The Fall of Heaven

by Andrew Scott Cooper

  The Shah, Queen Farah, and their youngest children and entourage left Cairo after a short stay and flew to Morocco as guests of King Hassan. They were in Morocco in February 1979 when the monarchy was finally overthrown. The new Islamic republic promised to cut oil sales and relations with any country that offered them safe haven, and many of the princes, presidents, and prime ministers who once called at Niavaran looking for favors turned their backs on them. Old friends such as Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, and the Dutch, Swedish, and Spanish royal families stayed in touch but lacked the political power to extend practical help. The family moved to the Bahamas and Mexico before President Carter reluctantly allowed the Shah to enter the United States for cancer surgery. His decision prompted the student takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. From New York the Pahlavis spent time in Panama before returning to the Middle East. President Sadat welcomed the Shah back to Egypt, where he died on July 27, 1980.

  In the months before he succumbed to lymphoma the Shah spoke more freely than at any time in his life. He held a series of revealing conversations with his wife’s friend Fereydoun Djavadi. “Why didn’t you go all out against Khomeini?” Djavadi asked him. “Why didn’t you finish this?” “I wasn’t this man,” the Shah answered. “If you wanted someone to kill people you had to find somebody else.” Djavadi was perplexed. He reminded the Shah that he had ordered the army crackdown in 1963. “You gave the orders to finish the job,” said Djavadi. “It wasn’t me,” the Shah told him. “It was Alam who gave the orders.”

  The Shah spoke often about fate and destiny. In the space of a few decades he had transformed a backward, poverty-stricken country into southwestern Asia’s most powerful state and the world’s second-largest oil producer. The Iran he left behind boasted one of the best-educated workforces in the Middle East and a burgeoning manufacturing and industrial base. Despite the economic dislocations caused by the oil boom, in his last year the economy had finally started to cool off and settle down. Iran under his watch experienced one of the greatest artistic and cultural revivals in its modern history, and the country was on its way to becoming a regional hub for industry, science, and medicine. He had hoped that his farewell gift to Iran would be free elections, a return to democracy, and the handover of the crown to his eldest son. Like his father, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi had simply run out of time and luck. “I hadn’t the time,” he mused. “If I had five more years everything would be done.”

  The Shah was in Cairo when Djavadi asked him to describe his feelings about Iran and the Iranian people. “Your Majesty, you’re in love with Iran,” said Djavadi. “Can you define what is Iran?”

  The Shah, for whom nationalism was like a religion, paused to consider his answer. “Iran is Iran,” he soberly replied. There followed a minute’s silence. “It’s land, people, and history,” he added. Another minute passed. “Every Iranian has to love it.” He repeated over and over: “Iran is Iran. Iran is Iran.”

  Shortly thereafter he slipped into unconsciousness and passed away. He was sixty years old, an age when many statesmen in Western countries were winning their first elections to national office.

  One thing he knew for sure. Though the glory days of empire might be over, the claim to past greatness ran through the land and the people like a pulse.

  NOTES

  The page numbers for the notes that appeared in the print version of this title are not in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for the relevant passages documented or discussed.

  INTRODUCTION: Back to Cairo

  “I turn to right and left”: Abolqasem Ferdowsi, Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings, trans. Dick Davis (New York: Penguin, 2006), p. 764. p. 273.

  “Ingratitude is the prerogative of the people”: Author interview with Bob Armao, October 20, 2014. The Shah made his comment to Armao shortly before he left Iran in January 1979.

  “I didn’t want to come on the anniversary”: Author interview with Farah Pahlavi, February 15, 2015.

  “It will be back up soon enough”: Author interview with Amir Pourshaja, March 16, 2013.

  “Ingratitude is the prerogative of the people”: Author interview with Bob Armao, October 20, 2014.

  “protecting Adolf Eichmann”: “Buttoning Andy Young’s Lip,” Newsweek, November 26, 1979, p. 33.

  “a saint”: “Mr. Ambassador,” Newsweek, August 27, 1979, p. 17.

  $25 billion: “Nobody Influences Me!” Time, December 10, 1979, p. 34.

  “No, I wouldn’t deny it”: Oriana Fallaci, Interviews with History and Conversations with Power (New York: Rizzoli, 2011), p. 158.

  casualty estimates: See later chapters of this book and also http://www.emadbaghi.com/en/archives/000592.php#more.

  3,164 names: See http://www.emadbaghi.com/en/archives/000592.php#more.

