The Shah

by Abbas Milani

  But the Iraqi government was pressuring Lebanon to allow Bakhtiyar to continue on to Baghdad. Eventually, after nine months, Iraq won Bakhtiyar’s release and arranged for his travel to Baghdad. It is reported that “an estimated one million dollars in bribes” was given to the Lebanese President to ensure that he did not sign Bakhtiyar’s extradition papers for Iran.

  In Baghdad, Bakhtiyar redoubled his campaign against the Shah, but unbeknownst to him and his Ba’athist patrons, the circle of his aides and supporters was filled with SAVAK agents. According to one estimate, sixteen of Bakhtiyar’s closest aides, including his cook and his typist, were agents of SAVAK. Their order was to kill Bakhtiyar, for the Shah was becoming increasingly impatient with the General’s continued activities.

  Aware that the Shah was tightening the noose around him, in early 1970 Bakhtiyar tried to convince the Ba’ath Party to help him kill the Shah. Saddam Hussein, by then already the party’s second in command, rejected Bakhtiyar’s request.34 Finally, on August, 7, 1970, Bakhtiyar was shot by one of the double agents who had wormed his way into the General’s inner circle. Five days later, Bakhtiyar died; the Shah, according to Alam, rejoiced at the news.

  The successful assassination had come on the heels of some bad news from Iraq, where SAVAK had been behind a failed coup attempt. The man SAVAK had entrusted with the job of leading the coup had informed Ba’ath Party officials of the Iranian overture and had been instructed by Iraqi officials to become a double agent. The Iraqi security forces waited till the last minute and then arrested everyone involved with the coup attempt. All forty-one of those arrested were executed.35

  During this period, the Shah demanded and often received concessions from both the British and American governments. One of his earliest demands was for both countries to end their contacts with opposition forces inside Iran. Six years earlier, he had made the same demand, only to have both countries roundly reject the request. This time, however, the Shah was in a different, more powerful position. The United States not only ceased its contacts with opposition figures but began to reduce the number of intelligence officers assigned to work in Iran. By the mid-1970s, their total number in Iran had reached pre–World War II levels. Even embassy contacts with Ali Amini—by then an ex-prime minister with no political role and a judicial case pending against his wife—had become problematic for the Shah. He threw the equivalent of a diplomatic tantrum when, in 1968, Armin Meyer, the American ambassador in Iran, invited Ali Amini to dinner.36 Though the embassy calls the Shah’s reaction “byzantine,” something that “only a Persian mind can fathom,”37 it did decide to henceforth contact Amini only through an intermediary.38

  Worried that its relationship with the Shah might be endangered, Great Britain also chose “not to deploy any of its own intelligence service in Iran,” feeling they had “little option other than to rely on SAVAK.”39

  With virtually no contacts with the opposition, both Britain and America relied on reports they received from the Shah and from SAVAK, or on claims made by the opposition outside the country. If the Shah was overly optimistic and blind to his regime’s weakness, the opposition demonized the Shah and could not even entertain the possibility that he was making any positive changes in Iran. They even found a way to dismiss the Shah’s role in OPEC as yet another proof of his role as “a lackey of U.S. imperialism.” Higher oil prices, advocates of this theory proposed, were more of a burden on Europe and Japan, and thus the Shah’s insistence on higher prices was simply benefiting the United States.

  A good example of how the Shah and the opposition approached political questions can be found in the issue of political prisoners. The opposition outlandishly claimed that Iran had “hundreds of thousands of political prisoners,” whereas the actual number was closer to 4,000. No less exaggerated was their claim that thousands had been killed and tortured to death by SAVAK. The actual number of people executed for political crimes during the Shah’s thirty-seven-year reign was about 1,500—still a high number but less than the figure offered by the opposition.40 On the other hand, for years, when the Western media asked the Shah about the plight of political prisoners and torture in Iran, the Shah invariably dismissed the question by saying Iran had no political prisoners, only criminals.

