The Crown Prince confided in amazement to the British Minister that Foroughi "hardly expected any son of Reza Shah to be a civilized human being",[60] but Foroughi successfully derailed thoughts by the Allies to undertake a more drastic change in the political infrastructure of Iran. [114] It was during this period that Mohammad Reza began to embrace the image of a "progressive" Shah, a reformer who would modernise Iran, who attacked in his speeches the "reactionary" and "feudal" social system that was retarding progress, bring about land reform and give women equal rights. [63] Mohammed Reza told Willkie that when he was flying he "wanted to stay up indefinitely". On 18 August 1953, Mosaddegh defended the government against this new attack. In the Shah’s place came Ruhollah Khomeini. The Shah of Iran with his third wife Farah Diba and their children, Prince Reza, Prince Ali Reza and the two younger children, Princess Farahnaz and Princess Leila. [272], Some achievements of the Shah—such as broadened education—had unintended consequences. He resented the internationally recognised Iran-Iraq border on the Shatt al-Arab river, which a 1937 treaty fixed on the low watermark on the Iranian side, giving Iraq control of most of the Shatt al-Arab. From 24 April 1926 until his accession, Mohammad Reza's arms notably consisted of two Shahbaz birds in the centre, a common symbol during the Achaemenid period, with the Pahlavi Crown placed above them. On 19 August 1953, pro-Shah partisans—bribed with $100,000 in CIA funds—finally appeared and marched out of south Tehran into the city centre, where others joined in. Others view her as a modern Marie Antoinette, spending her country into ruin while the poor continued to suffer. After pausing for a minutes, he said "Its land, people, and history," and "Every Iranian has to love it." [134] From Kermit Roosevelt, Mohammad Reza learned that Bakhtiar, during his trip to Washington, had asked the Americans to support a coup he was planning, which greatly increased the Shah's fears about Kennedy. In the 1960 U.S. presidential election, the Shah had favoured the Republican candidate, incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, whom he had first met in 1953 and rather liked, and according to the diary of his best friend Asadollah Alam, Mohammad Reza contributed money to the 1960 Nixon campaign. This became a major scandal, as the contrast between the dazzling elegance of the celebration and the misery of the nearby villages was so dramatic that no one could ignore it. "[187], However, by 1975, Mohammad Reza had abolished the two-party system of government in favour of a one-party state under the Rastakhiz (Resurrection) Party. Pahlavi's siblings include his sister Princess Farahnaz Pahlavi (born 12 March 1963), brother Prince Ali-Reza Pahlavi (28 April 1966 – 4 January 2011), and sister Princess Leila Pahlavi (27 March 1970 – 10 June 2001), as well as a half-sister, Princess Shahnaz Pahlavi (born 27 October 1940). We have only to answer, and they will fulfill our wishes[195], Because the House of Pahlavi were a parvenu house as Reza Khan had begun his career as a private in the Persian Army, rising up to the rank of general, taking power in a coup d'état in 1921, and making himself Shah in 1925, Mohammad Reza was keen to gain the approval of the older royal families of the world, and was prepared to spend large sums of money to gain that social acceptance.[196]. They married on 15 March 1939 in the Abdeen Palace in Cairo. [5], In October 1971, Iran marked the anniversary of 2,500 years of continuous Persian monarchy since the founding of the Achaemenid Empire by Cyrus the Great. Khomeini rejected Bakhtiar's demands and appointed his own interim government, with Mehdi Bazargan as prime minister, stating that "I will appoint a state. Born Mohammad Reza, with his twin sister, Ashraf, the children of Reza Shah Pahlavi and his second wife, Nimtaj Ayromlou (Tadj ol-Molouk). [135] Mohammad Reza had to sack his prime minister Jafar Sharif-Emami and give in to the teachers after learning that the Army probably would not fire on the demonstrators. [208][209][210], International cultural cooperation was encouraged and organised, such as the 2,500 year celebration of the Persian Empire and Shiraz Arts Festival. By 1977, Iran's armed services spending had made it the world's fifth strongest military. Mohammad Reza used the style His Majesty until his imperial coronation in 1967, ascending to the title of Shahanshah, when he adopted the style His Imperial Majesty. [178] The Shah also maintained close relations with King Hussein of Jordan, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and King Hassan II of Morocco. [53] When Reza Khan learned of the meeting, he flew into a rage and attacked one of his generals, Ahmad Nakhjavan, striking him with his riding crop, tearing off his medals and was about to personally execute him when his son persuaded him to have the general court-martialed instead. [31] Mohammad Reza grew up surrounded by women, as the main influences on him were his mother, his older sister Shams and his twin sister Ashraf, leading the American psychologist Marvin Zonis to conclude it was "from women, and apparently from women alone" that the future Shah "received whatever psychological nourishment he was able to get as a child". Pope John XXIII reportedly vetoed the suggestion. In the year 2000, reflecting on this notion, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright stated: In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. The Shah and Farah Pahlavi on their wedding day in Dec. 1959. The demonstrations quickly turned into riots, with Khomeini consistently fueling the flames. "[223] Empress Farah grew so frustrated with her husband that she suggested numerous times that he leave Iran for medical treatment and appoint her regent, saying she would handle the crisis and save the House of Pahlavi. [87] As a child she was tutored and brought up by Frau Mantel, and hence lacked proper knowledge of Iran, as she herself admits in her personal memoirs, stating, "I was a dunce—I knew next to nothing of the geography, the legends of my country, nothing of its history, nothing of Muslim religion. [7]. Pahlavi subsequently indicated his interest in marrying Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy, a daughter of the deposed Italian king, Umberto II. Then they loved Iranians.