  “The problem here”: Ali Ansary, The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 226.

  Chile, casualty figures: For more information on Chile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, see The Report of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/resources/collections/truth_commissions/Chile90-Report/Chile90-Report.pdf.

  Argentina, casualty figures: For more information on Argentina in the 1970s, see Paul H. Lewis, Guerrillas and Generals: The “Dirty War” in Argentina (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002).

  Iraq: John F. Burns, “How Many People Has Hussein Killed?” New York Times, January 26, 2003.

  Syria: To learn more about events in Syria in 1982, see the Guardian newspaper’s coverage, http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2011/aug/01/hama-syria-massacre-1982-archive.

  “Green what?”: Author interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, September 4, 2015.

  “Everyone is a psychologist, you know?”: Author interview with Farah Pahlavi, March 24, 2013.

  “Blunt histories do not always meet”: Margaret MacMillan, Dangerous Games (New York: Modern Library, 2009), p. 41.

  “Historians, of course, do not own the past”: Ibid., p. 43.

  “When did you reveal yourself”: The author was witness to the dinner table conversation.

  1. THE SHAH

  “A country’s king can never be at peace”: Abolqasem Ferdowsi, Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings, trans. Dick Davis (New York: Penguin, 2006), p. 764.

  “I want my son to inherit not dreams”: John B. Oakes, “Shah Is Offering New Plan to Aid Developing Nations,” New York Times, September 24, 1975.

  His day began: Author interview with Amir Pourshaja, March 16, 2013. Details in this chapter about the Shah’s daily routine, except where indicated, are taken from this interview session.

  sensitive stomach, food allergies: Ibid. Author interview with Fereydoun Djavadi, July 13, 2013.

  larger than Great Britain: Edward J. Linehan, “Old-New Iran, Next Door to Russia,” National Geographic 199, no. 1 (January 1961): 47.

  thirty-five million subjects: James O. Jackson, “Shah: Dedicated, Dominant, Distrustful,” Chicago Tribune, January 8, 1978.

  twenty-one: The number of dams built under the Shah was provided by Dr. Iradj Vahidi, former minister of water and power, via an e-mail exchange with Abdol Reza Ansari, former minister of the interior, April 15, 2015. Under the Shah a total of twenty-one dams were constructed. Fifteen were water storage dams and six were diversionary dams. The storage dams were: Karaj, Sepeed-Rood, Dez, Latian, Karoon, Mehhabad, Golpayegan, Shah-Abbas, Arras, Zarrineh-Rood, Gheshlaagh, Meenaab, Doroodzan, Gorgan, and Shahnaz. The diversion dams were: Karkheh, Shabankaareh, Kahhak, Zahhak, Shaour, and Bampour.

  during the rainy season: Author interview with Kambiz Atabai, October 25, 2015.

  One day at the Caspian: Author interview with Fereydoun Djavadi, July 13, 2013.

  “What is he doing?”: Ibid.

  “a feeling of déjà vu”: Farah Pahlavi, An Enduring Love: My Life with the Shah (New York: Miramax, 2004), p.
245.

  “We are delighted to salute”: “Who Else Would Have Done It?,” Kayhan International, October 27, 1967.

  second largest oil exporter: “Troops Guard Oil,” Kayhan International, November 1, 1978.

  education statistics: Jagdish Sharma, “Student Unrest Stems from Just Grievances,” Kayhan International, October 9, 1978.

  17 percent to more than 50 percent: Joe Alex Morris, “Iran’s Future Grows Less and Less Certain,” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1978.

  “Nobody can dictate to us”: “Shah Rejects Bid by Ford for Cut in Prices of Oil,” New York Times, September 27, 1974.

  “to a threshold of grandeur”: “Oil, Grandeur, and a Challenge to the West,” Time, November 4, 1974, p. 28.

  “Boom?”: “Iran’s Race for Riches,” Newsweek, March 24, 1975, p. 38.

  “living better than most”: Jackson, “Shah: Dedicated, Dominant, Distrustful.”

  423-fold: Ibid.

  14-fold: Ibid.

  “The Shah’s power is virtually total”: Ibid.

  “one of the most pervasive”: Ibid.

  10 percent: “Oil, Grandeur, and a Challenge to the West.”

  40 percent of the wealth: Ibid.

  sixty-one thousand villages: Richard T. Sale, “Iran, the New Persian Empire: Shah’s Vision of Progress Clashes with Iranian Reality,” Washington Post, May 8, 1977.

