The Shah

by Abbas Milani

  This intelligence failure manifested itself not just in America’s inability to foresee or appreciate the seriousness of the crisis faced by the Shah, but also in its misinformed and misguided prescription for a solution. From November 1978, the American Embassy was quietly working behind the scenes to facilitate what political scientists call a “pacted transition” between some in the opposition and the Iranian military.

  As newly declassified American documents show, the U.S. Embassy not only acted as a facilitator for these negotiations but also decided whom the military should negotiate with. In the months before the revolution, Khomeini and his allies initiated extensive contacts with the American government and embassy in Tehran and Paris. William Sullivan, sadly ignorant of the history of Iran and of Shiism, concluded in November 1978 that the only force capable of creating a democracy in Iran, and also standing up to the Soviets, was that of Khomeini and his supporters. The Shah is a new look at how these colossal errors were made. By learning from this history, we can see how the United States and the Iranian democrats can avoid the errors of the past.

  In fact, both the United States and the regime in Tehran have hitherto failed to learn the right lessons from the story of the Shah’s fall. The United States, for example, could take away four crucial points from this history. If U.S. policy-makers had carefully studied the contours of the Shah’s nuclear negotiations—and The Shah offers a brief summary of them based on new archival material—they could have better navigated the treacherous waters of Iranian nationalism. Secondly, they could have easily exposed the vacuity of one of the clerical regime’s pivotal claims against the United States: that in questioning the intentions of the regime’s nuclear program, the United States is engaged in a double standard; it gave the Shah whatever he wanted, the clerics claim, but now denies the Islamic regime their inalienable rights under the non-proliferation treaty. The Shah shows just how intense the negotiations and disagreements between the Shah and the United States really were.

  Third, The Shah shows the nature of the coalition of forces that overthrew the Shah. Events since Iran’s June 2009 contested election have shown that the same coalition is the backbone of the movement now challenging clerical despotism in Iran. Future American policy must take into consideration the continued power and relevance of this democratic coalition in determining Iran’s future.

  Finally, The Shah shows that the interests of the United States and Iran are both better served when the United States supports the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people.

  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has also drawn the wrong lessons from the fall of the Shah. He has more than once intimated that the Shah lost his throne because of the concessions he made to the opposition. Like the Shah, Khamenei also blames “outside forces” for the rise of the democratic movement. But the Shah lost his throne because he failed to make concessions at the right time and because he failed to see the domestic roots of the movement against him. Understanding the fall of the Shah helps map out the contours of a transition to democracy in the future, as well as the shape of the ongoing instability in Iranian politics over the last three decades.

  At the vortex of these dynamic changes stood the character of the Shah. Every policy decision made by the Shah and his American allies landed on the hard rock of Iran’s social realities and his personal idiosyncrasies. Biography, then, is an indispensable tool in assessing the chances of any policy’s failure or success. The Shah fills a gaping hole in understanding and demonstrates that character is destiny, not just for the Shah, but for determining the fate of every policy, both American and Iranian.

  NOTES

  Abbreviations

  CPL Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, Atlanta, Georgia.

  FDR Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, NY

  FO Foreign Office; files in Public Records Office, London

  FRUS U.S. Dept. of State, Foreign Relations of the United States of America (Washington, D.C.: GPO)

  JFK John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, MA

  NA National Archives, Washington, D.C.

  NPL Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, Yorba Linda, CA

  NSA National Security Archive, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

  NSF National Security Files; files at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, MA

  PRO Public Records Office, London

  Frequently cited sources

  Assadollah Alam, Yadasht Haye Roozaneh [Daily Journals], edited by Alinaghi Alikhani, 6 volumes (Bethesda, Md., n.d.). Cited as Alam, Daily Journals.

  Princess Soraya Esfandiary Bakhtiary, Palace of Solitude, translated by Herbert Gibbs (London, 1991).

  Empress Farah, My Thousand and One Days: An Autobiography, translated by Felice Harcourt (London, 1978).

  Hussein Fardust, Zohour va Soghoute Saltanat Pahlavi, Khaterat-e General Sabeq Hussein Fardust [The Rise and Fall of the Pahlavi Monarchy, Memoirs of Ex-General Hussein Fardust], 2 volumes (Tehran, 1370/1991). Cited as Fardust, Memoirs.

  Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, Answer to History (New York, 1980).

  Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, The Collected Works of the Shah (Tehran, 1975). Cited as Shah, Collected Works.

  Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, “La Chronique Roseene,” L’Echo du Rosey, Noel 1935.

  Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, Mission for My Country (London, 1961)

  Sir Denis Wright, “The Memoirs of Sir Denis Wright: 1911–1976,” 2 vols. (unpublished memoirs).

  Ardeshir Zahedi, The Memoirs of Ardeshir Zahedi, 2 vols. (Bethesda, MA, 2006).

  Zahedi Papers, Montreux, Switzerland. Zahedi private collection.

  1 The Flying Dutchman

  1. William Shakespeare, Othello, 5.4.324–325.

  2. Alam, Daily Journals, vol. 5. On page 44 he tells the Shah he is a prophet; on the same page, he compares him with Napoleon; on page 254 he calls him the “emperor of the Shiites.” Throughout the six volumes, he makes comparisons with De Gaulle.

  3. Alam, Daily Journals, vol. 6, pp. 21–23.

  4. Ibid., p. 75.

  5. In 1964 Mehdi Samii was the head of Iran’s Central Bank; the government was so desperate for money that he used his personal friendship with the executives of Bank of America to secure a $5 million loan. Mehdi Samii, interview with author, Los Angeles, September 3, 2006.

  6. NSA, CIA, “The Shah’s Lending Binge,” 1977.

  7. Parviz Sabeti, telephone interview with author, September 3, 2004.

  8. NSA, CIA, National Intelligent Estimate, October 8, 1971, “Nothing Succeeds Like a Successful Shah,” p. 5.

  9. Colonel Kiumars Jahanbini, interview with author, Washington DC, November 5, 2004. The Colonel was the head of the Shah’s bodyguard unit for over a quarter of a century. He kindly agreed to be interviewed. He has hitherto refrained from talking to any scholar or journalist. I am grateful for his confidence.

  10. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, Answer to History (New York, 1980), p. 167.

  11. General Azarbarzin, interview with author, Los Angeles, April 25, 2005.

  12. Keyhan, 16 Farvardin 1358/April 1979, p. 4. General Azarbarzin, who was for many years one of the highest-ranking generals in the Iranian air force, confirms the help given to Morocco—as well as to other countries. General Azarbarzin, interview with author, April 27, 2005.

  13. Ardeshir Zahedi, interview with author, New York, May 8, 2005.

  14. Richard Parker, telephone interview with author, June 11, 2002.

  15. Ardeshir Zahedi, interview with author, Montreux, December 6, 2004.

  16. Farhad Sepahbodi, interview with author, Sedona, August 2, 2001.

  17. Several people, including the bodyguards of the Shah and the Queen, told me of this strange decision.

  18. Shawcross reports this episode; William Shawcross, The Shah’s Last Ride (London, 1989); I also heard it from Jahanbini. Aslan Afshar claims he was the aide who suggested the idea to the Shah. Aslan Afshar, i
nterview with author, Nice, March 29, 2009.

  19. For an account of the behind-the-scenes discussions about what to do with the Shah, see David Rockefeller, Memoirs (New York, 2002), pp. 356–375.

  20. The chief of his security detail, Colonel Jahanbini told me of the Shah’s near-obsession with his radio in those early days; Jahanbini, interview with author, November 6, 2004.

  21. Shah, Answer to History, p. 13.

  22. Mohammad Reyshahri, Khaterat [Memoirs] (Tehran, 1383/2004), p. 74.

  23. Farah Pahlavi, An Enduring Love: My Life with the Shah (New York, 2004), p. 307.

  24. William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of King Lear, 1.2.105.

  25. Shawcross, The Shah’s Last Ride, p. 99.

  26. Majid Alam, interview with author, San Diego, September 3, 2003.

  27. He was banished for defying the Shah’s orders. Le Monde published a report alleging that Princess Ashraf had been arrested at an airport in Switzerland and charged with drug trafficking. As it happened, the paper had made a mistake: a Persian princess had been arrested, but it was not Ashraf. She wanted to sue the paper, and the Shah, who was hoping in those days to mend his relations with European media, had ordered her not to pursue the lawsuit and to settle for the apology offered by the paper. She refused to obey, and as she had been helped in all of this by Sepahbodi, he was banished from the Foreign Ministry. In fact, afraid that he might be put in prison, the Princess arranged for him to fly out of Iran and stay in Europe for a while. Once the Shah’s anger subsided, Princess Ashraf interceded on behalf of her friend and, after some reservations, he was offered the Moroccan Embassy.

