by Abbas Milani
Caught between the mythic mountain and the magic well, constrained by the inexorable force of its geography and history, sits the city of Tehran, where on October 26, 1919, in “a small and modest house” in one of the city’s “older residential districts”2 a boy was born. They called him Mohammad Reza. His mother, Taj ol Muluk, was a self-assertive woman of strong views; his father, Reza Khan, was a charismatic officer of the Cossack Brigade, initially established by the Russian Tsar and by the time of Mohammad Reza’s birth already under the command of Iranian officers. In fact, Reza Khan was one of the first Iranians to take such a command.
The house was a typical example of traditional urban Persian architecture—an insular, inward-looking building with high walls to keep away the intrusive gaze of strangers. Like the Persian language, in which the surface and substantive meanings of words—their zaher and batan—are often in discordant contrast, in traditional Persian architecture, houses are sharply divided between the andarun and birun—the private and public domains. The façades of these houses are humble and bereft of ostentation. In contrast to the feigned simplicity of the façades, the interiors are, usually, rich with lavish appointments. Mohammad Reza’s house of birth was no exception. Protected by high brick walls, on two sides of the yard stood interconnected rooms, five steep stone steps above the ground; underneath the building were rooms, often used for storage in winter and as a cool haven in the sometimes-sizzling days of summer. In the middle of the yard stood a small, round pond.
As Reza Khan’s fortunes grew, the family moved into bigger houses and better neighborhoods. Of those early years, and the houses he lived in, Mohammad Reza remembers only “the beauty of the mountains . . . that loomed over the city.”3
Not far from where he was born, there were a dry moat and a mud wall that encircled the capital. The wall, with its twelve† (mostly) ornate gates, conjuring the twelve Imams of Shiism, and its 114 crenellations, celebrating the 114 chapters of the Qu’ran, was a relic of Nasir al-Din Shah’s late-nineteenth-century “journey of discovery” to Europe.4 At night, the city gates were closed, while during the day, the moat, ever dry and a bleak reminder of Tehran’s aridity and its distance from water, became a hangout for dope fiends, pederasts, the musicians disparagingly called motrebs, and stray dogs—the tormented ghosts that often prowled Iran’s urban landscape. Tehran was in 1919 a city of dirt roads and mud houses, of small streams that acted as open sewage; and at night it was a dark, dread domain dominated by hooligans and bandits, as well as daroogeh—or the police—whose cruelty and corruption made them even more dangerous and more predatory than the thieves they supposedly kept at bay.
Mohammad Reza was barely six years old when his father became king and ordered the encircling mud wall razed and the moat filled. In his ambitious effort to modernize the capital, Reza Shah re-drew the map of the city, willing into existence two tree-lined boulevards that cut through the labyrinthine maze of the old capital. In forcing his linear, rational grid on the old village that now masqueraded as a city and the capital of the country, Reza Shah also ordered the destruction of all but one of the twelve gates. In this razing frenzy, he was participating in an age-old pattern of Iranian history, in which memories of the past, and relics of the ancien régime, are deemed counter-revolutionary and subversive.
Five hours after Mohammed Reza was born, in the early afternoon, his twin sister, Ashraf, joined him in the world. Compared with the jubilant celebration that had followed his birth, Ashraf’s belated arrival, in her own wounded words, begot “none of the excitement that greeted my brother’s birth. To say that I was unwanted might be harsh, but not altogether far from the truth.”5
An iconic picture, taken when she and her twin brother were about three years old, captures both Mohammad Reza’s privileged position and his twin sister’s sense of alienation and anguish. The father, mustachioed, stern, impatient, with piercing eyes, sits on a bench in the backyard of their house—surrounded by pots of flourishing flowers. He is clothed in the dashing white tunic worn by commanders of the Cossack Brigade, tight black trousers tucked neatly into his shiny knee-high black boots, the quintessential Cossack fur cap on his head. On his lap sits Mohammad Reza. The father’s oversized hands are wrapped around his son’s diminutive body. The boy looks at once blissful and anxious. He is biting his lips (lip-biting and twirling a strand of his hair around one of his fingers, were, all his life, signs of his anger and anxiety). But in spite of the nervous bite, the boy also has the contented look of a mariner who has, at long last, safely arrived in harbor.
