The Shah

by Abbas Milani

  Before long, the Queen’s collection of more than 350 artifacts and masterpieces required a space of their own. A wing of the Shah’s Sahebgraniyeh Palace was turned into a private Jahan-Nama (Window to the World). It had all the trappings of a museum, but it was simply for the viewing pleasure of the royal family. Twenty-three million tooman ($7.5 million) was spent transforming the onetime residential palace into a museum.8 What is clear from Alam’s Daily Journals is that neither the Queen nor the Shah spent money according to a predetermined budget. The Shah and the Court were, according to the constitution, ostensibly provided a yearly budget by the government. But in the case of the Shah, and even the Queen, they spent money as they saw fit, decided on allocating contracts, and then ordered the Court Minister to pay for it. More often than not, the government was ordered to shoulder the bill. The use of government facilities and military planes for the personal use of the royal family was so common and taken for granted that it was rarely commented upon.

  For the Shah, in particular, the entire country was his virtual private fiefdom. On September 30, 1975, John Oakes of the New York Times wrote after visiting Iran that “in no country of the world can Louis XIV’s famous aphorism—‘L’état c’est moi’—be applied with more accuracy than Iran.”9 The next day, the Shah read the article and angrily told Alam, “the bastard [pedar soukhteh*] has said that I am Louis XIV. He was the essence of reaction and I am a revolutionary leader.”10 A few days later, the same Court Minister submitted the “central thesis” of an upcoming speech he was to give for the Shah’s approval, and said, “I am going to say that [Your Majesty and your father] embody Iran and that Louis XIV’s phrase, ‘L’état c’est moi,’ aptly applies to you.” The Shah was not angry this time, but instead said, “When I look at myself, it is true that I see or want nothing other than Iran. Thus your suggestion is not wrong.”11

  Even Western embassies had begun to notice the blurring of the lines between the Shah’s personal assets and expenses and those of the government. On one occasion, this conception helped absolve the Shah of the allegation of bribery. In June 1968, Iran placed an order for forty helicopters with the American company Augusta Bell. Britain’s air attaché reported that, in return for the order, the Shah had already received two helicopters and was expected to receive another “two large helicopters in de luxe VIP trim, also free.” Another British official at the embassy opined that while it was impossible to decide whether the allegations were true, even if they were true, it should not be “categorized as bribery” since whatever use the Shah found for the helicopters would invariably “be . . . for state and governmental purposes” and thus the gift of the helicopters means Iran will be “getting a few more helicopters.”12

  With an apparently infinite supply of money at her disposal, the Queen began to buy art, and before long her art collection included, amongst other things, five Picassos, four Braques, a Gauguin, and a Chagall. Giacometti’s Standing Man stood next to a lulled cat from Peru. An Egyptian bird sat next to exquisite pottery and statues from ancient Persia. Masters of abstract expressionism were also amply represented, testifying to the Queen’s wide-ranging aesthetic sensibilities. Tehran became a mecca for art dealers and big-name American and European architects, who converged on the city to sell a design or an artifact and claim a share of the oil revenue. What the Queen could not find in Tehran, she either found in her travels in Europe or America or had her aides or agents find for her. Some of the regime’s opponents at the time criticized these purchases as extravagant.

  Easily the most controversial of this collection was a De Kooning painting (Lady No. 3). The Islamic regime in Iran refused to display this and many other modern masterpieces on “moral” grounds and eventually decided to exchange it for a few pages of an old illuminated Shahnameh—often thought to be the most beautiful illuminated text in Iran. A large number of middlemen and dealers were involved in the negotiations, and some have suggested that, in return for bribes and kickbacks, the Iranian officials fraudulently undervalued the price of the rare De Kooning masterpiece.13

  The Queen’s eclectic taste was evident not just in the collection but even more in the interior of the palace. The prevalence of French motifs made the atmosphere equally comfortable for the Shah, who was in his cultural taste a dedicated Francophile. French was, after all, the language the Shah and the Queen preferred to use when conversing with the Crown Prince. His nurse, too, was a Frenchwoman. The palace was two and one-half floors, with 9,000 square meters of living space. The building was “entirely hidden behind a mass of trees.” There was a helicopter pad allowing the Shah to get around the city by air. In the 1970s, congestion and the fear of terrorism made travel by car almost impossible for the Shah. When using the helicopter, he often took over the controls. There was also a large reflective pool and a carefully manicured landscape that separated the Niavaran Palace from the Shah’s office. Though the distance was short, the Shah occasionally drove one of his many fast cars from home to office, but more often he simply walked. His love of speed, a constant passion of his life, was now an option available only when he was on vacation in places where security was not an issue.

