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, the pilot of his single-engined Piper pointed to the snow-capped mountains wreathed in ominous clouds, but the prince was anxious to start home. Before he took off, Ali did an act of kindness: into his plane he loaded an old peasant ill with tuberculosis, who needed immediate hospitalization. Then the plane, carrying prince and peasant, headed for the capital two hours away.
It never arrived in Teheran. The Shah's birthday party was called off, and 25 Iranian-piloted Thunderbolts, assisted by eight U.S. Air Force planes, began a methodical sweep over the desolate Turkoman steppe. On the fifth day of searching, three peasants saw vultures swooping over a hidden ravine in the Elburz Mountains, only 42 miles from Teheran. The peasants went to the spot and there found the bodies of the prince and his two companions.
Ali's death leaves Iran without an heir presumptive. The Pahlevi dynasty began only with the Shah's father, a onetime army sergeant who seized the throne. The Shah himself has no sons. His five half brothers are the sons of princesses of the old rival Kajar dynasty, and are constitutionally barred from royal succession. Parliament can, however, shut its eyes and grant Iranian "quality" to one of the half brothers, making him eligible for the throne.