne, though he was obviously in a weakened position with the occupying governments of Britain and the Soviet Union considering him to be on probation, and though both governments had often let him know that they expected him to abide by the constitution, the Shah made every effort to increase his power and regain as much of his father’s lost authority as he could. Even in those early days, he would often declare in private that, in Iran, progress is possible only when there is a powerful king. His skirmishes with Qavam, which began as soon as Qavam was named prime minister in August 1942, were a clear example of these early efforts.
The British Embassy, aware of the Shah’s fear and dislike of Qavam, tried to ensure that he survived as prime minister.47 On December 9, 1942, however, Qavam’s tenure all but ended in blood and defeat. On that day, food shortages in Tehran led to “bread riots”—an intermittent feature of Iranian politics since the time of the Constitutional Revolution. Moreover, since the advent of World War II, when food shortages had become a fact of life in Iran, Britain often used delivery of grain—much of it actually gifts to Iran from the United States—as a bargaining chip against the Iranian government. Now that very issue of grain and bread was undermining the British plan to keep Qavam in power.
The bread riots were accompanied by fairly serious looting; Qavam’s house was “denuded and set on fire.” The army and the police were conspicuous by their absence and by their failure to make any attempt to restore order.48 Considering the Shah’s domination of the military and security forces, the British Embassy concluded that the Shah was complicit in the bread riot and its violent turn against Qavam. “I cannot acquit the Shah of a share in the responsibility,” Bullard concluded.49
In the midst of the riots, the Shah summoned to the Court a number of the Majlis deputies and told them, “unless something drastic was done there could be a revolution from below,” and suggested “that a revolution from above would be better.”50 What the Shah meant by this “revolution” was made clear when, in the course of a subsequent meeting with the British Ambassador, he said that “a change of government” would be needed “to satisfy public opinion” and abort the revolution. In future years, the Shah would often refer to these words as his first call to revolution—a call that he claimed he could finally put into action in 1962.
The day after the bread riots, the British Ambassador was instructed to meet with the Shah urgently and tell him that his “attitude [was] most disappointing,” and that the Allies were dismayed at having “learned of the attitude taken by His Majesty during the recent disturbances.” The British had also learned that the Shah had been conspiring with members of the Majlis to bring about a vote of no confidence against Qavam. The Shah was to be told that should he try to use the Majlis and its “most irresponsible elements” against Qavam, the Allies would have no choice but to bring about the parliament’s “enforced dissolution.” Bullard was instructed to end with a not-too-subtle threat, telling the Shah, “it is now for him to assert himself in support of the Prime Minister who has the confidence of the Allies.”51
To the utter surprise of the British and Soviet Embassies, and contrary to the image of the young Shah as a mere malleable tool of the British, only an hour after meeting with Bullard and receiving the threatening message that virtually ordered him to support Qavam, the Shah called the Prime Minister to the Court and “pressed [him] to resign.”52 But Qavam was nothing if not ambitious, and, aware that he had the support of the Allies, he ignored the Shah’s pressures.
Faced with Qavam’s intransigence and with the British support for Qavam, the Shah tried another approach. He “sounded out Soviet ambassador about the possibility of forming cabinet with considerable military elements,” but without Qavam; there too he received what he considered a deeply discouraging response.53 What the Shah failed to realize in those days was that the Soviet Union, Britain, and America were unwilling to endanger their strategic alliance against Hitler simply for some tactical gain in Iran.
When the British heard about the Shah’s surprising moves against Qavam, even after he had been warned, they sent him a more threatening second message. He was told in so many words that Qavam was the choice of the Allies and must stay in power. This time the Shah saw the writing on the wall, and a few days later, in his next meeting with Bullard, he “admitted that he had committed an error of judgment” in “trying to remove Qavam after promising [the British] to keep” him. The reason, the Shah said, was that the riots had been “rapidly getting worse,” and “in the stress of the moment [Qavam] had failed to understand the situation as clearly as he should have.”54
But Qavam was not the Shah’s only problem. The Allies’ decision to arrest some 200 prominent Iranians on the charge of having pro-Nazi sympathies put the Shah in a quandary. Many of these figures were his staunch allies and supporters, and the Allies did not inform the Shah and the Iranian government of their arrest until after the fact. In Isfahan, when the Allied forces entered the house where the German spy Franz Mayer was hiding, they discovered documents showing “the existence in Persia of a wide organization” that was preparing a coup against the Allies by “seizing aerodromes, blocking roads.” Many prominent Persians were amongst those arrested for their alleged roles in the conspiracy. The wording of the British Embassy’s conclusion that the Shah himself did “not seem to be
directly involved” in the German conspiracy was hardly a sign of their strong trust or confidence in the Shah.55 Nevertheless, he registered his dismay at the arrests.
