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Few foreign students express anything but scorn for the Shah and condemnation of his U.S. supporters. Says Phyllis Bennis, a California attorney representing 165 Iranian students who were arrested in a Los Angeles demonstration last week: "Iran has been made a prime market in the Middle East. The Shah is a tool of the U.S. corporations." Others charge that the Shah's modernization program is largely a myth. "People are fighting with the regime because the Shah never did make land reforms," insists Farhad Ehya, a spokesman for the Iranian Student Organization at U.C.L.A. "Whatever he did, he took back. The people don't have education. They don't have health care."
The Shah has often been criticized for enjoying a sumptuous life-style while his people suffer economic distress. His Imperial Majesty, Shahanshah (King of Kings) is, at 58, trim and fit. He and his wife, Empress Farah, 40, Crown Prince Reza, 18, and three other children, shuttle among five palaces in Iran. The Shah enjoys a good game of tennis, skiing at St. Moritz, and flying his own JetStar. He works even harder than he plays, frequently putting in 15-hour days, which are often spent conferring with a handful of trusted advisers.
The country he inherited 37 years ago was not only backward and riven by tribal conflict but notoriously unstable: there had not been a single peaceful succession since Cyrus the Great in the 6th century B.C. In the two decades before his army officer father, Reza Shah, seized power in a military coup in 1921, there had been five different Shahs, a civil war and several coups d'état. In 1941 the Shah's father, a German sympathizer, was forced to abdicate when the Allies needed a secure route to channel war supplies to Russia. British and Soviet forces occupied Iran, and Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, then 22, took power. After the war, the Soviets stayed on and set up a puppet regime in the northern province of Azerbaijan. The young Shah brought the issue before the United Nations Security Council and succeeded in having them thrown out.
His national integrity secured, the Shah turned to the task of modernization. His achievements—often accomplished by plainly dictatorial methods and at times torture and terror—were remarkable. When the Shah came to power, Iran's illiteracy rate was 95%; today it is 50%. In the 1940s the school population was about 275,000, and Iran had only one institute of higher education; this year a notably improved educational system will receive 10 million pupils, and there are now some 200 colleges and universities. As recently as 1960, only 2% of Iran's women had attended a university; today, women make up 38% of the university population. Having all but ended tribalism and feudalism, the Shah has redistributed land to 16 million people.
Despite his fear of the Russians, the Shah receives extensive aid from the U.S.S.R. By Soviet count, 134 projects have been launched with Moscow's help, among them metallurgical plants, engineering facilities and a trans-Iranian trunk gas pipeline. Last March the Soviets built a new blast furnace at Isfahan; new smelting and rolling mills will follow soon. All told, these projects are claimed to account for the production of 90% of all coal in Iran, almost 90% of the iron ore and 70% of the steel.
But Moscow is also the enemy, and in recognition of this and his pivotal role as the guardian of the Persian Gulf oil lanes, the Shah has become commander in chief of one of the mightiest military machines in the Middle East. In 20 years, he has bought $36 billion in arms—half from the U.S. He has submarines from West Germany, tanks from Britain, frigates from Holland. His air force flies 141 F-4Es, 64 F-14As, 20 F-14s; and 180 more jets are on order. He has spent $500 million on 491 Bell helicopters, and will pay out another $500 million to train his men to fly them. Washington evaluates the Shah's army as an intensely loyal, well-equipped force. Manpower is 220,000, with 300,000 reserves.
The immense investment in military hardware has left the Shah open to charges that some of that money — which has helped him hold the allegiance of the military — should have been spent to improve civilian living conditions. Though a booming city, Tehran suffers a severe water shortage. Housing costs have shot up. The drop in oil income in the past three years (because of the fall of the dollar), though only 3%, found Iran financially overextended. As a result, many development projects simply came to a halt. Inflation leaped to 50% a year, profiteering became widespread, and the confluence of troubles served to highlight some of the faults that have long characterized the Shah's modernization program.