IRAN: Out Goes the Shah

One hot evening about 20 years ago, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, home on vacation from his elegant school in Switzerland, stood in the gardens of the ornate Marble Palace gazing into the waters of a pool. His father, the Shah of Persia, came upon him and demanded: “What are you doing, son?” “Nothing, father, just standing here thinking,” answered the boy. The Shah’s face clouded, and he roared: “Thinking! God damn it, one day you’re going to be Shah and you’ll have to act, not think.” He booted his son into the water.

Father was a tough ex-cavalryman who became Shah by grabbing power; his son could never quite get over a shamed and hesitant feeling that the monarchy was not his by long tradition. Even after being booted into the pool, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi never learned to be decisive. Ascending the throne in 1941, Mohammed Reza quickly indicated that he preferred affairs of the heart to affairs of state. In his early days, he kept a fast plane, a hot-rod Cadillac and a French mistress; once he made a big and unsuccessful pitch for Rita Hayworth.

Favor Unreturned. While he was still Crown Prince, young Mohammed Reza did a kind act that was to lead, after many turnings, to his own undoing last week. A young physician begged the Crown Prince to take pity on the physician’s father, who had been exiled by the Reza Shah, and was dying. Mohammed Reza brought the old man back from exile, thus saving his life, and won his pledge of eternal devotion. The old man was Mohammed Mossadegh.

When Mohammed Mossadegh came to power eleven years later, he first drove out the British, then turned his attention to the next obstacle in his way, the young Shah. First, he sent the Shah’s sister and mother into exile. The departing Queen Mother warned her son: “Today this man banishes your sister and me. Tomorrow he will turn on you.” A few months later Mossadegh did; he demanded that the Shah surrender control of the army. This once, the Shah stood firm. He dismissed Mossadegh and appointed a new Premier in his place, but after three days of pro-Mossadegh rioting in the streets of Teheran, the Shah quaveringly brought back Mossadegh and gave him the power he demanded.

Mossadegh was a master of the divide-and-conquer technique, uniting one day with a fanatic mullah to oust a rival Premier, allying himself with the Reds the next to break the mullah. He got rid of the ablest of the Shah’s advisers like Court Minister Hussein Ala; he usurped the royal prerogative of dissolving the Majlis. The outlawed Communists, for supporting him, were left untouched and grew in strength.

A succession of British and U.S. ambassadors tried to encourage the Shah to be firm. Though they could reach his heart, they could not stiffen his spine. And at each stage of Mossadegh’s usurpation of power, loyal army commanders pleaded: “Say the word, O Shahinshah, say the word.” The Shah increasingly resorted to barbiturates to sleep; his temples greyed, his hands trembled. One night last week, in his 34th year, his twelfth as Shah, his third in the era of Mossadegh, the Shah gave the long-awaited word. It was much too late.

Forewarned. The machinery of power had long ago passed to Mossadegh; almost all the Shah’s allies and strongpoints had been enveloped and destroyed. At the end, only 700 of the Imperial Guard and one brigade were loyal to the palace. Shortly before midnight they donned helmets and took up arms against Mossadegh. They arrested three Cabinet members, including Foreign Minister Hussein Fatemi. With a few truckloads of troops, a colonel of the Imperial Guard set off for Mossadegh’s house, with royal orders for the Premier’s dismissal. Mossadegh’s forces had been tipped off and were waiting. The Imperial Guards walked into a solid wall of tanks, trucks and jeeps around Mossadegh’s house.

Troops “loyal to Mossadegh surrounded the Palace and Parliament building. By 5 a.m. it was all over, not a shot fired. In the face of Mossadegh’s overwhelming control, the Shah’s belated assertion of his constitutional prerogative was made to seem like an attempted coup, and Mossadegh, the usurper, to personify law & order. Belatedly, from a hideout in the mountains, a brave follower of the Shah’s, General Fazlollah Zahedi, onetime Senator, proclaimed himself Premier. He had royal decrees from the Shah, he said, dismissing Mossadegh. As recently as a year ago, Teheran would have rung with the news; now it caused no stir.

In northern Iran, at Ramsar on the Caspian Sea, where he and his pretty Queen were vacationing, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi heard the news of the failure. With Queen Soraya,* he boarded his private twin-engine plane and flew to safety in Bagdad (where he landed unrecognized, asking the name ‘ of a good hotel). In Teheran, Mossadegh, confined to his iron cot and closely guarded, counted one more obstacle out of his way. Now, though his unhappy country has lost one more source of stability, there was little left to challenge him except the Communist-led mobs, who now sing his praises, but whose leaders await his downfall to grab power for themselves.

* His second wife. The first, Egyptian Princess Fawzia, was Farouk’s sister; he divorced her in 1948 for failure to bear him a son.