The Shah

by Abbas Milani

  From early 1948, the question of changing the constitution and increasing his power became something of an “obsession” for the Shah. Even in the eyes of George Allen, the American ambassador, who was usually sympathetic to the Shah, he had begun to “show almost alarming preoccupation” with the question of constitutional change.115

  Throughout 1948, the Shah used every occasion to convince the British and American Embassies about the wisdom, indeed the dire necessity, of his proposed constitutional change. By then he had found more than a few Iranian politicians willing to support his plans. During the month of October of that year, he threatened that “he would abdicate”116 if he did not receive the extra powers he demanded. At about the same time, he offered to give the Majlis “a four months ultimatum” to approve his proposal, otherwise he would resign. The American Embassy still tried to dissuade the Shah from his plans, telling him that “foreign policy and national defense were already firmly in his hands” and that seeking more power was unwise. Moreover, the embassy advised the Shah strongly against the idea of using “the threat of abdication.”117

  When the Shah decided he could not convince the American and British Embassies about the wisdom of his plans, he decided to proceed and “not to heed American and British advice” against the idea.118 Faced with the Shah’s intractable position, both embassies changed their minds and decided to support the idea. Ironically, Tehran was in those days rife with rumors that the Shah’s decision to increase his power was an order issued by the British.119 Their only suggestion was that, concurrently with the revision of the constitution, the Shah should also demand the establishment of a Senate. The 1905-07 constitution had called for the creation of such an institution, but it had never been established.

  By April 1949, the Shah finally succeeded in convening an amenable Constituent Assembly for the specific purpose of changing the constitution, augmenting his own power and diluting the power and independence of the Majlis. In his speech to the opening session of the Assembly, after conjuring the “sacred and unchanging principles of the Beneficent faith of Islam,” the Shah told the members that after contemplating the problems of the country over the last few years, he had concluded that the “most elemental cause of the country’s problems has been an imbalance between the powers of the three branches of government.” A new constitutional amendment augmenting the power of his office would, he said, allow the country to find its place amongst the genuine democracies of the world and allow the government to work for a more just and equitable distribution of wealth in the country.120 But the argument was specious at best. Constitutional experts have long argued that in a democracy, where checks and balances between the three branches diminish the possibility of despotism, the power of the executive to dissolve the parliament can be “democratic” only if, in the process of dissolution, the fate of the executive is put to a new vote. In the absence of such provision, the right to dissolve the parliament leads to despotism.121

  In the case of Iran, the carefully “picked” Constituent Assembly not only gave the Shah the power to dissolve the Majlis at will, but also called for the creation of a Senate—a body composed of sixty senators, thirty of whom were appointed by the Shah, thus affording him yet another mechanism with which to influence the legislative process and dilute the power of the popularly elected Majlis.

  Opposition to the Shah’s plans to increase his power was not limited to Western embassies. Many in Iran, particularly amongst the opposition, also spoke against the proposed change. None, however, spoke as frankly and as prophetically as Qavam. From Paris, he wrote a missive, in the form of an open letter to the Shah, accusing him of breaching the constitution and usurping powers that even a despot like Mohammad Ali Shah—notorious for trying to roll back every democratic component of the Constitutional Revolution—had not dared claim for himself.122 Such a power grab, Qavam predicted, would have dire consequences for the Shah.

  The Shah did not deign to respond but had his Court minister, Ebrahim Hakimi, write a biting letter accusing Qavam of treason and of conspiring with the Soviets in the Azerbaijan crisis. Moreover, Qavam was stripped of his title of Hazrat-e Ashraf. Qavam wrote back in a no-less-defiant tone, reminding the Shah of the letter he had written commending Qavam for his work in solving the Azerbaijan crisis. True to form, Qavam went on to claim that “he, and no one else” was responsible for the solution of that crisis. Iranian papers at the time were ordered to publish only the Shah’s response, not either of Qavam’s angry epistles.

