The Shah

by Abbas Milani

  It was not only the British and American governments that resisted the Shah’s “feelers” about the idea of replacing Zahedi; the General had a powerful faction in the Majlis itself. According to the British Embassy, for example, the Majlis was divided among three groups—“the Shah’s men, who are in the majority, Zahedi’s supporters, and still a small ‘nationalist intellectual’ opposition.”101

  Aside from Zahedi’s insistence on keeping all the constitutional powers of a prime minister in his own hands—he in fact demanded that the Shah must reign and not rule—there were a number of other issues that created friction between the Shah and his prime minister. Arguably the most intractable problem was the Shah’s insistence on appointing Abolhassan Ebtehaj to the crucial post of director of Plan Organization, where he would have control of much of the government’s purse. Zahedi was adamantly opposed to the appointment. The Shah won the battle, but Zahedi continued to complain about Ebtehaj, and the issue became a major cause of tension between the Shah and the Prime Minister.

  When his initial efforts to replace Zahedi failed, the Shah decided to wait until his return from a trip he and Soraya wanted to take to Europe and the United States. Many of his advisors opposed the idea of such a trip.102 It was too soon after the traumas of August, and the intended three-month journey was deemed unduly long. The Shah was not convinced. He kept repeating that the Queen was tired and needed some rest.

  The Shah’s desire to make the trip also met with some resistance from the British and American Embassies. On July 3, 1954, the Shah first told the U.S. Embassy of his plans “for an informal and unofficial visit to the US,” emphasizing that he hoped to make the trip only after “an agreement is reached on the oil dispute.” When consulted about plans for the trip, President Eisenhower’s response was clear: the Shah should make the trip only “after there is an oil settlement.”103

  By then, the outline of the oil agreement was clearly emerging. All evidence indicates that the Shah and the Iranian regime generally had little role in the agreement, save the decision to sign it. On February 24, 1954, a message from Secretary of State Dulles to the U.S. Embassy in Tehran offered the outline of what Britain and the United States had agreed to in their February 19 aide-mémoire. Dulles declared that the “US government is prepared to support participation by AIOC to the extent of 40 percent.. . .American companies will participate to the extent of 40 percent. As to the remaining 20 percent, US would hope that most of it could be taken by Shell, thus increasing British shares.” Whatever remained would be given to smaller oil companies, including one in France. A remaining unresolved issue was the thorny question of compensation. Britain insisted on receiving it, and the Iranian government knew that public opinion in the country would make such a payment difficult if not impossible.104

  Not surprisingly, the basic structure of the eventual agreement that came to be known as the “Consortium Agreement” followed closely what Dulles had indicated in his note to the American Embassy in Tehran. Even the otherwise pliant Majlis was critical of the agreement. Rumors of kickbacks spread immediately. It was, for example, alleged that Ali Amini, Iran’s chief negotiator, had received $5 million for his role in ratifying the agreement—an allegation he and his son have strenuously rejected. His son argues in a well-researched but sympathetic biography of his father that the check was in fact for $5.4 million and that it was given to Amini not as a bribe, but as the first installment of a $45 million package of aid promised to Iran by the Eisenhower administration.105

  According to the British government, while the “common sense and courage of Ali Amini” deserved “full credit” for the passage of the controversial oil agreement, “ultimately [the] success of negotiations was determined by the Shah.” According to the embassy, “due in part to dishonest advice from interested Persian politicians and hangers-on at the Court,” the Shah had initially tried to “get a better arrangement by dealing directly with Britain.” The reference to the “hangers-on” at the Court was apparently a thinly disguised allusion to the episode with Perron and Shahrokh.106

  On September 21, 1954, Amini, in his capacity as Iran’s chief negotiator, presented the details of the agreement to the parliament. He admitted that the agreement was not “what the people had desired.” An ideal agreement, he said, would only be possible when Iran could compete with the major economic powers of the world.107 A consortium of predominantly American and British companies was granted control over the sale and production of oil in a big part of Iran. A separate agreement called for Iran to pay AIOC £21 million of compensation for lost revenues during the Mossadeq era. The company in fact claimed its real losses to have been double that amount; as a gesture of goodwill, it would accept less than half the total amount. The Shah was insistent that he would only sign the agreement if the consortium fully accepted Iran’s sovereign rights over its oil and acknowledged its function to be the agent of the Iranian government.108 Nevertheless, the Shah and Amini both insisted that the Consortium Agreement was not an ideal deal but simply the best deal Iran could get at that time. They tried to lay the blame for any flaws in the agreement on Mossadeq—his government had left the country so weakened, the Shah argued, that the new government had its back to the wall and had no choice but to agree to a flawed deal.