  Niavaran Palace’s interior appointments were at once Iranian and European. The tile- and mirror-work as well as the elaborate decorative plaster were the creation of some of the most acclaimed Iranian masters—names like Master Abdollah and Master Kazempour. A few years earlier, such masters would have had no role in a “modern” building in Tehran. But in a city where the Shah and the Queen set the fashion for much of the elite, having traditional appointments in new buildings soon became a fad.

  The entrance hall to Niavaran was a palatial grand salon, with a gallery of rooms above it. In the words of Architectural Digest, which featured the Niavaran Palace in an issue in 1977, it was “an Eastern version of the Roman atrium.”14 The big room was “intentionally flavored” with paneling that was “French in conception” next to tile-work and plaster curlicues that were unmistakably Persian. Lighted display cases exhibiting “Persian papier-mâché” and gold artifacts stood next to masterpieces of French painting and rare French tapestry. On one wall hung a painting by Marie Laurencin, while next to the fireplace was a small work by Utrillo. Grand Empire chandeliers of Russian origin gave the room an air of majesty, while other parts of the salon were chock full of a wide assortment of artifacts.

  The reception room as well as the dining hall were both “richly furnished in a conventional French manner.” Exquisite Persian rugs, antiques, and mirror-works provided the Persian flavor of the rooms. Here and there, works of Persian masters, from Sohrab Sepehri and Abolghassem Saidi to Parviz Tanavoli† were also displayed on the walls.

  Between the public part of the palace and the private residence where the Shah and the Queen had their bedrooms was a small private cinema with a green rug, a sculpture by Parviz Tanavoli, and a painting by Abolghassem Saidi. Watching a film after dinner was by then a permanent part of the Shah’s nightly program. He preferred light comedies—French comedians were amongst his favorites—and preferred Hollywood productions over somber and serious art films. Sometimes controversial films that had befuddled the censors but were deemed important were sent to the Court for the Shah and the Queen’s final verdict.

  Occasionally the Queen tried to get the Shah to watch more serious films, particularly those made by Persian directors. One such film was Dariush Mehrjui’s Dayereh Mina, an unsparing look at the profitable traffic in the blood of Tehran’s poor and addicted masses. The film had become controversial because Dr. Manouchehr Egbal, the one-time prime minister and the perennial head of Iran’s Medical Association, wanted the film banned because it offered a negative image of medicine in Iran. The Queen insisted that the Shah should see the film, and finally, on the night when it was brought to the Court, halfway through it the Shah angrily got up and marched out of the screening, arguing that these so-called intellectuals were only happy when they looked at the dark side of life. On
another occasion, talking about a film that had been produced by the Organization for the Intellectual Development of Children, headed by Lili Amir-Arjomand, a close friend of the Queen, the Shah again dismissed the film saying, “What the hell is a lyric film? What use does it have for an ill-intentioned man to make a film?”15 The organization had become one of the most successful, yet controversial, institutions in the last years of the Shah’s rule. It had begun the practice of using mobile libraries, affording children of even the most remote villages and towns access to books. The organization also produced films, including the first shorts made by Abbas Kiarostami.