  Parallel to the tumult in his public life, the Shah’s private life too was undergoing profound changes. On the one hand, Queen Fawzia still refused to return home. The Shah had made numerous gestures of reconciliation. In those days, he confided to the British Embassy, in his mind, the Queen Mother is “probably the main obstacle to [the] return of the Queen.”123 So disturbed was the Shah about his mother’s interferences that he compared her to Qavam, complaining that his “position is becoming increasingly delicate between an experienced and ambitious Prime Minister on the one hand and a vindictive and domineering mother on the other.” Together, he said, they have “reduced [me] to an insignificant role.”124

  According to sources in Cairo, the real reason for Fawzia’s refusal to return “was not only the Queen Mother but also a Persian lady with whom the Shah had an affair.”125 Tehran was in those days a small town and was awash in rumors of the Shah’s flings, of sightings of the Shah cavorting around town in one of his several fancy convertibles with a young Persian lady at his side. Of these, the most infamous was Parvin Ghafari, whose infinite appetite for gossip and self-adulation is evident in the salacious memoir she was allowed—some say forced—to publish after the Islamic Revolution.126

  Ultimately, the British decided not to burn “their fingers” in trying to mediate between the Shah and his estranged queen. Aside from the blonde paramour, there was talk of wild parties and high-stakes poker games at the Court. None of these rumors were likely to encourage the British to intercede or the Queen to return to Tehran. With their customary caution, British officials knew what every wise man or woman knows: trying to mediate between estranged couples can only earn one “the dislike of both parties.”127

  Learning of the British reluctance to mediate, the Shah decided to send his own emissary to Cairo. It was known that King Farouk was against the idea of his sister’s return. The reason for the opposition was not known, of course. The Shah’s twin sister claims that Farouk’s unrequited love for her was one of the main reasons. No sooner had Ashraf met Farouk, who was by then already married, than “he started talking about love and marriage.” When she turned him down, Ashraf claims, he took up with another woman and was bent on divorcing his wife; and wanting to avoid being the first Muslim king to divorce his wife, Farouk, in this rather fantastic story, ordered his sister to divorce her husband. In reality, by then many Muslim kings—including Princess Ashraf’s own father—had divorced their wives many a time. But regardless of the reason, Fawzia refused to come back, and the Shah wanted to at least appear to have made a serious effort to bring her back and therefore sent a special emissary.

  He chose Dr. Gassem Ghani for the job; he was a respected physician and scholar who had been part of the party sent in 1939 to bring the newly betrothed Fawzia to Iran. According to Dr. Ghani, he had all but convinced Fawzia to return when suddenly she received a letter from Iran. No sooner had she read the letter than she announced her categorical decision not to return to Iran. By then she had been estranged from her daughter for several months, and even the idea of seeing her child again was not enough of an enticement. Many have suggested that the Shah’s mother was the author of the letter, while others point to one of the Shah’s sisters who had earlier, in a fit of anger, broken a vase over Fawzia’s head.128 The content of the letter is not known, but it is rumored to include a lurid account of the Shah’s continued philandering. In those days, the British Embassy in Cairo was told that the reason for the divorce was t
hat “the Shah besides being much preoccupied with a Persian lady wishes to marry a Persian woman and get a son wholly Persian.”129

  One reason the Shah was keen on having Fawzia back was to stop the spread of damaging rumors in Tehran about “the real” reason for the Queen’s departure. While Fawzia was in Tehran, the Shah, ever busy with his own philandering, had asked a close friend, a member of his inner circle, to keep the Queen company. Whispers in Tehran had it that an unexpected emotional attachment had developed between the “keeper,” a handsome, athletic young man, and his ward. Many who know Fawzia best dismiss these allegations as nothing short of vicious rumors. “She is a lady,” her son-in-law, Ardeshir Zahedi, said, “and never veered from the path of purity and fidelity.”