  As the complicated details of the consortium deal were being worked out, the April 19, 1954, issue of Life magazine displayed a picture of a notorious figure known as Sha’ban “the brainless one,” suggesting that he was one of the many street toughs who had played a key role in ensuring Zahedi’s victory on August 19, 1953.109 The Shah tried to use the article as an excuse to dismiss Zahedi. He sent Court Minister Hussein Ala to see Loy Henderson and suggest that Zahedi must be replaced “by someone. . .more acceptable to the West.” Ala intimated that, in the Shah’s view, the delay in realizing an agreement between Iran and the oil companies was caused by the reluctance of the companies to deal with Zahedi. Henderson emphatically rejected the idea and indicated his utter surprise at the Shah’s most recent ploy to get rid of the Prime Minister. Moreover, Henderson said, it was “the Shah rather than [the] Prime Minister” who was likely to play the decisive role in “achieving a settlement.”110

  In confirming his role in the passage of the consortium deal, the Shah wrote that at the time, “President Eisenhower sent me a letter expressing his personal appreciation for my efforts in resolving the oil problems caused by Mossadeq’s government.”111

  After four weeks of sometimes rancorous debate in the Majlis, the Consortium Agreement was finally ratified in late October and signed into law by the Shah on October 24, 1954. With the oil issue behind him, and with the failure of his latest ploy to be rid of Zahedi, the Shah decided to go to America before the end of the year and leave the resolution of his problem with the Prime Minister until after his return.

  All obstacles to the trip the Shah and Soraya so anxiously wished to make seemed to have disappeared. But then, on November 2, the Shah’s only full brother, Ali Reza—and thus the only sibling who could by law succeed him on the throne—died in a plane crash. He had been traveling from the Caspian coast to Tehran. The weather was stormy, and airport officials had tried to dissuade the Prince from taking off, but he did not heed their warnings. That night, the royal family was gathering at the home of the Queen Mother to celebrate the Shah’s birthday. When Ali Reza, known for his punctuality, was late in arriving, everyone feared the worst. It took some time before the body and the wreckage could be located in the rugged mountains and dense forests that lie between Tehran and the Caspian Sea. Amongst the wild rumors that circulated before the discovery of the wreckage was that “the prince had flown to the Soviet Union.”112 Moreover, the Shah too was considered complicit in the alleged conspiracy to kill the dashing and ambitious Prince. Ironically, the death of his brother only made the trip to the United States more necessary; the need for an heir was now redoubled. The question of Soraya’s ability to bear a child was fresh on the Shah’s
mind and was one of the reasons for his urgent desire to visit the United States. Not long after their return to Tehran from Rome, at the end of a masked ball, the Shah had asked Soraya, “Isn’t it time we think of producing an heir to the throne?”113

  The Shah and Soraya finally commenced their long-anticipated journey on December 5, 1954. Only a handful of days of their three-month-long journey were given to official visits in the United States, Britain, and Germany. The remaining days were given to a star-studded trek across America. The list of celebrities that met with the royal couple included Bob Hope, Esther Williams, Humphrey Bogart, Grace Kelly, Lauren Bacall, and William Randolph Hearst Jr.—including a visit to his Xanadu. A crucial part of the trip for the Shah and Soraya was their visit to New York Hospital—twenty-five years later, on his deathbed, the Shah would not only visit the same hospital but would use the same suite of rooms.114 According to Soraya, after many examinations, the doctors assured the royal couple that there was nothing wrong with Soraya and that “everything will return to normal” once the Queen had recovered from the “shocks, upsets and vexations of the last two years.”115 She makes no reference to their visit to Boston where she was told that she could never have a child.

