Word: pahlavis
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Today Mohammed Reza Pahlavi is a man of 60, battling cancer, unwelcome in most countries of the world, and bearing a price on his head (an all-expenses-paid pilgrimage to Mecca, offered by the revolutionaries who overthrew him to anyone who succeeds in killing him). Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini and his aides are filling the air with tirades against the Shah as a "U.S. puppet," a Hitlerian "criminal" who tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of his subjects, a thief who looted Iran of untold billions. At the other extreme, the Shah's defenders cite the praises heaped...
...adult. Reza Khan started as a noncommissioned officer in the Persian army, rose to colonel, and in 1921 led a military revolt that finally ousted the last Shah of the Qajar dynasty in 1925. Even before he had seized the bejeweled Peacock Throne- for himself, he chose Pahlavi, one of the ancient languages of Persia, as his dynastic name...
Much of the Shah's wealth was funneled into the Pahlavi Foundation and several others, established ostensibly to fund charitable activities, like aid to the handicapped. The New York lawsuit asserts that the Iranian state budget "provided annually a subsidy of approximately $10 million" to the foundations. In addition, it says, "plaintiff [the Khomeini government] is unable to account for several billion dollars of revenues earned by the National Iranian Oil Co. between 1973 and 1978." In 1976 alone, it asserts, Nice's receipts as published by the company were $1 billion less than the NIOC earnings reported...
Though the foundations did do some charitable work, the Shah invested most of their money in income-producing assets. In a new book, Iran: The Illusion of Power, British Journalist Robert Graham published a 3½-page list of holdings of the Pahlavi Foundation that he was able to track down as of the end of 1977 and that he estimated to be worth $2.8 billion to $3.2 billion. They included total ownership of Bank Omran, one of Iran's largest banks; 80% ownership of Bimeh Melli, the nation's third largest insurance company; and full or partial...
...stories of such transfers have so far proved unverifiable. Information on the Shah's holdings outside Iran ranges from sketchy to nonexistent. The New York lawsuit lists only four in the U.S. The most prominent is a 36-story Manhattan skyscraper owned by an American branch of the Pahlavi Foundation...