  Finally, on November 17, 1947, what had been till then an open secret in Tehran took on the authority of fact when an official communiqué announced the dissolution of the Shah’s marriage to Queen Fawzia. The weather, it turned out, was the real culprit! The Queen, it said, had left Iran three years ago after a long ailment, and on the orders of her physician, who believed a change of climate would help her heal faster. Now the same doctors had, according to the communiqué, decided that Tehran’s “weather is damaging to her health” and forbade her to return. Never was “weather” imbued with such a rich array of metaphorical meanings. Because of this climatic exigency, “His Royal Majesty has decided that she should forgo returning to Tehran. The marriage, by mutual accord was dissolved.”130

  With the luxury of hindsight, writing in his 1961 memoirs, the Shah offers an altogether different reason for his divorce. It was, the Shah writes, her inability to produce a son that caused the breakup. He writes of the birth of a beloved daughter, Princess Shahnaz, as “the only happy light moment” of his marriage to Fawzia, adding that “for reasons that are still not clear, Princess Fawzia could not produce a male child . . . in spite of the doctor’s concentrated effort,” and thus, “pressured by my advisors” when Fawzia “returned to Egypt, we decided to divorce.”131 In a strange twist of fate, a few years later when Fawzia did remarry, that time to an Egyptian man, their first and only child was a boy.

  Whatever the reason for the divorce in 1947, the daily grind of his ongoing political battles was making the Shah often look tired and spent, someone who needed “a complete change to cut himself off for a while from the intrigues” that surrounded him.132 To those who saw him in those days, he seemed like a “pathetic figure but sympathetic, if one could feel that there was anything solid there.” Events since the end of the Second World War had certainly tested the “solidity” of his character. The next few years would test it even further.

  Chapter 9

  PALACE OF SOLITUDE

  Fear not, my Lord. That power that made you king

  Hath power to keep you king in spite of all.

  Shakespeare, King Richard II, 3.2.27–28

  In 1950, the Shah’s political and private life experienced drastic changes. His wandering bachelor days came to an end, and his political life became dominated by oil. Iranian politics in the second half of the forties had become increasingly overshadowed by the question of oil and the country’s attempt to wrest its increasingly valuable oil industry away from British monopoly control. The intransigence of the British and their inability to see the depth of the sentiment for this cause only made the Shah’s life more complicated. The wave of nationalism that swept the countries of the Third World in the aftermath of World War II helped Iranian nationalists. By 1950, in spite of the role many different individuals had played in the oil saga, Mohammad Mossadeq was the undoubted leader and symbol of Iran’s quest to nationalize its oil.

  At the same time, the Shah, having just pushed through an amendment to the constitution increasing his own power, riding a wave of pro-royalist sentiments after surviving an assassination attempt, and thinking that he had finally rid himself of the troublesome Qavam, was working fast behind the scenes to increase his hold on power. He had by then launched the Senate, mandated in the 1906 constitution but not materialized until 1949. His parliamentary power increased as the law allowed him to name thirty of the sixty senators. In his first years on the throne, Britain and the United States had advised him to remain a constitutional monarch, but now, with the rise of nationalist and communist sentiments in Iran, both countries wanted and encouraged the Shah to be more forceful. In the ebb and flow of the time’s unstable political situation—five prime ministers in a two-year parliamentary term—the Shah tried to carve out for himself an indispensable, unique role. The Cold War was in full force, and the Shah tried to position himself as the last bastion against the Communist threat in Iran. By August 1953, the increasing power of the Tudeh Party, the death of Stalin, the Soviet Union’s muscular policy in Eastern Europe, the victory of Mao Zedong in China, the Korean War, and the beginning of anti-colonial wars in Southeast Asia all inadvertently helped the Shah.