  The fact that the Shah was taking a surprisingly long vacation was the subject of some criticism even in the American press. Newsweek wrote sarcastically that “even the Shahanshah (King of Kings), Vice Regent of God, Shadow of the Almighty, and Center of the Universe deserves a vacation. [The royal couple have spent] this winter in a private visit to the US. . .physical check-ups in New York hospitals, sight-seeing in San Francisco, dancing the mambo in Hollywood, skiing in Sun Valley, waterskiing in Miami Beach.”116

  These trips were not without some problems. In one town, a woman claimed to have the Shah’s child. She was convinced to keep quiet about her claim.117 The Miami trip turned out to be far more adventurous than the royal couple had bargained for. Someone took a picture of the Queen waterskiing in a swimming suit. Some in the Shah’s entourage tried to buy the negative of the pictures from the photographer, but their effort came to naught. The political price of the photos became clear a few months after the return of the royal couple. At that time, when the Shah sanctioned a vicious attack on the Baha’i and as the international community, including the British and American governments and the United Nations, condemned the savagery, the Shah’s confidante, Alam, tried to explain the reason for the assault. He met with Denis Wright and “went over to a large refrigerator in [his] sitting room.. . .He extricated from it two American weeklies. . .he showed in one of them a photograph of Queen Soraya in the scantiest of bathing costumes; in the other, a photograph claiming that the Shah had fathered a child by a well-known American socialite.” Those stories found their way to Ayatollah Boroujerdi and a fiery cleric named Falsifi. The articles were used by the mullahs to blackmail the Shah into attacking Baha’i centers in Tehran and around the country.118

  During the Shah’s less pregnant negotiations with the Eisenhower administration, one of the key issues that soon emerged was the size of Iran’s military and the amount of aid the United States was willing to pay to strengthen and modernize it. The Shah sought bigger and bigger packages of aid, and a stronger military; the United States advised caution. It was U.S. policy to warn the Shah “against seeking to develop a military establishment which would become an undue burden on Iran’s economy.”119 At the same time, Eisenhower assured the Shah that the United States was committed to Iran’s security and saw the Zagros Mountains in Iran as the “first line of defense in the Middle East” against Soviet aggression.120 For the rest of his reign—with the sole exception of the Nixon era—the issue of Iran’s military budget and its relative size in comparison to expenditures on social programs remained a thorny issue between the Shah and the Americans. From the time of his 1954 trip, the Shah also canvassed the United States for a bilateral security agreement with Iran. Instead of such an agreement, the Americans agreed to join as an observer in what became known as the 1955 Baghdad Pact. As a result, not long after the Shah’s return to Iran, the country forfeited its century-old tradition of neutrality and officially joined the pact, causing the ire of the Soviet Union and many in Iran’s opposition.

  On February 12, 1955, the Shah left the United States for England aboard the Queen Mary. He and his entourage arrived there on the February 16 and stayed for no more than a week. The highlight of the trip was a dinner at Buckingham Palace, where Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden were amongst the guests. After Britain, it was Germany’s turn, with the royal couple arriving there on February 23. They stayed there for two weeks. It was something of a homecoming for Soraya. The trip included an emotional reunion between the Shah and his daughter, Shahnaz, who had been studying in Belgium. Soraya, jealous of the Shah’s divided attentions, threw an embarrassing tantrum on the night of the father–daughter reunion. Even after Shahnaz’s return to Iran, the Shah had a continuously hard time reconciling his fatherly duties with Soraya’s jealousies.