Standing between Reza Khan’s legs, possessively clutching her father’s hand, is Shams, Reza Khan’s older and favorite daughter. Even as a girl, she wears the petulant and spoiled expression that would define her life. A few steps away, Ashraf stands alone, looking almost disheveled, gazing at the camera in dismay. While the two daughters are attired in similar drab cotton dresses and long dark stockings, the young future Shah wears what looks to be an expensive sailor suit. In his short pants and knee-high socks, the boyish Mohammad Reza looks like a European schoolboy.
Reza Khan, the father, was a soldier by temperament, fearless in war, towering in physique, and commanding in comportment. He was relentless in pursuit of his goals and willing to use any means necessary—including bullying and brute force—to achieve his ends. Not long after Mohammad Reza’s birth, Reza Khan became the power behind the Iranian throne—and soon enough, its occupant.
The Shah had an intense and paradoxical relationship with both the person and the legacy of his father. In his first book, the 336-page Mission for My Country, there are no fewer than 784 distinct references to his father, or in other words, an average of more than two per page.6 In comparison, he mentions his mother only 12 times. He writes of his father as a man “of strength . . . determination . . . a towering figure . . . a dominant personality . . . no man ever believed more in his country . . . selfless . . . one of the greatest mind readers.”7
At the same time, in the part of the narrative ostensibly set aside for celebrating his father, he insists that his father influenced him both “positively and negatively.” He calls one chapter “My Unconventional Childhood,” and refers to Reza Shah as “one of the pleasantest men in the world” but also “one of the most frightening.”8
This ambivalence was evident not just in the Shah’s writings but in his life as well. He was highly sensitive to too much praise of his father. It was something of a rule amongst seasoned courtiers that Reza Shah must not be praised too profusely in front of his son. Mohammad Reza Shah often complained that he had accomplished infinitely more than his father, but that people failed to adequately appreciate his efforts and continued to harp on his father’s feats. In 1961, long before accomplishing any serious reforms of his own, he wrote that although his father “carried out so many ambitious and progressive projects, he never promulgated any comprehensive development program such as our present second seven years plan.”9
In a later book, written in the mid-seventies, the Shah offers a summary of fifty years of Pahlavi rule in Iran and is even more openly critical of his father, concluding that “in the first twenty years”—or in other words, during the reign of his father—“the country’s efforts were focused on neutralizing the negative effects of the past. . . . There was in practice little time left for constructive work. . . . Our country’s real effort towards progress and prosperity began only after August 19, 1953.”10 More incredibly still, in the fifteen-page introduction to the book, the Shah never mentions, even once, his father’s name. Even when referring to his own ascent to the throne, he praises “a will superior to all human wills” for putting the fate of the nation in his hands, making no reference to his father’s role in establishing the dynasty. While his failure to praise his father is subtle in these public pronouncements, in private he sometimes went further. In 1972, for example, just at the time when he had squared off against big oil companies, his confidant, Alam, asked about Reza
Shah’s valor. “Of course I had never seen him in war,” the Shah responded, “but when he was sick, he didn’t have much valor.”11
It is not clear where his father was on that chilly October day, around noon, when Mohammad Reza was born. Some have him fighting in jungles in the province of Guilan. His daughter Ashraf offers a different version, claiming that the father was at home, pacing the yard—pacing was a constant habit of both Reza Shah and his son, Mohammad Reza Shah—anxiously awaiting word from the midwife. In those days, Iran had nine hospitals, forty-one clinics, and four trained nurses. There was not a single gynecologist in the country. It was therefore not just customary, but necessary, for women to deliver their children at home. Lucky and prosperous were those like Mohammad Reza’s mother, the willful Taj ol Muluk, who could also afford to have a midwife present. The high infant mortality rate in Iran at the time was one consequence of these medical deficiencies.