[195]. [80] As a regular visitor to the nightclubs of Italy, France and the United Kingdom, Mohammad Reza was linked romantically to several actresses including Gene Tierney, Yvonne De Carlo and Silvana Mangano. [126] When Eisenhower visited Iran on 14 December 1959, Mohammad Reza told him that Iran faced two main external threats: the Soviet Union to the north and the new pro-Soviet revolutionary government in Iraq to the west. And even less with tolerance ... when Castro came to power, he killed at least 10,000 people ... in a sense, he was really capable, because he's still in power. [206] Though Mohammad Reza envisioned the "Great Civilisation" of a modernised Iran whose standard of living would be higher than those of the United States and at the forefront of modern technology, he did not envision any political change, making it clear that Iran would remain an autocracy.[202]. [182] Mohammad Reza, who always feared the prospect of a Soviet invasion, welcomed the Sino-Soviet war and the resulting reduction of Red Army divisions along the Soviet-Iranian border as giving him more room internationally. However, eventually American decision-makers lost their patience, and by the time the Republican administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower entered office, fears that communists were poised to overthrow the government became an all-consuming concern; these concerns were later dismissed as "paranoid" in retrospective commentary on the coup from U.S. government officials. He lay down on the seat and covered himself with a blanket as guards waved his driver through the gates. Wikimedia CommonsFarah Pahlavi at work in her Tehran office. For all his good intentions, the shah was still a dictator with the power of life or death over his subjects and his brutal suppression of protesters only fueled a cycle of violence in the country. Nevertheless, Reza Khan was always convinced that his sudden quirk of good fortune had commenced in 1919 with the birth of his son who was dubbed khoshghadam (bird of good omen). ", a chorus that Mohammad Reza heard. [146] A high-ranking Romanian defector, Ion Mihai Pacepa, also supported this claim, asserting that he had been the target of various assassination attempts by Soviet agents for many years. [49] Mohammad Reza's dominating and extremely possessive mother saw her daughter-in-law as a rival to her son's love, and took to humiliating Princess Fawzia, whose husband sided with his mother. [71] In a letter to the Azerbaijani Communist leader Ja'far Pishevari, Stalin stated that he had to pull out of Iran as otherwise the Americans would not pull out of China, and he wanted to assist the Chinese Communists in their civil war against the Kuomintang. Referred to as Operation Ajax,[93] the plot hinged on orders signed by Mohammad Reza to dismiss Mosaddegh as prime minister and replace him with General Fazlollah Zahedi, a choice agreed on by the British and Americans. [32] Traditionally, male children were considered preferable to females, and as a boy, Mohammad Reza was often spoiled by his mother and sisters. [197] As an Iranian, Mohammad Reza greatly enjoyed supporting the Greek branch of the House of Glücksburg, knowing the Greeks still celebrated their victories over the Persians in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. The very masculine Mohammad Reza vetoed this idea, saying he did not want Farah to be "Joan of Arc," and it would be too humiliating for him as a man to flee Iran and leave a woman in charge. [218] He spent the entire summer of 1978 at his Caspian Sea resort, where two of France's most prominent doctors, Jean Bernard and Georges Flandrin, treated his cancer. [15] Mohammad Reza's paternal grandmother, Noush-Afarin, was a Muslim immigrant from Georgia (then part of the Russian Empire),[16][17] whose family had emigrated to mainland Iran after Iran was forced to cede all of its territories in the Caucasus following the Russo-Persian Wars several decades prior to Reza Khan's birth. A third factor was his wish to present Iran as a prosperous and powerful nation; this fuelled his domestic policy of Westernisation and reform. So am I, however! [151] Mohammad Reza was a Francophile whose court had a decidedly French ambiance to it. [168] Additionally, British, French, and Italian arms firms were willing to sell Iran weapons, thus giving Mohammad Reza considerable leverage in his talks with the Americans, who sometimes worried that the Shah was buying more weapons than Iran needed or could handle. In 1963, Mohammad Reza launched the White Revolution, a series of far-reaching reforms, which caused much opposition from the religious scholars. [181] Further adding to the Shah's confidence was the Sino-Soviet border conflict of 1969, which forced the Red Army to make a major redeployment to the Chinese border. Concurrent with this celebration, Mohammad Reza changed the benchmark of the Iranian calendar from the hegira to the beginning of the First Persian Empire, measured from Cyrus the Great's coronation. [147] Mohammad Reza's office was functional whose ceilings and walls were decorated with Qajar art. [141] In 1963 and 1964, nationwide demonstrations against Mohammad Reza's rule took place all over Iran, with the centre of the unrest being the holy city of Qom. He has no moral courage and succumbs easily to fear". Despite his public professions of admiration in later years, Mohammad Reza had serious misgivings about not only the coarse and roughshod political means adopted by his father, but also his unsophisticated approach to affairs of state.