  The Shah returned to Tehran on March 12, 1955. It was raining, and he and his wife were afforded a warm welcome by thousands of people who had weathered the rain. General Zahedi was at the airport but was suffering from an attack of gout and was forced to rest in the royal pavilion as he awaited the arrival of the royal plane. A few weeks after his return, the Shah began his earnest move to force Zahedi’s resignation. Even before leaving on his trip, he had created a de facto committee whose composition was a surprising combination of his most trusted aides—like Ala and Alam—and a key minister of the General’s cabinet, Ali Amini. They called themselves the “polit-bureau,” and their job was to work with the media and members of the Majlis to prepare the ground for Zahedi’s dismissal. The Shah repeatedly complained to the British and American Embassies that the Zahedi government was incapable of bringing about the changes and the radical reforms the country needed. The Shah also complained about Zahedi’s “devotion to certain cronies among ministers”121 and the corruption of some of these cronies. The Americans took seriously the Shah’s complaint that Zahedi had surrounded himself with corrupt officials.122 The British, on the other hand, believed the issue of “corrupt cronies” was just an excuse for the Shah. The Shah, the embassy wrote, has himself more than his share of such “corrupt cronies.”123

  The Shah found another excuse to get rid of Zahedi when he learned at the airport of Zahedi’s gout.124 A third convenient excuse was a letter the Shah received from General Zahedi upon his return, “saying that either Mr. Ebtehaj must go or he [Zahedi] would resign.”125 In fact, the Shah soon learned that the rift between the two men had grown so bad that “the business of government had been brought to a standstill.” While British and American sources both confirm that the General did in fact send this ultimatum to the Shah, Ardeshir Zahedi rejects the idea, saying that he never saw such a letter and that writing such an ultimatum was “not in [his father’s] style.”126 What the General told General Teymour Bakhtiyar about this time confirms Ardeshir’s story. On March 23, the Prime Minister told Bakhtiyar that much of the tension in his relations with the Shah was the fault of Ebtehaj. Zahedi added that he could not understand why, “after all he had done for this country,” the Shah was so keen “to get rid of him.” He ended by saying that “if forced to resign, he would go not to Europe, but to South America, where he would be able to speak his mind about the present rulers of Persia.”127

  Less than a month after his return home, on April 6, the Shah made his final move to dismiss Zahehdi. The plan initially called for some of the Shah’s trusted men to ask Zahedi to resign, but none of these indirect pressures bore any fruit. Finally, the Shah decided to intervene directly and sent Alam to convince Zahedi to go gently into the sunset. After a couple of days of negotiations, drafts of the resignation letter and other details were worked out with the Shah’s indirect but full participation. Finally, on April 7, Zahedi resigned and, in circumstances strangely parallel to Mossadeq’s end, the
Shah used his power during a parliamentary recess to accept Zahedi’s resignation and appoint Hussein Ala as prime minister.128 In the words of the British Embassy, Ala was “the almost perfect” pliant tool—one who would allow the Shah to take “a direct and major part in governing the country.” By then, Ala was “well over seventy years old and had to immediately leave the country for medical treatment in Europe.” Even when back in Tehran, he “could not work for more than one or two hours a day.”129 The British Embassy tartly noted that following Zahedi’s departure, “the business of government. . .has in practice been carried out by the Shah with Alam. . .as his errand-boy. The Prime Minister has little or no responsibility or authority.”130

  With the Tudeh Party in retreat and most of its leaders fled to Eastern Europe, and with the National Front more or less defeated, the Shah used the occasion of a failed attempt on the life of Ala to order a crackdown on the radical Islamists in Feday’an-e Islam who were responsible for the botched plot. Their top activists and leaders were arrested; included on the list were Ayatollah Kashani; Navvab Safavi, the founder of the group; and Khalil Tahmasebi, General Razmara’s assassin. In those days, the Shah had his suspicions that “Saudi Arabian money” was being funneled to the Islamist group.131 The Iranian government could never find any proof of this allegation. However, it was true that Safavi had in fact traveled to Egypt, where he had met with Gamal Abdel Nasser and Seyyed Qotb, one of radical Islam’s most influential theorists and the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood (akhvan-al Muslemin). The British Embassy knew about these contacts and reported at the time that the Iranian group was “linked to the Moslem Brotherhood, receiving orders from them.”132 It is an interesting sign of Safavi’s influence that in a recent memorial to his legacy, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote that his foray into politics began when he heard a young cleric named Safavi give a rousing sermon in Mashad.