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At last week's celebrations, an hour-long parade recalled Iran's many dynasties. To represent the Achaemenians, who wore long beards, 200 Iranian soldiers did not shave for months; in the interests of authenticity, the government turned down a Japanese firm's offer of fake beards. There were also Sassanians, Parthians and Safavids—right down to the 20th century, when the Shah's father, General Reza Khan, a professional soldier of near-peasant origin, seized power in a 1921 army coup. He was ousted by the British and Russians during World War II for inconveniently keeping his strategic country neutral, and the present Shah took over in 1941.
White Revolution. The big party was actually nine years late. The celebrations were postponed while the Shah, who feared that his country's poverty might set the stage for a "Red revolution," set about accomplishing a "white revolution from the throne." His peaceful upheaval has been amazingly successful. Since 1962 Iran's gross national product has advanced at an average 9.2% per year, to $10 billion in 1970. Per capita income has nearly doubled, from $180 a year to $350.
Drawing on oil income that now has reached $2 billion, the Shah has built modern roads, communications facilities and dams. He has bartered natural gas for a Soviet steel plant and a Rumanian tractor factory, and used hard currency to buy more sophisticated Western technology. U.S. and European investment has built an auto-assembly works, an aluminum plant and a petrochemical complex. Though two-thirds of the country's 30 million people still live in villages, Teheran, the capital, has become a bustling city of 3,000,000, with traffic even scarier than Tokyo's.
Democracy is less advanced. Iran has political parties and elections, but the Shah appoints half the members of the Senate and makes all the important decisions. The press is firmly controlled, and criticism of the Shah is wholly forbidden. For the celebrations, the army clamped tight security around a 60-mile circumference of the tent city and, by ironic coincidence, arrested exactly 2,500 potential troublemakers. Iran's security police, SAVAK, tracked each VIP electronically via a small radio transmitter carried by an aide of the guest.
The Headwaiter. Some of the most illustrious names on the invitation list failed to make it. Regrets were sent by President Nixon (who dispatched Spiro Agnew instead), Queen Elizabeth II (who was represented by Prince Philip and Princess Anne) and, in the unkindest cut of all, French President Georges Pompidou, who sent Premier Jacques Chaban-Delmas. What was particularly grating was the fact that the Shah had given the affair such a heavily French accent. Taking note of this, Pompidou is reported by a Western diplomat to have said: "If I did go, they would probably make me the headwaiter."
There were plenty of acceptances, from King Hussein to Princess Grace and Prince Rainier, as well as Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny. But most of the visitors were lesser-knowns, such as King Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho, Liechtenstein's Prince Franz Joseph and Swaziland's Premier Prince Makhosini.