In his attempt to navigate between increasingly brazen Soviet and British pressures on him, the Shah found assistance from an unexpected source. In 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt sent General Patrick Hurley as his personal emissary to Iran. Hurley was an odd and eccentric character. He had made a fortune as an attorney and joined the army in World War I. By the time he was sent to Iran on his mission, he was a general. His cowboy hats and his aversion to the circumlocutions that are part and parcel of diplomatic discourse made him an oddity in Tehran and put him on a collision course with the British Ambassador.
In Tehran, Hurley was horrified by what he found: abject poverty amongst the people and arrogant disdain for the populations by the British and Soviet ambassadors. Even before Hurley’s arrival, officials in the U.S. Embassy had clashed with Britain over the American idea of replacing the corrupt political personalities that dominated the Iranian scene with younger, Westernized technocrats. The British dismissed these suggestions as absurdly utopian, a sign of America’s dangerous naiveté about Iran. Most of the personalities thus criticized by the American Embassy had long reputations of being “friendly” with the British.
As he attended to his sensitive role of managing the logistics of the 1943 Tehran Conference—with Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt all attending—Hurley began a series of meetings with Iranian officials, particularly the Shah. When Roosevelt came to Iran, Hurley briefed him on the situation. In fact, on his way out of Tehran, at the airport, Roosevelt had a long conversation with Hurley and then asked him to turn the gist of their conversation into a report about the future of U.S. policy in Iran. The often maligned and ignored Hurley Report became the first blueprint for American efforts to promote democracy in Iran and then the rest of the Muslim Middle East.
Hurley began his report by suggesting that Iran, as “a country rich in natural resources,” stood a good chance of becoming a free and independent nation with a government “based upon the consent of the governed.” Aside from the domestic scourge of illiteracy, the other obstacle to democracy in Iran was, according to Hurley, the machinations of the twin colonial powers of Great Britain and the Soviet Union. The General railed against the idea that noble American blood was being shed in the ignoble effort to maintain what he considered the moribund British Empire and the expansionist Soviet Union.
Roosevelt found the report interesting and along the lines of his own thoughts. He sent a copy to Churchill, maybe more in mischief than in earnest consultation, writing in an accompanying note, “This is for your eyes only. I rather like his general approach.” Churchill took umbrage at this clear snub. He waited almost three months before he chose to respond. Using his legendary wit, he wrote, “I make bold, however, to suggest that British imperialism has spread and is spreading democracy more widely than any other system of government since the beginning of time.” He ended his chiding note by insisting that Britain is certainly “no less interested than the US in encouraging Persian independence, political efficiency and native reform.”56
During these months, as the Shah fought on many fronts, he also had to contend with the issue of his father’s fate. The British seemed bent on doing everything they could to humiliate the once-proud Reza Shah. From the moment he had left Tehran, the British had controlled his every move, reminding him more than once that he was in fact no more than a prisoner of war. More than once, when Reza Shah asked about his destination, the young British officer who was “accompanying” him refused to answer, claiming ignorance. In reality, even as early as the time the entourage was in the city of Kerman, about seven hundred miles south of Tehran, the British had already decided that Reza Shah would be sent to Mauritius. A few days later, when Reza Shah and his family boarded the ship that was to take them away from Iran, they were not told their destination. When the ship—a cargo ship used for carrying mail—finally anchored off the waters of India, Reza Shah and his entourage wanted to disembark for a visit. In Tehran they had received visas for India. But now they were told that, in spite of their visas, they could not disembark, nor would “their destination . . . necessarily be India.”57 Distraught and angry, Reza Shah sent a tartly worded telegram to the British Viceroy of India, complaining about the treatment he had been receiving. “Before leaving Tehran,” he wrote, “I was informed through British Minister [in] Tehran that British Government agreed my going to America with my family, and it was on this understanding that I left Iran. Now I have been arrested at Bombay and have been told that I can not go to America.”58 Back in Tehran, the Shah made every effort to ensure his father’s physical safety, emotional sanity, and human dignity. The boat anchored off Bombay for five days, and Reza Shah spent most of the hot, humid days walking along the deck.
