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Dry Domain. Like his father, the Shah longs to impart grandeur to his dynasty. But he has another objective more realistic and admirable: to convert Iran into a healthy and stable modern nation. It has an awfully long way to go. Still vivid in the Shah's mind is the reaction of Iran's comfort-loving old-line politicians when he first confided his goal to them in 1942. "Sixteen Majlis Deputies," he recalls, "met with me in one of the rooms of this palace to confer about political affairs of the day. I told them that we must establish social justice in this country and added, 'It is not fair that a number of people should be at a loss what to do with their wealth, while a number die of hunger.' Next day they said, 'The Shah has developed revolutionary ideas.' "
In many ways Iran is a brown, unpromising ground for an economic and social revolution, 20th century style. A sprawl ing country that would stretch from Spain to Poland and from England to Italy, Iran is mostly arid plateau, where even under maximum irrigation a full 50% of the land would remain near-desert. Iranians all agree that life would be hopeless without the mountains: the Elburz range breaking the frosty blasts from the Russian north, the Zagros range towering over the Iraqi border to the east. On the mountain slopes the inhabitants of Iran's jam-packed cities find their vacation ground, and the migrant tribes their winter herding. More important, the snow-capped peaks send down the trickle of water that keeps the valley towns alive.
Some of Iran's barrenness stems from its history. Ever since the decline of the ancient Persian empire,-it has been a crossroads nation—sacked bloodily by Alexander, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. (One of Persia's last forays as conqueror was a 1739 raid on India, when troops pilfered from Delhi the emerald-incrusted throne on which the Shah now sits on cer emonial occasions.) Centuries ago, the average Persian retreated to his ridge-locked valley, where the keeper of the ritual hot baths still gets a cut of the villagers' crops, and where slim youths still build and maintain the tiled-roofed qanats that tunnel water as far as 40 miles from the nearest mountain well. Even yet, the Iranian economy remains primitive enough that a whole family can make a living off a single walnut tree. In the rug shops of Tabriz, tiny children work at the looms all day for 20^ or less. And the country's exports remain highly selective: choice caviar from the lightly salted Caspian Sea, sheep intestine for sausage casing, 300 tons of dried rose petals—and 350 million barrels of oil a year.
Reassuring Words. Even the oil—which Britain's Anglo-Persian Co. first began to exploit in 1909—long brought little to Iran but a more flagrant gap between rich and poor.