  2 A Compromised Constitution

  1. For a beautiful prose rendition of the Zahhak story, and indeed of the entire Shahnameh, accompanied by the finest selection of exquisitely reproduced miniatures, see Dick Davis, The Lion and the Throne: Stories from the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, vol. 1. (Washington, DC, 1998), pp. 23–33. By way of disclosure, readers should know that Mage Publishers, who published Dick Davis’s three-volume masterpiece translation of Shahnameh, has published four of my books.

  2. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, Mission for My Country (London, 1961), p. 51.

  3. Ibid.

  4. For a discussion of these trips, see Abbas Milani, “Nasir-al Din Shah in Farang: Perspectives of an Oriental Despot,” in Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Modernity in Iran (Washington, DC, 2004), pp. 51–63.

  5. Ashraf Pahlavi, Faces in a Mirror: Memoirs from Exile (New York, 1980), p. 1.

  6. Marvin Zonis, Majestic Failure: The Fall of the Shah (Chicago, 1991), p. 27.

  7. Ibid., p. 28

  8. Shah, Mission for My Country, p. 45.

  9. Ibid., p. 49.

  10. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Besouy-e Tamadon-e Bozorg [Towards the Great Civilization], (Tehran, n.d.), p. 7.

  11. Alam, Daily Journals, vol. 2, p. 346.

  12. Amir Afkhami, “Compromised Constitutions: The Iranian Experience with the 1918 Influenza Pandemic,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 77, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 391.

  13. For a discussion of the flu and its global impact, see John Berry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History (New York, 2004).

  14. Anthony R. Neligan, The Opium Question with Special Reference to Persia (London, 1927), p. 27; see also Afkhami, “Compromised Constitutions,” pp. 384–386.

  15. The Kerman figures are for 1925 and are quoted in Afkhami, “Compromised Constitutions,” p. 385.

  16. Some sources have gone so far as to claim that no country in the world suffered as much from the war as did Iran. See Mohammad Gholi, Majd, Persia in World War I and Its Conquest by Great Britain (Lanham, Md., 2003). His tendency to pick and choose the sources that confirm what he, a priori, wants to prove, makes many of his assertions doubtful.

  17. For an informed account of the Agreement, its friends and foes, see Homa Katouzian, State and Society in Iran: The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis (London, 2000), pp. 25–164.

  18. PRO, “Leading Personalities in Iran, 1947,” FO 371/62035. I have changed the order of some of the sentences from the original narrative.

  19. Mehdi Bamdad, Tarikh-e Rejal-e Iran [History of Iran’s Politicians], vol. 5 (Tehran, 1347/1968), p. 123.

  20. Seyyed Zia Tabatabai, “Interview with Dr. Sadredin Elahi,” first published in Iran and reprinted in a fuller version in an émigré paper, called Jong, October 1990. In the reprint, it is indicated where and how SAVAK had censored the original interview. Nothing that would deprecate the royal family or Reza Shah was allowed in print.

  21. For a history of this movement, see Cosroe Chaquèri, The Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran, 1920–1921: Birth of the Trauma (Pittsburgh, 1995).

  22. A copy of the cover of the book was provided in Reza Shah Kabir (Tehran, 1356/1997).

  23. PRO, Cox to Norman, July 10, 1921, FO 371/6446. The mendacious role of Mohammad Hassan Mirza is discussed at length in Cyrus Ghani, Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah: From Qajar Collapse to Pahlavi Power (London, 1998), pp. 224–249.

  24. There is an entire file of fascinating reports on the lives of Bolsheviks in Iran, as reported by the British Embassy. See PRO, FO 371/10841.

  25. PRO, “Internal Summary,” September 5, 1925, FO 371/10842.

  26. PRO, Mr. Norman to Earl Curzon, March 1, 1921, FO 379/6403, p. 3.

  27. Ibid., p. 4.

  28. Ibid., p. 4.

  29. Ibid., p. 5.

  30. PRO, Mr. Norman to Earl Curzon, February 22, 1921, FO 371/6401.

  31. PRO, Mr. Norman to Earl Curzon, March 1, 1921, FO 379/6403, p. 6.

  32. PRO, Mr. Norman to Earl Curzon, February 25, 1921, FO 371/6401.

  33. Ibid., p. 1.

  34. PRO, “Persian Political Situation,” February 26, 1921, FO 371/6601.

  35. Shah, Mission for My Country, p. 40.

  36. PRO, Mr. Norman to Earl Curzon, May 26, 1921, FO 371/35077.

  37. Ibid.

  38. PRO, Mr. Norman to Earl Curzon, March 1, 1921, FO 371/6403. This is easily one of the lengthiest accounts of the coup provided by the British Embassy in Tehran.