  In Alam’s Daily Journals, there are numerous references to episodes, some involving shouts and tears, in which the Queen tried to convince the Shah that more must be done to reach a compromise with the opposition, particularly those in the intellectual class. The government agencies run by her friends or family, particularly Iranian National Radio and Television, managed by her cousin Reza Qotbi, and the Organization for the Intellectual Development of Children, managed by her childhood friend Lili Amir-Arjomand, were often the only place opposition intellectuals could find employment. Pressure on Qotbi to purge his staff increased substantially when SAVAK discovered and stopped a plot by a few television employees and camera crew to abduct the Queen and the Crown Prince.41 Even before this plot, Alam had been ordered more than once by the Shah to work with SAVAK and investigate the allegation that Iranian National Radio and Television was “infiltrated” and “dominated” by Communists.

  More than once in this period, the Queen asked the Shah to control the excesses of the police and SAVAK. For example, when the police raided a night club known as a hangout of Tehran’s jet set—what the British Embassy called the “jeunesse dorée of Tehran”—the Queen complained about police behavior. Not only had they shut down the nightclub, but they had physically abused the customers and forcefully “shaved a number of influential scions of hippy appearance.” That same day, Hossein Zenderudi, an acclaimed painter and a favorite of the Queen, was “seized by the police while traveling in a car and had his artistic locks chopped off in an insulting manner.”42 When the details of the story recounted by the Queen were confirmed, the Shah immediately ordered the dismissal of the chief of police. The gesture, according to Alam, “had a positive impact on the people.”43 The moral of the story, according to the British Embassy, was that “the permissive society with court backing seems to have won this round against the police.” The incident also was an example of the Queen’s increasing “interference in political matters on the side of liberalization.”44

  These events were all taking place during the Shah’s dramatic decade of rising power and independence between 1965 and 1975. One of the first signs of this new independence was his decision to sign a major economic and military deal with the Soviet Union. In return for the purchase of Iran’s gas, in 1965 the Soviets agreed to build a steel mill for Iran—something that had come to represent for both the Shah and his father a “dramatic symbol of Iran’s movement into the modern world.”45 No sooner had Britain and the United States learned the details of the deal than they tried to pressure the Shah to change his mind. The United States was particularly worried that such an agreement would be a first step in the Shah’s eastward tilt. The American Ambassador pleaded with the Shah to reconsider, pointing out that “Americans are human and there is not slightest doubt they would be deeply hurt that valued and admired friend like Shah has decided to trade in arms with our adversaries . . . particularly at the time when whole American nation is gripped by anxiety over Vietnam.”46 But the Shah refused to change his mind.

  In November 1965, the Shah had informed U.S. Ambassador Armin Meyer that he was uneasy about what he called a “growing estrangement between the US and Iran.” In addition to his grievance against John Kennedy for having forced Amini on him, the Shah described how, under pressure from the United States and its promise of aid, he had walked away from the 1959 agreement with the Soviet Union. Yet in the six years since, the United States had failed to live up to its promises. When, on March 16, 1966, Meyer raised some of Washington’s concerns about the new Russian deal, the Shah, “in a dark mood,” recalled how Eisenhower had rejected his pleas for help in constructing a steel mill.

  If the agreement with the Soviet Union was the most telling sig
n of the Shah’s newfound independence, the two big events he organized in that period—his coronation in 1967 and the celebration of 2,500 years of monarchy in 1971—signaled his emergence as a more self-assured figure of domestic dominance and international significance. The decline of the British Empire, the falling star of Nasser of Egypt, the U.S. entanglement in Vietnam, China’s growing tensions with Russia, and finally the rise in the price of oil all combined to encourage the Shah to become increasingly assertive. A belated decision to have his coronation was one sign of this new confidence. For a variety of reasons, his coronation had been delayed. In the forties, he was fighting to remain relevant and royal; in the fifties, early plans called for him to have a coronation concurrent with a party to celebrate twenty-five hundred years of monarchy.