  As documents from the U.S. and British archives show, both countries concluded as early as March 1951 that the Shah was the West’s best hope in fighting the Communist threat in Iran. In a directive to the U.S. Embassy in Tehran at the time, for example, Secretary of State Dean Acheson stated that “the only person who could provide the requisite leadership under the current circumstances is the Shah and we believe that the US and Britain should support him in every feasible way.”1 It was in this spirit that Acheson noted that it was “of vital importance to make clear that any aid by the United States was given to the Shah and the Iranian people . . . not Mossadeq.”2

  At the same time, at least in the State Department, there was also a small faction insisting that the best way to stop the Communists in Iran was not to support the Shah, but to go all out in support of Mossadeq. Early in 1953, this faction was still arguing against an attempt to topple Mossadeq. Instead, they suggested that the United States should give him sufficient assistance to stand up to the Tudeh Party. That group lost the argument, at least partially as a result of Mossadeq’s occasional efforts to frighten the United States by flirting with the Tudeh or even the Soviet Union. The rise of John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen to the top of the American foreign policy establishment and their distrust of nationalists as bulwarks against Communism also played a key role in defeating the strategy of the pro-Mossadeq faction in the State Department. But the most important reason for the group’s failure was the success of the British government in portraying them as naïve and their ideas as “silly.”3 The more Mossadeq lost his viability as a bastion against Communism, the more the Shah benefited.

  In domestic politics too, the Shah was looking for an alliance with all opponents of Communism. He even tried to find some allies amongst some of Mossadeq’s supporters—social democrats who had initially joined the Tudeh Party in the mistaken assumption that it was an independent voice for change and justice, and democrats who had joined the National Front in the belief that it was the voice of Iranian democracy. These two disgruntled groups had joined forces to form what they called the “Toilers’ Party.” Mozzafar Baghai, a powerful orator, a professor of political ethics at Tehran University, and one of the most influential leaders of the oil nationalization movement, and Khalil Maleki, an estranged leader of the Tudeh Party and one of Iran’s most dedicated and erudite social democrats, were the most eminent leaders of this party. Before the party split in two—with Baghai leading one faction and Maleki the other—the Toilers’ Party was the most formidable adversary and challenger of the Tudeh Party. Another key element of the Toilers’ Party’s political platform was support for Mossadeq and the effort to nationalize Iran’s oil. In the months before August 1953, Baghai broke with Mossadeq and became one of his chief critics, while Maleki, though critical of some of Mossadeq’s tactics, remained loyal to him.4

  During this period the Shah tried to monitor closely the work of leftist groups through the military’s intelligence unit (Rokne do). Pakravan was in charge of that unit and a close ally of the Shah. He was also a member of a
highly covert network of officers loyal to the Shah and opposed to the Communists. Membership was by invitation only and was solemnized during secret rituals reminiscent of Masonic rites. This network became increasingly important in the Shah’s effort to maintain control of the army during the heady days of confrontation with Mossadeq.5

  While fighting Communism was high on the Shah’s mind, Iran was bedazzled by Mossadeq’s nationalization movement and his battle with the British. The American government, aware of Mossadeq’s rising appeal and the tide of nationalism sweeping the world, tried to convince the British to make some grand gesture of conciliation, some indication that they recognized the legitimacy and power of the movement. After much intransigence, the British finally agreed to start negotiations for a new oil agreement with Iran. But as British archival documents clearly show, their strategy from the onset was to pay lip service to the nationalist movement while maintaining their control of Iran’s oil.

  A note by Dean Acheson, written in November 1951, offers a remarkably clear-eyed view of the British government’s vision of Iran. He writes of Churchill roaring like “a wounded lion,” and of the British government’s “truculent braggadocio.” He argues that the “cardinal point” of British policy is “not to prevent Iran from going commie . . . [but] to preserve what they believe to be the last remaining bulwark of British solvency.” He writes of the decline of the British Empire and of Britain’s unwillingness to accept anything but Mossadeq’s defeat.6 The British even refused to allow Iran to examine the oil company’s books—claiming such examination would threaten their national security.