  39. PRO, Mr. Norman to Earl Curzon, March 1, 1921, Enclosure no. 3, FO 371/6403.

  40. Seyyed Zia, Interview with Dr. Sadredin Elahi, part 2, p. 9. There he says, “Mussolini was my hero.” Throughout the interview Seyyed has waxed eloquent about Lenin and his political virtues.

  41. PRO, “Foreign Countries Report: Persia,” No. 38, March 1921, FO 248/6402.

  42. PRO, Mr. Norman to Earl Curzon, March 1, 1921, FO 379/6403, p. 8.

  43. R. N. Bosten, “Baznegari be Zendegiy-e yek rooznameh nevis siy-o dosaleh Gomnan ke nagahan nakost vazire Iran shod,” [Revisiting the life of an unknown thirty-three-year-old journalist who suddenly became Iran’s Prime Minister], Rahavard, Summer 1371/1992, no. 3, p. 112.

  44. PRO, Mr. Norman to Earl Curzon, May 26, 1921, FO 371/35077.

  45. Bosten, “Revising the Life of an Unknown Thirty-three-year-old Journalist,” p. 111.

  46. PRO, Mr. Norman to Earl Curzon, May 25, 1921, FO 371/6404.

  47. PRO, L. Oliphant, to Foreign Office, June 6, 1921, FO 371/6406.

  48. William Shakespeare, Richard II, 1:1. 196.

  49. A facsimile of the order is published in Reza Shah Kabir (Tehran, 1356/1977).

  50. PRO, “Summer Intelligence Review,” No. 10, March 7, 1925, FO 371/10842.

  51. In an early sign of his authoritarian disposition, when Reza Khan tried to register his preferred last name, he was informed that someone else, called Mahmoud, had already picked Pahlavi. Reza Khan ordered the man to give up his last name! In protest, the man refused to pick another name and simply picked his first name as his surname, becoming Mahmoud Mahmoud. He went on to become a prominent historian of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution.

  52. PRO, Tehran to Foreign Office, April 25, 1925, FO 371/10843.

  53. Ibid.

  54. For a discussion of the role of different strata, and particular
ly for a revisionist account of the clergy’s role in opposing the idea of a republic, see Vanessa Martin, “Muddaris, Republicanism, and the rise to Power of Riza Khan, Sardar-I Sepah,” in The Making of Modern Iran: State and Society Under Reza Shah Pahlavi, 1921–1941, edited by Stephani Cronin (London, 2003), pp. 65–75.

  55. PRO, Tehran to Foreign Office, December 31, 1924, FO 371/10840.

  56. PRO, Sir P. Loraine, to Foreign Office, January 22, 1925, FO 371/10840.

  57. Quoted in Cyrus Ghani, Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah: From Qajar Collapse to Pahlavi Power (London, 1998), p. 361.

  58. PRO, Sir P. Loraine, to Austen Chamberlain, Nov. 2, 1925, FO 371/10840.

  59. For an account of these machinations, see Ghani, Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah, pp. 224–249.

  60. PRO, Sir P. Loraine to Foreign Office, September 28, 1925, FO371/10840.

  61. PRO, Sir P. Loraine to Foreign Office, October 10, 1925, FO371/10840.

  62. Ibid.

  63. PRO, Sir P. Loraine to Foreign Office, December 12, 1925, FO 371/10840.

  64. PRO, Tehran to Foreign Office, February 2, 1926, FO 371/11489

  3 The Peacock Throne

  1. Vita Sackville-West, Passenger to Teheran, with a new introduction by Nigel Nicolson (New York, 1990), p. 131.

  2. Abbas Amanat, Pivot of the Universe: Nasir-al-Din Shah Qajar and the Iranian Monarchy, 1831–1896 (Berkeley, 1997), p. 25.

  3. Ibid., p. 19.

  4. A brief account of the Throne is provided in the great encyclopedia of Persian language and culture, Dehkhoda. The encyclopedia was eventually published under the auspices of Tehran University. Today, a new edition bereft of entries critical of the clergy is published.

  5. Sackville-West, Passenger to Teheran, p. 77.