  The Shah’s taste in films was complicated. On the one hand, when he heard that Ebrahim Golestan’s documentary about the oil industry in Iran had won several international prizes, he asked to see the film and the director. Golestan took the film to the Court with some trepidation, for the last line of the film was consciously ambiguous. It talked of the West taking Iran’s oil and leaving the country with nothing but the foam left on the beach in the wake of a big wave. The Shah not only clearly understood the implied message in the phrase but as he talked with Golestan after the end of the private showing, he said, “so long as I am here I will not allow them to leave us only the foam.”16

  On the other hand, in the late 1960s, as the Shah was trying to improve Iran’s image around the world, the acclaimed filmmaker Albert Lamorisse, whose Red Balloon had won many awards, was commissioned to make a short documentary on Iran. He made what some have called a “poetic praise” of the best in Iran’s tradition and history. The film had emphasized older buildings and ancient monuments, and when the Shah saw it, he summarily dismissed it as having missed its mission. There are no dams and new buildings, he complained. Much to his consternation, Lamorisse was forced to re-edit the film and include footage of new buildings and Iran’s modernizing military.17

  If the royal couple’s cinematic taste was occasionally at odds, there was no controversy when she turned part of a loft into a private library. The space was designed by Aziz Farmanfarmaian and Charles Sevigny, an American designer living in Paris in the seventies. Halfway through the construction of the small space, Alam, then the minister of Court, complained to the Shah that already 12 million tooman ($1.5 million) had “been spent [on the library] and nothing is done. . . . The Shah simply laughed” and instructed Alam to pay the expenses.18 The Shah took no part in these decorative decisions but occasionally complained about cost overruns. Such complaints were invariably prompted by Alam, who was by then clearly despised by the Queen for his role in arranging the Shah’s trysts.

  Alam retaliated by constantly whispering in the Shah’s ear about the cost of these renovations, or about the fact that the contracts were invariably given to relatives and friends of the Queen. The renovation of the royal couple’s Swiss ski chalet, Suvreta, in fashionable St. Moritz was, on the orders of the Queen, given to Parviz Bushehri, who, again according to Alam, “charged ten times the fair price, and no one, including the Shah said anything.”19 When Alam tried to solicit the Shah’s support in questioning the estimated price, the Shah ordered his Court Minister to “just sign it.”20 On more than one occasion, Alam complained to the Shah about “the lady Her Majesty has picked to help decorate Niavaran, Sa’adabad and Nowshahr [on the Caspian]. I must, according to my duty inform Your Majesty,” he told the Shah one day “that everything is costing fifty percent more than what they should. And it is not clear what is the cargo of all of these planes we have put at her disposal, and fly back and forth to Europe.” Again the Shah simply smiled, ordered Alam to keep quiet and pay the bill, and said, “You know I have to live a little too.” Alam clearly understood the Shah’s implied message. “Her Majesty must be allowed to do anything [the Queen] wants and her entourage engage in any shitty work, so that the Shah hears less grumbling.”21 Here then was the political price the Shah was paying for his philandering. More importantly, stories and rumors about these allegations of corruption were fast becoming a potent political issue.

  Numerous reports from the British and American embassies in late 1978 make it clear that the issue of corruption was one of the chief grievances of the opposition. In an October 5, 1978, report, the British Embassy wrote about claims based on information from “someone in a position to know and whose information is invariably reliable that during the recent period of crisis Princesses Shams and Ashraf and their families moved about 1.8 billion dollars out of Iran. This amount is almost exactly . . . the amount which the Swiss banking representatives here reckon surfaced during the period in foreign money havens.”22 By the time the Shah decided to make a public pronouncement on his family’s activities, it was far too little, far too late.

  In 1975, as the Queen was creating her library, the regime seemed in complete command of the situation, and as reports from the American and British Embassies clearly testify, they all believed the regime safe and secure for the foreseeable future. The cost of the Queen’s library was small change compared to the government’s multibillion-dollar annual oil revenue. When it was finally finished, the library had more than 23,000 books, and included old and new, Persian and Western texts. The oldest manuscript was a French book published in 1609. In the 1977 Architectural Digest essay about the palace, there is a photo of the library that shows a Paul Jenkins painting sitting on an easel. On the wall of the library hangs a large assortment of embroidered benevolent talismans; on the window ledge sits a long array of family pictures. The unusual combination of religious relics and modern paintings, accompanied by an assortment of antiques and art deco furniture, captured the Queen’s peculiar cosmopolitanism.

