Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi

Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (born October 26, 1919, Tehran, Iran—died July 27, 1980, Cairo, Egypt) was the shah of Iran from 1941 to 1979, when he fled the Iranian Revolution and his rule officially ended following a constitutional referendum. The autocracy of his rule was amplified after the 1953 coup, in which the United States and the United Kingdom helped restore him to power after a two-year standoff with the Majles (parliament) forced him to flee the country. His position strengthened by foreign support, Mohammed Reza later imposed aggressive economic development policies, including the modernization program known as the White Revolution. The program rapidly upended the traditional power structures in the country, heightening tensions that eventually led to Mohammad Reza’s downfall in 1979.

• U.S.-Iran Relations: A timeline in betrayal, rhetoric, and bloodshed.

Mohammad Reza was the eldest son of Reza Shah Pahlavi, an army officer who became the ruler of Iran and founder of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925. Mohammad Reza was educated in Switzerland and returned to Iran in 1935. In 1941 the Soviet Union and Great Britain, fearing that the shah would cooperate with Nazi Germany to rid himself of their tutelage, occupied Iran and forced Reza Shah into exile. Mohammad Reza then replaced his father on the throne (September 16, 1941).

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In the early 1950s a struggle for control of the Iranian government developed between the shah and Mohammad Mosaddegh, a zealous Iranian nationalist. In March 1951 Mosaddegh secured passage of a bill in the Majles (parliament) to nationalize the vast British petroleum interests in Iran. Mosaddegh’s power grew rapidly, and by the end of April Mohammad Reza had been forced to appoint Mosaddegh premier. A two-year period of tension and conflict followed. In August 1953 the shah tried and failed to dismiss Mosaddegh and, after riots broke out, fled the country. Several days later, however, Mosaddegh’s opponents, with the covert support and assistance of the United States and the United Kingdom, restored Mohammad Reza to power.

Under Mohammad Reza, the nationalization of the oil industry was nominally maintained, although in 1954 Iran entered into an agreement to split revenues with a newly formed international consortium that was responsible for managing production. With U.S. assistance, Mohammad Reza then proceeded to carry out a national development program, called the White Revolution, that included construction of an expanded road, rail, and air network, a number of dam and irrigation projects, the eradication of diseases such as malaria, the encouragement and support of industrial growth, and land reform. He also established a literacy corps and a health corps for the large but isolated rural population. In the 1960s and ’70s the shah sought to develop a more independent foreign policy and established working relationships with the Soviet Union and eastern European nations.

Overthrow and exile

The White Revolution gained the shah new support from the rural poor and the urban working class, but he faced continuing political criticism from those who felt that the reforms did not move far or fast enough and religious criticism from those who believed Westernization to be antithetical to Islam. Opposition to the shah himself was based upon his autocratic rule, corruption in his government, the unequal distribution of oil wealth, forced Westernization, and the activities of SAVAK (the secret police) in suppressing dissent and opposition to his rule. These negative aspects of the shah’s rule became markedly accentuated after Iran began to reap greater revenues from its petroleum exports beginning in 1973.

Widespread dissatisfaction among the lower classes, Shiʿi clergy, bazaar merchants, and students led in 1978 to the growth of support for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a Shiʿi religious leader living in exile in Paris. Rioting and turmoil in Iran’s major cities brought down four successive governments as the Iranian Revolution gained momentum. On January 16, 1979, the shah left the country, and Khomeini assumed control. Although the shah did not abdicate, a referendum resulted in the declaration on April 1, 1979, of an Islamic republic in Iran. The shah traveled to Egypt, Morocco, The Bahamas, and Mexico before entering the United States on October 22, 1979, for medical treatment of lymphatic cancer. Two weeks later Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took hostage more than 50 Americans, demanding the extradition of the shah in return for the hostages’ release (see Iran hostage crisis). Extradition was refused, but the shah later left for Panama and then Cairo, where he was granted asylum by Pres. Anwar Sadat.

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The shah had two marriages that ended in divorce when they failed to produce a male heir to the throne. In October 1960 a third wife, Farah Diba, gave birth to the crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, who has spent much of his adult life in exile in the United States.