  “piped water, sanitation, doctors”: Ibid.

  “People hunt for undigested oats”: Ibid.

  “It’s all skin deep”: Ibid.

  “It’s all fake pretension”: Ibid.

  fifth-strongest nation: “Expert Puts Iran up with World Big Guns,” Kayhan International, December 6, 1977.

  5.9 billion rials: Changiz Pezeshkpur, “Stock Volume Hits 5.9b. Rials,” Kayhan International, January 1, 1978.

  380,000 tourists: “Foreign Tourism Still Rising,” Kayhan International, July 5, 1978.

  100,000 foreign residents: “Riots ‘Don’t Alarm’ Foreign Community,” Kayhan International, September 7, 1978.

  52,000 Americans: Author interview with Henry Precht, June 4, 2009.

  expatriate communities in Iran: “Riots ‘Don’t Alarm’ Foreign Community.”

  “Look at them”: “Iran’s Race for Riches,” Newsweek, March 24, 1975, p. 38.

  defended by a crack professional fighting force: Figures and quotes (unless otherwise indicated) describing the size of the different branches of the Imperial Armed Forces come from a White House document titled “Iran’s Petroleum Vulnerabilities,” February 21, 1978, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library.

  pledge to defend “God, Shah, and Fatherland”: “An Army with Two Missions,” Time, November 27, 1978, p. 29.

  “His is a formidable personality”: “Memorandum: Nothing Succeeds Like a Successful Shah,” Central Intelligence Agency Office of National Estimate, October 8, 1971, Iran: The Making of US Policy, 1977–80, National Security Archive (Alexandria, VA: Chadwyck-Healey, 1990), document 00757.

  “My Quran, I forgot it! I have to go back!”: Two former palace aides relayed this story to the author. The Shah’s staff never understood the accusations made by opposition groups that the King did not take his devotions or religion seriously.

  stayed at his side for the rest of the day: Author interview with Colonel Kiomars Djahinbini, March 25, 2013.

  “I remember him coming down the stairs”: Author interview with Reza Pahlavi, March 26, 2013.

  worked without air-conditioning: Author interviews with Farah Pahlavi, March 23–25, 2013, and Fereydoun Djavadi, July 13, 2013.

  “We start getting work”: Jackson, “Shah: Dedicated, Dominant, Distrustful.”

  “Often I order minor officials”: Ibid.

  “I barely had time”: Ibid.

  “I not only make the decisions”: Lewis M. Simons, “Shah’s Dreams Are Outpacing Iran’s Economic Boom,” Washington Post, May 26, 1974.

  approved salary increases, etc.: Khosrow Fatemi, “Leadership by Distrust: The Shah’s Modus Operandi,” Middle East Journal 36, no. 1 (Winter 1982): 54.

  No military plane took off or landed: Ibid., p. 48.

  above the rank of lieutenant colonel: Confirmed by Kambiz Atabai, October 24, 2015.

  itineraries were sent to the Shah: Jackson, “Shah: Dedicated, Dominant, Distrustful.”

  “Copies of every story”: Ibid.

  “He only wanted to get things done”: Author interview with Dr. Parviz Mina, September 11, 2014.

  “He would let you explain yourself”: Author interview with Abdol Reza Ansari, September 12, 2014.

  “He asks very, very sharp questions”: Jackson, “Shah: Dedicated, Dominant, Distrustful.”

  “He was familiar with everything”: Foundation for Iranian Studies oral history interview with Armin Meyer by William Burr, Washington, DC, March 29, 1985, pp. 1–18.

  “Once you lost his goodwill”: Habib Ladjevardi, director, interview with Denis Wright, Harvard University Center for Middle East Studies, Iranian Oral History Project, October 10, 1984, tape 3, p. 5.

  Once a week: Confirmed by Kambiz Atabai, October 24, 2015.

  padlocked to the wrist: Asadollah Alam, The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran’s Royal Court, 1969–77, introduced and edited by Alinaghi Alikhani (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), p. 159. Confirmed by Ardeshir Zahedi, who served as Iranian foreign minister from 1966 to 1973, in author interviews, October 27–28, 2012.

  “My voice is heard everywhere”: Margaret Laing, The Shah (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1977), p. 225.