The paucity of modern public health amenities made life precarious for the infant Mohammad Reza. It soon became apparent that he was a sickly infant, particularly vulnerable to the numerous diseases that wreaked havoc on the country—a country that had, according to one astute medical historian, a compromised constitution at the time.12
The year Mohammad Reza was born, 1919, saw the height of a worldwide influenza epidemic that had its origins in the heartland of America, but came to be known as the “Spanish flu.” In sheer number of people killed—estimated to be nearly 100 million worldwide—it is considered the most deadly plague of all time.13 While the number of people killed in Iran is a matter of considerable controversy, the country was devastated by the disease. Experts suggest that famine, malaria, anemia, and, finally, opium, were responsible for Iran’s unusually high mortality rate.
The problem of addiction was itself something of a plague. It is estimated that around the time of Mohammad Reza’s birth, in Tehran, of the city’s 250,000 inhabitants, no fewer than 25,000 people, or 10 percent, were addicted to opium.14 In cities outside the capital, the problem was at times even more serious. Kerman, for example was notorious, with 25,000 addicts out of a population of 60,000.15
The advent of World War I only exacerbated conditions in Iran. Russian, Turkish, German, and British forces occupied parts of the country. Tribal disorder made an already-enfeebled central government weaker and more vulnerable. Famine took many lives.16 Predatory and parasitic gangs roamed the countryside and made travel hazardous; even many of the important urban centers, like Yazd and Kashan, were in the parasitic grip of hoodlums and gangs. In Kashan, Nayeb Hussein Kashi had established his own veritable dukedom, milking the rich and menacing the poor.
It was in the midst of these tumults that Reza Khan contacted the German Embassy in Tehran to solicit their help. The idea of using Germany as a “third force” to countervail against Russia and Britain—the two poles of colonial power in Iran—was beginning to take serious root in Iran at the time. Before long, a group of Iranian nationalists who had settled in Berlin also solicited German assistance in the fight against British and Russian colonialism. In the case of Reza Khan, however, Germany showed no willingness to offer help. But the story of his relationship with Germany, particularly after the rise of Nazism, proved singularly important not only in his life, but in the fate of his son, Mohammad Reza.
Next to the war, the Bolshevik Revolution, leading to the removal of Tsarist forces from Iran, had the most profound impact on the country’s political dynamics. In 1918, with Russia temporarily out of the picture, Britain, in a policy championed by Lord Curzon, opted to make Iran a virtual protectorate. By bribing the monarch, Ahmad Shah (the last king of the Qajar dynasty), his Prime Minister, and two other key members of the cabinet, the British government tried to pass what came to be known as the 1919 Agreement. It would place British “advisors” at the helm of the most important ministries, as well as of the army.
A strong nationalist movement developed in opposition to the Agreement. On the international scene, the United States, the new Soviet government, and France were also actively campaigning against the agreement.17 Amongst the few Persian advocates of the Agreement was a journalist called Seyyed Zia. His support marked him irrevocably with the infamy of being a “British stooge,” and thus 1919, the year Mohammad Reza was born, marked a turning point in Seyyed’s long and eventful life.
1919 was also the year of the Treaty of Versailles. Iran tried desperately to take part in the negotiations and to make its case about the damages the country had suffered as a result of the war. Britain was adamantly opposed to Iran’s participation, while the United States intervened on Iran’s behalf.
Seyyed Zia openly ridiculed Iran’s effort to participate in the conference. The British Foreign Office describes Seyyed as “a man of outstanding singleness of purpose and courage. Personally attractive, religious without being fanatical or obscurantist. . . . He is both honest and energetic—a very rare combination in Persia. . . . Has something of a mystic in him.”18 Iranian sources have called Seyyed Zia the most notorious Anglophile politician in modern Iranian history.19 Seyyed never denied having close ties with the British. “I was a friend of the British,” he declared, “because being their friend, you only pay a price . . . but being their enemy guarantees your destruction. All my life I have paid the price for this friendship, but as a rational man, I was never ready to be destroyed.”20 Seyyed would soon play a huge role in the establishment of Reza Khan’s dynasty and his installation on the throne.
