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If the words sound like an echo of the Shah's, it is no accident. Alam's father, a tribal chieftain whose private domains extended for hundreds of miles along the Afghanistan border, was a friend of the Shah's father. The two young men were buddies, and after Mohammed Reza Pahlevi assumed the throne in 1941, Alam became his closest confidant. He served as Minister of the Interior (twice), Agriculture and Labor. When ex-Premier Ali Amini quit in 1962, the Shah, who had had 16 Premiers in his 21-year reign, finally turned to his childhood friend.
Poolside Business. Alam developed into a shrewd administrator who knows when to conciliate and when to cut off debate. "I learned," he says, "to be cold-blooded in critical moments and to be just to my enemies." Displaying his toughness, the Premier called out the army last June to crush Teheran rioters who had been whipped into a frenzy by Moslem mullahs (priests) opposing land reform and women's suffrage. He often holds Cabinet sessions in a tented pavilion alongside the blue-tiled swimming pool on his palace grounds. On a nearby tree hangs a telephone, just in case the Shah should call, which he does at least a dozen times a day.
Alam is hopeful that in 20 years Iran's current spate of reforms will produce a Western standard of living. He has no worries about his own future either. "I am an optimist," he says. "If I do all right, then the nation benefits. If not, the Shah will fire me and I can rest."