  The coronation was an elegantly simple event, modeled after Reza Shah’s. The big difference was that this time the Queen was also being crowned as the regent. Indeed, on September 11, 1967, the leadership committee of the Constituent Assembly, convened especially for the purpose of revising the constitution, informed the Shah and the Queen that the requisite amendments to articles of the constitution had passed the assembly. One new article stipulated that the Crown Prince must be twenty before he could ascend the throne. Another article made the Queen regent in the event that the Shah died before the Crown Prince was of age. It was decided that the coronation would take place on the Shah’s forty-eighth birthday, October 26, 1967. The Crown Prince was to have a key role in the ceremonies and, perhaps not coincidentally, he was exactly the same age at the time as the Shah had been when his father crowned himself king and expected the young Crown Prince to play his role.

  The Shah had decided to make the coronation “a major but essentially domestic affair,” after “informal soundings in London, Copenhagen, and elsewhere showed that Her Majesty the Queen and other sovereigns” wouldn’t be able to attend with “such relatively short notice.” Moreover, he had insisted on avoiding any “waste and extravagance.”47 It has been estimated that the total cost of the event was £1,250,000.

  The most complicated elements of the event itself were the design of a new crown for the Queen and the construction of two royal horse-drawn carriages, which would carry the royal couple and the Crown Prince from their residential palaces to Golestan Palace, where the ceremonies were to be held. Finding someone capable of constructing the carriages was no easy task. The world’s most reputable builder of such carriages lived in Vienna and had to be coaxed out of retirement to build two carriages that would be at once traditional and royal and also comply with modern security requirements.48 Horses for the carriage were bought in Hungary.

  Making the Queen’s crown was less difficult. Under strict security, the Crown Jewels were given to one of the most famous jewelers in the world, Van Cleef & Arpels, who were asked to weave the invaluable gems into a design that was traditionally Persian as well as modern. While the Shah crowned himself, the Queen knelt before the Shah and received her crown from his hands.49 The event itself lasted no more than thirty-five minutes and went smoothly. All past prime ministers, with the exception of Ali Amini, had been invited.

  On October 28, the heads of diplomatic missions in Tehran met with the Shah to offer the gifts they had chosen to commemorate the coronation. They had earlier agreed to find something “personal from the head of the state for the Shah’s personal use.” While the British gave him a “silver-gilt fruit basket,” the Italians offered a “lapis lazuli and gold trinket box,” the Russians offered “a huge china umbrella stand, and the US gave a Tiffany-made silver-gilt bowl.” The oddest gifts were the King of Nepal’s “mounted rhinoceros horn” and Japan’s fresh apples. The Argentinean gift was lost in transit at Heathrow.50

  More flamboyant, expensive, and controversial than the coronation was the 1971 celebration of 2,500 years of monarchy in Iran. The idea, first conceptualized in 1959, had initially been rather limited in scope. A small number of the country’s elder statesmen, as well as the top officers of the government, were appointed by the Shah to the Committee to Celebrate 2,500 Years of Monarchy. Their task, in the Shah’s words, was to “celebrate our culture’s proud heritage” and show the world that “Iran’s continued existence and its national sovereignty is possible through the continuation of monarchy.”51 In the beginning, it was assumed that the Shah’s coronation would take place during the same celebration. But by 1966, the Shah had changed his mind.

  A decade after the formation of the committee, virtually nothing had been done to plan the celebration. The Shah lost patience, and with little forethought or consultation, ordered the celebration to take place in 1971. Suddenly, planners were faced with the reality that in some eighteen months, hundreds of dignitaries, many of them heads of state, and hundreds more journalists, were going to converge on Persepolis, the ancient capital of the Persian Empire. Nothing could be a more majestic reminder of Iran’s past imperial grandeur than the ruins of Persepolis. Yet, the nearest city, Shiraz, had no airport capable of handling the requisite large planes. There was only one luxury hotel, with no more than a couple dozen rooms, and even they did not measure up to the grand celebration the Shah had envisioned.

  According to the CIA, “tens of millions of dollars [were] spent on an airfield suitable for 707s”; new roads to and from the airport to Persepolis had to be expeditiously built.52 Contractors demanded and received extra money to work virtually around the clock to finish the projects on time. Then there was the question of security. Most of the heads of state would arrive in Shiraz late at night, and the road to their accommodations in the desert would be dark, and therefore dangerous; specialists from the oil company were brought in to line the road with temporary gaslight fixtures.