  “some enormous earth slide”: “Iran: Desert Miracle,” National Geographic 147, no. 1 (January 1975): 6.

  inaugurated the soaring Shahyad Monument: Amir Taheri, “Tehran’s Ctesiphon: Shahyad Inaugurated,” Kayhan International, October 17, 1971.

  Construction on an underground metro: “Work Gets Started on City Metro,” Kayhan International, November 14, 1977.

  forested green belt: “Forest Belt Around Tehran,” Kayhan International, November 14, 1977.

  “stern, icily correct”: Jackson, “Shah: Dedicated, Dominant, Distrustful.”

  “Some found him a little humorless”: Cynthia Helms, An Ambassador’s Wife in Tehran (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1981), p. 92.

  “rather a bore”: Habib Ladjevardi, director, interview with Denis Wright, Harvard University Center for Middle East Studies, Iranian Oral History Project, October 10, 1984, tape 4, p. 7.

  “found the Shah heavy going”: Ibid., p. 8.

  play with a loose strand of hair: Author interviews with Farah Pahlavi, March 23–25, 2013.

  “The expression in his face never changed”: Author interview with Khalil al-Khalil, June 21, 2013.

  “As serious as a mullah”: Princess Soraya Esfandiary Bakhtiary, in collaboration with Louis Valentin, Palace of Solitude, trans. Hubert Gibbs (London: Quartet Books, 1992), p. 80.

  the formal Persian word for “you”: Ibid., p. 67.

  “He had really great self-control”: Author interviews with Farah Pahlavi, March 23–25, 2013.

  “Not so fast! Not so fast!”: Ibid.

  “The missile was fired from six miles away”: Author interview with Lieutenant General Mohammad Hossein Mehrmand, January 13, 2015.

  “On a one-to-one, eyeball-to-eyeball basis”: Don A. Schanche, “Contradictions Shadow Image of Shah,” Los Angeles Times, November 12, 1978.

  “He was exactly the opposite”: Author interview with Mahnaz Afkhami, August 16, 2013.

  “My father was shy”: Author interview with Reza Pahlavi, March 26, 2013.

  “If I take a liking to someone”: Jackson, “Shah: Dominant, Dedicated, Distrustful.”

  he was careful: Author interview with Fereydoun Djavadi, July 13, 2013.

  “stiffly seated”: Donnie Radcliffe and Jacqueline Trescott, “Back-Door Diplomacy at the White House,” Washington Post, November 16, 1977, p. 129.

  the false rumor spread: Ibid.

  “He was so shy”: Author in
terview with Parvine Farmanfarmaian, February 16, 2015.

  “There was a gentleman”: Author interview with Farah Pahlavi, November 13, 2014.

  made sure thank-you gifts: Author interview with Elli Antoniades, April 3, 2013.

  paid the medical expenses: Ibid.

  “I can’t allow this”: Ibid.

  the wrong medication: Alam (1991), p. 479.

  “I am sorry I was too busy”: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1031880/posts.

  “Pull this fellow’s ears”: Ibid.

  “Dangerous”: Edward J. Linehan, “Old-New Iran, Next Door to Russia,” National Geographic 199, no. 1 (January 1961): 84.

  “And do you know how many died”: Author interview with Robert Armao, October 20, 2014.

  fell “into such prolonged laughter”: Alam, (1991), p. 503.

  presented him with checks: Author interview with Robert Armao, October 20, 2014.

  “a fantastic tailor”: Author interview with Maryam Ansary, April 17, 2013.

  “You can’t throw a stone”: Jackson, “Shah: Dominant, Dedicated, Distrustful.”

  “Isn’t there any other news”: Author interview with Reza Ghotbi, March 25, 2013.

  “Let me tell you quite bluntly”: Max Frankel, “‘This King Business,’ a Headache to Shah,” New York Times, April 14, 1962.

  “It is hardly a pleasant job”: E. A. Bayne, Persian Kingship in Transition (New York: American Universities Field Staff, 1968), p. 38.

  “children”: Various associates and acquaintances of the Shah confirmed to the author that the Shah often affectionately referred to the Iranian people as his “children.”

  “You Westerners simply don’t understand”: Jackson, “Shah: Dominant, Dedicated, Distrustful.”

  the farr: To read more about the farr see Bayne (1968), p. 67; Homa Katouzian, State and Society in Iran: The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis (London: I. B. Taurus, 2006), p. 5; and Abolala Soudavar, The Aura of Kings: Legitimacy and Divine Sanction in Iranian Kingship (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2003).