Eventually, Reza Shah learned that he was being sent to the island of Mauritius. Again he wrote to British authorities, asking whether the decision to send him there was “taken after I had left Iran . . . or whether it was in accordance with deliberate policy of British government?”59 He further reminded them that in Tehran, he had been promised safe passage to the Americas. In their internal deliberations, the British agreed that Bullard might have given Reza Shah the impression that he would be allowed a temporary stay in India, followed by permanent refuge in South America. But now they decided to tell the un-kinged Reza Shah that the British government had “never agreed that he should go to America.” While they were pondering his fate, the Secretary of State for Colonies informed the Governor of Mauritius that he had full discretion to restrict Reza Shah and his family’s freedom and that their correspondence must be fully censored and if “necessary, Persian speaking clerk should probably be sent from India.”60 For much of his seven-month stay on the island (September 1941 to April 1942), Reza Shah and his entourage received no communications from Tehran.
By then, the British found themselves in something of a quandary about Reza Shah. On the one hand, they worried that he was becoming part of another “Napoleon legend.” Persians, the British Embassy opined in its inimitable tone, “are not a logical race”;61 in another note during the same week, they called Persians “base people” who might now be inclined to create a Pahlavi legend.62 The British were in fact worried that Reza Shah is “now becoming popular again as the alleged victim of the British cruelty. The myth is being created that we got rid of the Shah because he defended the independence of Persia and wanted to modernize the country.”63
Bullard, as usual, favored the most brutal answer to the fallen Reza Shah’s request. He wrote, “We are not under any obligation, moral or contractual, expressed or implied, in this matter. The Shah may say that ‘when he abdicated to facilitate our plans, he put his trust in the British government to let him retire to any neutral country which he might select.’ But if the prisoner at the bar pleads guilty, that does not put the judge under any obligation to let him off hard labor, even if he may thereby have saved the Crown the trouble of a prolonged case.”64
However, after some time, the British attitude toward Reza Shah changed a bit. He was eventually allowed to receive letters and packages from Iran. In the first handwritten note he sent to his father, the new Shah wrote that “the grandeur and dignity Your Imperial Majesty’s presence had afforded Iran has now dissipated with your departure.”65 In the meantime, Reza Shah and his son both pressured the British government to move the fallen king and his entourage to a new location. Eventually, the British succumbed to the wishes of the father and son and arranged for Reza Shah’s transfer to South Africa on April 10, 1942. South America and Canada were both ruled out, and South Africa was the only place, the British felt, safely far from Iran where they could keep close watch on the fallen Reza Shah.
The trip took eight days. Reza Shah was told there was German submarine activity in the area, causing considerable delay. They landed in Durban on April 18, 1942, and Reza
Shah was immediately taken by the gaiety and urban vivacity of his new place of exile. The house set aside for him was too small for his entourage, and a new house was hard to find in the city. Ultimately, they moved to Johannesburg, where he and his family first stayed in a hotel and then rented two adjoining half-completed houses.
Even in Johannesburg, Reza Shah was depressed and despondent. In a letter from exile, written only seventeen days before his death, he wrote to his son about his fears of the future and offered some advice. He wrote of his own despondency, confessing that the only thing that kept him alive was the slim hope of one day seeing his son and the rest of the family again. Those who saw Reza Shah in South Africa describe a broken man, bereft of any desire to live. “Without a hope of seeing you,” he wrote to the Shah, “I would no longer have any attachment to life.”66 While heaping praise on his son for his love of country and his youth, he also warned against the danger of listening to sycophants. He asked his son to fortify his courage, fight his anxieties, and remain strong. “Be firm and steadfast,” he told his son, “fear nothing, as a single mistake by you might well destroy our efforts of twenty years and sully our family name; never succumb to anxiety; remain so resolute that no force can change your determined will.”67 But in trying to heed his father’s last wishes and maintain the throne and preserve the dynasty, the Shah was fighting against not just a destiny determined by his character but also a strong current of Iranian history that underscored the crisis of monarchy as an institution.