  The Shah’s office in Sahebgraniyeh was a contrast in sense and sensibilities. It was simple in design and dominated by the glitter of the beautiful nineteenth-century mosaic mirror-work on its walls and rare Persian rugs on its floors. Nasir al-Din Shah had used the palace as a pleasure dome, with his harem spread around his perch of patriarchy. For the sick and weakened Mozzafar al-Din Shah, it was a place of rest. It was in the yard of this palace that, in 1905, he finally signed the firman that declared Iran a constitutional monarchy. The Shah, on the other hand, who probably worked more in one month than his Qajar predecessors did in a year, had turned the hall on the second floor of the building into his office. His desk, a handcrafted work of exquisite Persian artistry (monabatkari) sat in a corner, always impeccably tidy. On the walls, there were no paintings. Their only adornments were two large mirrors and two old swords, a shield with arrows sticking out of it like rays of the sun, and a bow. On the ceiling and parts of the wall, decorative plaster with beautiful Qajar fresco paintings drawn between elaborate frames of plaster gave the room a nineteenth-century Persian aura.

  Not long after moving to Niavaran, the Queen began plans to build a new, bigger palace in Farahabad, a royal hunting ground near Tehran used by the Shah and the royal family at the time for riding. The Shah initially agreed, but when a government financial crisis required a budget cut, and Mehdi Samii, then director of the Plan Organization, told the Shah of the existing financial crunch, the Shah immediately scuttled plans for the construction of the palace.23 On at least one other occasion, the Shah rejected suggestions to build a palace for the royal family. It was to be in the city of Meshed. “What do we need a palace for?” the Shah asked Alam.

  While the Shah was averse to conspicuous architectural construction and consumption, his willingness to spend money for his life-long passion for expensive fast cars, fast boats, and planes was a notable exception. By the mid-1970s, he had a fleet of expensive cars that was legendary amongst speed aficionados. In an exhibit commenced in Tehran a few years after the revolution, it was claimed that the royal family collection of expensive cars included at least “140 vintage and classic” cars.24 Amongst the Shah’s prized possessions were one of the only six Mercedes-Benz 500 coups (another one was used by Hitler to review troops); a Panther Lazer; a specially designed Maserati 500GT, ordered by the Shah in 1959; a 1939
Bugatti 57 C, a gift of the French government to the Shah at the time of his first marriage (that mysteriously landed in Romania after the revolution and sold for a million dollars); a Lamborghini Countach; a Rolls-Royce Phantom (one of 17 ever produced); a Ferrari 500; and finally a bronze C-30 Chrysler coupe prototype, with “pure gold dashboard, refrigerator, record player,” bought by the Shah for his second wife, Soraya.

  If Niavaran and the design of his office captured the Shah’s aesthetic sensibilities about private spaces, the Shahyad Monument was no less eloquent in articulating his vision of Iran. It heralded a Tehran transformed by changing times and conflicting identities and creatively bridged the city’s tormented past with its triumphant mood about its future. The Shah’s new, grand, sometimes grandiose, vision of Iran; his constant promise to build a “Great Civilization,” better than anything produced in the West while at the same time showing an openness to all things Western; and his increasing interest in conjuring the history of Iran’s ancient grandeur to consolidate his claim to power are all captured in the monument’s design. In retrospect, the Shah tried to use majestic monuments and imposing ceremonies like the celebration of 2,500 years of monarchy in lieu of offering a theory that legitimized his rule.

  His decision to hold his “desert bash” at a location where Persepolis provided the backdrop and his choice of the tomb of Cyrus for the delivery of his big speech only confirm his use of monuments as political props. The implied message in the use of these ancient monuments was that longevity affords legitimacy, and both buildings symbolized Iran’s pre-Islamic imperial grandeur. The new monument, called Shahyad—Persian for “memorial to the Shah”—was to capture, celebrate, and embody this tradition of monarchical grandeur and the Shah’s place in this pantheon. A young architect, barely out of college, came up with a design that encapsulated all the key elements of the Shah’s political paradigm.