Abstract
Late in 1973, at the height of his powers, the Shah discovered a lump in his abdomen that was diagnosed as lymphoma, a type of leukemia. The author argues that, even if the true nature of his illness was not spelt out to him until 1977, the Shah understood from the outset the life-threatening nature of his ailment, a critical factor in his visible rush to achieve as much as possible within a shortened lifespan. The rush factor put the Shah on a trail of pitfalls and errors of judgment. In August 1974, he speeded up that journey by doubling the spending package for the following three years, with catastrophic results. This followed a streak of bad political decisions that, meshed with rampant corruption, compounded the public apathy and discontent, including notably among moderate ulama.
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Notes
- 1.
Alikhani, The Shah and I, 334–6.
- 2.
See “The Two Faces of a Monarch” in Chap. 2.
- 3.
SAVAK announced the discovery of the plot on October 2, 1973, and 12 young militants known as the Golesorkhi group were arrested; Agheli, Roozshomar, 2.277. For a personal account of the plot, see Abbas Samakar, man yek shooreshi hastam, khaterat zendan [I am a rebel, prison memoirs], 2nd ed. (Los Angeles, 2001), 47–50, 185ff.
- 4.
Richard Helms–Kissinger conversation, July 23, 1973, FRUS (1973–6): vol. 27, doc. 24; see also Alam in The Shah and I, 444
- 5.
Ibid. 334.
- 6.
Details in “Oil Diplomacy (1963–1973),” Chap. 2.
- 7.
Ibid.
- 8.
Queen Farah, An Enduring Love, 245.
- 9.
Alam in The Shah and I, 348–9.
- 10.
Amir-Aslan Afshar in conversation with Ali Mir-Ferdos, ed., Kahterat Amir Aslan Afshar Akharin Ra’eis Kol Tashrifat Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi [Memoirs of A. A. Afshar the last “Grand Marshal of Ceremonies” in the Shah’s court] (Montreal: Farhang, 2012), 266–7. See also, Andrew Scott Cooper, Oil Kings, 164/443n.
- 11.
Alam in The Shah and I, 363.
- 12.
Queen Farah, An Enduring Love, 267.
- 13.
Queen Farah, An Enduring Love, 263–5; Professor Safavian in interview with Bijan Farhood, Kayhan London (online), July 27, 2015.
- 14.
Cooper, Oil Kings, citing Queen Farah, 164.
- 15.
Correspondence between Dr. Flandrin and Professor Bernard in Queen Farah, An Enduring Love, 246–7.
- 16.
Queen Farah, An Enduring Love, 266.
- 17.
Henry Precht, in the Library of Congress Oral History with Charles Stuart Kennedy, 2000, p. 42.
- 18.
Queen Farah, An Enduring Love, 266–7; James Buchan, Days of God, The Revolution in Iran and Its Consequences (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 138; Cooper, Oil Kings, 373.
- 19.
Milani, The Shah, 317; Buchan, Days of God, 138.
- 20.
National Intelligence Estimate, Washington, May 9, 1975, FRUS (1973–6): vol. 27, doc. 121.
- 21.
Situation Report, February 28, 1972, FRUS (1969–76): vol. E-4, doc. 168.
- 22.
Interview with Darioush Oskui (former deputy director of Plan Organization, in charge of planning), December 9, 2014.
- 23.
Khodadad Farmanfarmaian on the Persepolis Conference in Harvard Oral History interview with Habib Lajvardi, Cambridge, MA, December 1982, tape transcript 11, pp. 5–6.7.
- 24.
The microwave telecommunication project was a case in point. When the Plan Organization opposed this project, its implementation was transferred to the Ministry of the Imperial Court; see Farmanfarmaian (Head of Plan Organization 1968–73) in HIOHP interview, December 1982, tape transcript 10, pp. 11–12.
- 25.
Abdol-Majdid Majidi, HIOHP interview with Habib Lajvardi, Paris, October 1985, tape transcript 7.3ff.
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
Ibid., tape 7.5; Alam in The Shah and I, 332–33.
- 28.
Majidi HIOHP interview, tape 7, pp. 7–8.
- 29.
Ibid., 7.8; Alam in The Shah and I, 382; Jahangir Amouzegar, Iran’s Economy under the Islamic Republic, introduction; Abbas Milani, The Persian Sphinx, 269.
- 30.
The final document of the Ramsar conference noted inter alia, “Our fervor for accelerated economic growth has created bottlenecks in […]; the revision therefore is axed on addressing these shortcomings and bottlenecks.” Web access to full text of the revised fifth five-year plan (1973–1978) at http://www.vision1404.ir/fa/Article1.aspx.
- 31.
Dutch disease economic theory postulates the negative impact on an economy that has profited from a sudden sharp inflow of foreign currency as a result of such things as the discovery of large oil reserves; Financial Times Lexicon http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=dutch-disease.
- 32.
Majidi HIOHP interview, tape 6.3.
- 33.
Milani, The Persian Sphinx, 268–9.
- 34.
“British Policy on Iran (1974–1978),” N. W. Browne, 1980 secret evaluation, commissioned by Foreign Secretary Michael Owen (hereinafter Browne Inquest DNSA), p. 2.
- 35.
Majidi HIOHP interview, tape 7.15: note that the inflation figure is variously given as between 15% (US embassy, July 2, 1975) and 30% (Parsons, The Pride and the Fall, 50).
- 36.
FRUS (1969–76): vols. 27, Doc.60, March 19, 1974.
- 37.
Announcement by Ministry of Commerce, April 4, 1975, Agheli: 2.295.
- 38.