By 1921, when the young Mohammad Reza was only two years old, Iran was on the verge of disintegration. In each corner of the country, a warlord or a revolutionary leader had staked a claim to parts of the territory. In the northern provinces, an alliance between Iranian Communists, Soviet forces that had landed on the Iranian side of the Caspian coast, and a nationalist figure called Mirza Kouchik Khan led to the creation of the first Soviet Socialist Republic in Iran.21 In Khorasan, there were increasing signs of Bolshevik influence. There were even indications that the province’s governor, Ahmad Qavam, often simply called Qavam al-Saltaneh, was contemplating a declaration of independence. Qavam went on to become a lifelong nemesis of the young Mohammad Reza Shah. Another nationalist colonel, named Pessiyan, led a rebellion against the central government. Finally, Sheikh Khaz’al, an unabashed agent of the British government, declared the oil-rich province of Khuzestan a veritable British protectorate.
The Sheikh acted as a virtual head of state and went so far as to publish a book titled Agreements and Treaties between the British Government and His Honor, Sheikh-e Mahamareh.22 So crucial was Khuzestan to British geostrategic plans that when it became clear that the 1919 Agreement was heading for defeat, Britain began contemplating plans to help the region break away from Iran. In all of their plans in Iran, the British could invariably count on the complicity of some mendacious Iranians. In this case, Mohammad Hassan Mirza, Iran’s Crown Prince at the time, contacted the British government and suggested that “he was prepared to head new government in Southern Persia, separate from Northern Persia.”23 If installed as the king, he would, he promised, protect British oil interests.
The British had become concerned about the rise of Bolshevism in Iran and closely monitored the activities of every known Communist and worked with Reza Khan who took particular pride in his record as an anti-Communist.24 In 1925, for example, according to a report of the British Embassy in Tehran, there were “about 300 suspects under close surveillance, as Bolshevik agents . . . mostly Russian.”25 The embassy kept a close watch on their vulnerability and movement.
Hitherto, the British, still hoping for the ratification of the 1919 Agreement, had worked hard to prevent the emergence of a powerful central government. Now they were in favor of the creation of just such a government—one that could withstand the Bolshevik onslaught. It was in this context that the idea of the 1921 coup took shape, and with it, the life of the two-year-old Mohammad Reza was forever changed.
The British were not a
lone in hoping for a strong central government in Iran at the time. Some of Iran’s leading democrats, like the poet Malek-Shoara Bahar and his circle of friends around the journal Daneshkadeh, had also begun advocating the virtues, indeed the necessity of a “strong,” enlightened, but law-abiding leader. It is an often-repeated pattern of history that when societies experience prolonged periods of instability and conflict, particularly when opposing poles of power prove incapable of asserting hegemony and maintaining order, that the masses, as well as many in the elite, begin to crave a leader like Julius Caesar or Napoleon. Iran was no exception. By 1921, segments of the middle class and the bazaar merchants began advocating the necessity for a strongman, someone who could establish, after fifteen years of chaos and civil strife, some semblance of order. The British were by then in full agreement with this idea.
British General Edmund Ironside’s famous phrase goes, “What we need now is a military dictatorship.” While the military muscle of this dictatorship was to be provided by Reza Khan, the charismatic leader of the Cossack Brigade, the political savvy and connections would come from Seyyed Zia, the journalist who had ridiculed Iran’s efforts at participating in the Versailles treaty.
In the early hours of the morning of Esfand 3, 1299/February 21, 1921, the famous Cossack Brigade, led by Reza Khan, moved to take control of the capital, Tehran. They met virtually no resistance. Of the existing state machinery, only the weak, vacillating, and corrupt King was left in power. Hearing of the movement of troops towards the capital, Ahmad Shah became “very agitated . . . and talked of immediate flight, but Mr. Smart [of the British Legation] was able to calm him sufficiently to make him abandon his intention.”26 While the British supported the coup, they hoped to maintain a “figurehead” monarchy.