M
uhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, it might be argued, was not
exactly the callous, extravagant leader depicted by the
revolutionaries who hated him. Handsome and skilled in social
graces, he was indeed something of a playboy. He married three
times—the last time, in 1959, to a wealthy, French-educated
Iranian beauty barely half his age. From the start of his reign,
though, he seemed to recognize the plight of his people. Only
twenty-one when he succeeded his father in 1941, he refused to
assume the crown, stating that he had no desire to be king of
“a nation of beggars.” His detractors among Iran’s Muslim
clergy sarcastically discounted this as a ploy to cast himself as
a virtuous, humble leader while in reality he was, in their eyes,
a misguided, oppressive dictator. In either case, Pahlavi was
an intelligent young man with an excellent education. He
understood that major reforms were in order if Iran was to avert
internal disaster. He did not permit his coronation to take place
until 1967, long after he launched his reform efforts—and only
a dozen years before the revolution would depose him.
What Pahlavi wanted for Iran was what his father had wanted:
a modern, industrial empire that would be as glorious, in its own
time period, as ancient Persia had been. To create it, he needed
help from Western industrial nations, and he needed money.
Iran had a means by which to obtain both: oil. This valuable
resource had been discovered in 1908 by an early petroleum
entrepreneur from Australia, William Knox D’Arcy, in the
Khuzistan region of the country. With help from Great Britain,
D’Arcy established an enterprise that became known as the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). Over the years, Great
Britain obtained a majority interest in the company. In other
words, most of the profit from the sale of Iran’s oil went to
British investors. This was one example of the foreign involve-
ment that aroused the resentment of Muslim clergymen.
Great Britain and its allies relied heavily on Iranian oil for
their ships, planes, tanks, and trucks during World War II. After
the war, the worldwide demand for petroleum was high and the
country’s oil fields thrived. Iran exported more than 30 million
Shah Pahlavi’s Quest for Glory 27