  The idea of building luxury hotels to house the hundreds of dignitaries was easily dismissed as impossible. Thus emerged the controversial notion of building a city of tents near Persepolis. The most expensive tentmaker in the world, Jansen AG of Switzerland, was asked to design not only small tents to house the guests, but a gigantic tent to host the gala dinner. The tents had to be fireproof and air-conditioned. They were designed to withstand winds of up to a hundred kilometers per hour.†, 53 Two hundred and fifty Mercedes-Benz bulletproof limousines were bought to ferry about the heads of state. While Limoges was ordered to design special serving plates, Haviland supplied china cups for coffee. Fancy linen and towels were ordered from Porthault, and “several thousand glasses were ordered from Baccarat.”54 It had been the Queen’s order that the guests must all “feel they are staying in a palace.” A French designer was commissioned to make two sets of thirty dresses “for the ladies in waiting,” one for lunch and one for dinner. Elizabeth Arden was hired to set up a beauty salon with forty stylists ready to service the ladies at a moment’s notice.

  After the site for the tent city had been picked, a new problem reared its head. The organizing committee found that the patch of wilderness they had designated was a notorious den of venomous snakes. According to one member of the committee, the area was treated with a special spray, developed for the occasion, and then “a five ton truck was used” to carry away the snakes, lizards, tarantulas and other dangerous denizens of the desert.55

  The extravagant expenditure of millions of dollars turned what had begun as an attempt to assert Iran’s imperial past, educate the world and Iranians themselves about Iranian history, and herald the arrival of a new and greater Iran, into an embarrassment for the Shah and a bonanza for his opposition. The 2,500 schools and clinics that were to be built, the 2,500 books that were commissioned on every conceivable facet of Iranian society and history, and the launch of Acta-Iranica—a truly remarkable encyclopedia of Iran—were overshadowed by the rumor and reality of corruption and the embarrassment of nouveau riche extravaganza.

  It has been a common adage of Iranian history that the soul of the nation was riven between a Zoroastrian first millennium and an Islamic second millennium. A key goal of the 2,500 celebration, in
the words of one of its originators, Shojaedeen Shafa, was to accentuate the pre-Islamic imperial grandeur of Persia to the detriment of its Islamic component. It was hoped that this celebration would mark and buttress the notion of a third millennium of imperial Persian grandeur based on the Pahlavi dynasty’s modern and secular narrative of identity. But, ultimately, the celebration ended up having the opposite effect—it played right into the hands of the opposition. Indeed, less than a decade later, when the new clerical regime came to power, it set out to banish from Iranian history any allusion to the imperial Zoroastrian past and instead accentuate the role of Islam in shaping Iranian identity.

  Both the Shah and the opposition waged an elaborate public relations war about the ceremony. Ayatollah Khomeini issued a statement asking heads of state to boycott what he called “the devil’s festival.” The Confederation of Iranian Students tried to mobilize the Iranian diaspora and Western public opinion to pressure Western countries not to attend. The Iranian regime used hard-knuckle politics to convince heads of state to take part. The British and French governments were warned that “the future of the important copper deposits at Kerman in which British and French firms were struggling for the contract” was inexorably linked to Queen Elizabeth’s and “President Pompidou’s [presence] at the celebration.” The Dutch Ambassador was told to “produce Queen Juliana” or else, while the German government, ever eager to hold its position in the Iranian economy, was told that it must ensure the attendance of the German President.56

  Ironically, the only country that was more than eager to send its head of state to the celebration was not welcome. Israel made it clear that it would be happy to participate at the highest level, but the Shah demurred. Not only would an Israeli presence have caused virtually every Muslim head of state to stay away, but ever since Ardeshir Zahedi’s appointment as foreign minister, Iran had been trying to “balance” its regional policy by improving its ties with Arab states. So Israel was not invited.