IRAN: The Shah’s Search

Ever since he reluctantly divorced Queen Soraya in 1958, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, Shah of Iran, has been window-shopping through Europe. In his search for a new bride who would present him with a son and heir, the Shah’s wandering eye was caught by Italy’s pretty Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy, 19. But the Vatican, all Italy, and the girl herself proved unalterably opposed to the marriage. Last week his capital of Teheran was alive with signs that the Shah had found both happiness and the bride he wanted in his own country.

The new girl is Farah Diba, 21, slender and tall (5 ft. 8 in.), with shiny black eyes and curly chestnut hair worn in a carefully untidy nouvelle vague coiffure. A onetime student of architecture at the Ecole Speciale d’Architecture in Paris, she stood 20th in a class of 156, is a competent pianist, a good swimmer and basketball player. Popular with her French classmates because she had “such a lot of heart and sensitivity,” Farah comes from a well-to-do Iranian family and is distantly related to weepy ex-Premier Mohammed Mossadegh, who briefly dethroned the Shah in 1953. Her father, an army officer trained at St. Cyr, the West Point of France, died ten years ago of tuberculosis; her mother Farida is a handsome and Westernized woman, who wears Givenchy clothes and belongs to a progressive women’s club in Teheran.

After the Shah’s mother gave a party in her honor last week, Farah Diba was escorted to the Teheran airport next morning by palace guards in civilian clothes, boarded an airliner for Geneva and Paris, presumably to buy her trousseau (she bought 15 Dior dresses). Iranian courtiers speculate that the engagement will be announced this week on the Shah’s 40th birthday, but point out that even if the marriage goes through as expected, Farah will receive the title of Queen of Iran only if she bears a son. Until that time, she would probably be known simply as Madame Pahlevi.

In Paris at week’s end, Farah Diba was in full flight from reporters and photographers, refused to answer any questions. A foresighted newsman who had boarded her Paris-bound plane at Geneva asked her, “Will you be the next Queen of Iran?” Replied Farah, with an air of someone who knows a secret, “Ah, do you think so?”