(2 of 5)
Seven Roaring Days. This month, Iran will hold a blowout the likes of which few countries have ever seen. For seven roaring days and seven joyous nights, it will celebrate the coronation of the man responsible for it all: Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, 47, Shahanshah (King of Kings), Aryamehr (Light of the Aryans), and absolute ruler of his nation. It will be history's most belated crowning, for the Shah has already occupied Iran's throne for 26 years. Until now, however, he had steadfastly rejected the idea of a formal coronation. "It is not a source of pride," he often explained, "to become king of a poor people."
The Shah has worked hard to alleviate his country's poverty. While his Arab neighbors feuded, fussed and fought with each other, he was busy building, investing most of his oil earnings in development instead of armaments, plants instead of planes. He decreed a radical land reform, gave women equal rights and promoted education at every level. By creating a climate of stability, he has induced private foreign investors to pour $1.3 billion into Iran. Having visited 57 countries, he has used personal diplomacy to put Iran on good terms with most of the world. Although a Moslem, he has steered carefully clear of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He ships oil to Israel, but has made friends (and exchanged visits) with Iraq's Arab Socialist President Abdel Rahman Aref, his western neighbor, and most other Arab leaders. But he abhors Nasser, whom he sees as a continuing threat to the security of all the Middle East.
Although basically pro-West, the Shah has also refrained from taking sides in Viet Nam. In fact, he has so improved his once-strained relations with Russia that the Soviet bloc in the past year has negotiated to build for him more than a billion dollars worth of heavy industry, including Iran's first full-fledged steel mill, in return for surplus natural gas and oil. The deals have not changed the Shah's pro-Western views. Iran, he says, is "importing iron but not ideology."
Thousand Families. The Shah has not always been so enlightened. Installed by occupying British and Russian troops in 1941 to replace his pro-Nazi father—an illiterate foot soldier who rose to the rank of general and then seized the throne—the Shah came to the palace as a spoiled young man interested mainly in pretty girls and flashy cars. He had plenty of oil money to spend, and the unqualified cold-war backing of Washington, which saw him mainly as an anti-Communist with a long border with Russia. For ten unremarkable years, he lived in luxurious disdain of the welfare of his countrymen. Then along came a crusty old nationalist named Mohammed Mossadegh, who as Premier nearly overthrew the Shah in 1953 and, in the process, woke him up. "Suddenly, I realized that we were not only standing still but losing ground," says the Shah. "We had to develop or die."