Mohammed Reza Pahlavi: 1919-1980
Is it not passing brave to be a King,
And ride in triumph through Persepolis?
—Tamburlaine the Great,
Christopher Marlowe
He ended fearing for his life,
On the pinnacle of nothingness.
—Owhadi, Persian poet
Not even Scheherazade could have conceived the splendid scene beside the ancient ruins of Persepolis. The occasion was the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great, and the Shah of Iran had decided to throw a party that would dazzle even the most jaded of his guests: Kings and Queens, Presidents and Premiers, sheiks and sultans. More than $100 million was spent on tents lined with silk and furnished with Baccarat crystal and Porthault linens, banquets laden with roast peacock stuffed with foie gras, magnums of Château Lafite-Rothschild.
The year was 1971. Yet even then, to those who looked beyond the grandeur, there were signs that all was not well in the Shah's realm. The party grounds were sealed with barbed wire; troops armed with submachine guns stood guard. The University of Tehran was closed to forestall embarrassing signs of protest. By 1978, resentment against the imperial arrogance of Persepolis had ignited a revolution that spread from mosques to merchants to the remotest villages of the country. When Mohammed Reza Pahlavi died in a Cairo hospital last week at the age of 60 of lymphatic cancer complicated by a hemorrhage of the pancreas, it was after 18 months of exile.
No longer was he the Aryamehr (Light of the Aryans) and Shahanshah (King of Kings), absolute ruler of the remnant of the Persian Empire that his father had renamed Iran. Since fleeing the country in January 1979, he had been a man without a country, a man with a price on his head, placed there by the Muslim fundamentalists who overthrew him. His search for a home took him initially from Egypt to Morocco to the Bahamas to Mexico. Last October he requested permission to enter the U.S. for medical treatment. Despite warnings that his admission could irreparably damage relations with the new government in Tehran, the Carter Administration, encouraged by Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller, decided to admit the Shah on humanitarian grounds.
Iranian anger at what was seen as American protection of the ousted dictator boiled over. Militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran, took everyone present hostage, and demanded that the Shah be returned to stand trial for various "crimes." Washington refused. There was no indication how his death would affect the 52 Americans who are still being held captive after eight months.
After his recovery, the Shah briefly found a haven in Panama. In March, fearful of extradition proceedings and again in need of surgery, he went to Cairo at the invitation of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who offered his "good friend" a home and medical treatment there.