IRAN: Shah's Dream

His Imperial Majesty, Reza Shah Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, ceremoniously hammered a golden spike into a railway tie last week. Later, excited Iranians in Teheran watched the first train to make the trip from Bandar Shahpur, on the inlet Khor Musa of the Persian Gulf, pull in to Iran's inland capital. Thus the Trans-Iranian Railway, most spectacular, most expensive railroad enterprise undertaken since the World War, was pronounced completed. The railroad is the dream come true of a westernizing, wilful ruler who still believes in the 19th-Century notion that railroad-building is a...

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