IRAN: Death of a Prince

Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, Shah of Persia, lit cigarette after cigarette with shaking hands as he stood on the tarmac of Teheran's Mehrabad airport one evening last week. At ten-minute intervals, planes glided in to land. None of them brought the news the Shah was waiting to hear: word of his missing brother, 32-year-old Prince Ali Reza, heir to the Iranian throne.

Prince Ali had gone up north to hunt, and to look in on his plantations near the Soviet frontier, but planned to return to Teheran for the Shah's 35th birthday celebration. When he arrived at the airstrip at Gurgan,...

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