Telegram 03980 from US Embassy in Tehran, May 19, 1975, Central Foreign Policy Files, D740124–0466, DNSA.
- 39.
Telegram 05447, US Embassy in Tehran, July 2, 1975, RG 84, Tehran Embassy Files, Box 184, Iran 1975, E-8-1, Prices, Cost of Living D740197, DNSA.
- 40.
Rounded figures; see Charles Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 82fn12, citing several sources.
- 41.
Plan Organization Bulletin, January 15, 1977, Agheli, Roozshomar, 2.315.
- 42.
Agheli, Roozshomar, 2.316.
- 43.
Majidi HIOHP interview, transcript 7–15.
- 44.
Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi, Réponse à l’Histoire, 202–3.
- 45.
The Browne Inquest, DNSA. Part One, Introduction.
- 46.
Majidi HIOHP interview, transcript 6–20.
- 47.
Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi, be souy’e tamadon bozurg [Toward the Great Civilization], (Tehran, Pahlavi Library, 1977).
- 48.
Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi, Answer to History (Xs Books, 1980) 230.
- 49.
The Shah’s displeasure with Ameri in Alam in the Shah and I, 333, 370, 372; Ameri’s dismissal, December 29, 1974, in Agheli: 2.292; the Shah’s characterization as “shameless” in US Embassy dispatch to Washington, DC, 020069, March 4, 1975, DSWL.
- 50.
Milani, The Shah: 381; Mehdi Samii, interview with Habib Lajvardi, HIOHP, 1985, transcript 2–13.
- 51.
Afkhami, The Life and the Times of the Shah, 431–2; Homayoon, Man va rouzgaram, 119ff; Milani, The Shah, 382; Mohammad-Hossein Khosrow-Panah, “Nameh’haei dar da’vat az diktator baray paziresh’e hoquq’e siasi’ye mardom (Letters inviting the dictator to accept people’s political rights), Faslnameh (quarterly) Negah’e No, 23rd year, no. 100 (1392/2014).
- 52.
Holms to Department of State, 02213, March 9, 1975. FRUS (1973–76) vol. 27, Iran-Iraq.
- 53.
Afkhami, The Life and the Times of the Shah, 232.
- 54.
Nahavndi and Bomati, Le dernier Shah, 429n12.
- 55.
Mohmmad-Reza Pahlavi, Réponse à l’Histoire, 201–2.
- 56.
US Embassy in Teheran to Department of State, 04294, May 8, 1975, FRUS 1973–76, vol. 27, Iran–Iraq.
- 57.
Khowsro-Panah, Negah’e no.
- 58.
Portal of “Center for Documentation of the Islamic Revolution,” http://www.irdc.ir/fa/news/2409.
- 59.
Robert Graham, The Illusion of Power, 94.
- 60.
US National Archives, RG 84, Tehran Embassy Files, Box 184, Iran 1975, E-8-2, Prices, Anti-Inflation.
- 61.
MacArthur to Department of State, airgram 217, July 7, 1970, FRUS, (1969–76): vol. E–4, Iran and Iraq, 1969–72.
- 62.
Seyyed Hamid Rouhani, Nehzat’e Imam Khomeini, 2.1115; Baqer Moin, Khomeini, 146.
- 63.
R. K. Karanjia, The Mind of a Monarch, 222–3.
- 64.
Respectively principles 3, 4 and 13 of the White Revolution.
- 65.
Alinaghi Alikhani, ed., yaddashthay’e Alam [Alam diaries], 6 vols. (Bethesda, MD: Ibex Publishers, 2008), 6–536, hereafter Alam Diaries, Ibex ed.
- 66.
Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran, 97; Graham, The Illusion of Power, 95.
- 67.
Browne Inquest, DNSA.
- 68.
Modern Iran, 223; Sullivan, Mission to Iran, 88–89.
- 69.
Saeedeh Soltani Moghadam, on (the then provincial governor of Khorasan) Abdolazim Valian, in pazhuheshkadeh baqer al-oloum [a religious] website. http://www.pajoohe.com/fa/index.php?Page=definition&UID=39918#_ftn19, accessed on May 13, 2014.
- 70.
Parsons, The Pride and the Fall, 54–5.
- 71.
Ibid., 54; Houchang Nahavandi, Carnets Secrets: Chute et Mort du Shah (Paris: Editions Osmondes, 2004), 130.
- 72.
Alam in The Shah and I, 541–2, 548.
- 73.
Majidi, HIOHP interview, transcript 7.17–18.
- 74.
Kayhan International, October 26, 1976, cited in Abrahamian, Iran between Two Revolutions, 512.
- 75.
Cited in Graham, The Illusion of Power, 93.
- 76.
US Embassy Tehran, airgram, A-105, June 20, 1978, DNSA.
- 77.
Editorial Note, March 19, 1974, FRUS (1969–76), vol. 27, doc. 60.
- 78.
Alam diaries, Ibex ed., 6.274–5, entry on October 3, 1976.
- 79.
The Christian Science Monitor, April 23, 1980, citing a report of the royal family investments, prepared by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic in 1980.
- 80.
Ganji, Defying the Iranian Revolution, 6–8.
- 81.
Chargé Charles Naas to DOS, 07890, August 17, 1978, DNSA.
- 82.
Alam’s diary, Ibex ed., entry on October 3, 1976, 6.274–5.
- 83.
The Shah had legislation passed by the Majles (November–December 1976) that required foreign contractors and traders to deposit a binding affidavit attesting that no commission, kickback or bribe would have been paid to the third parties in connection with the transaction. Personal knowledge of the author.
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Bayandor, D. (2019). Downslide. In: The Shah, the Islamic Revolution and the United States. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96119-4_3
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