Word: pahlavis
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...something of a library, including more than two dozen volumes of biography, reportage, memoir, poetry and photography, translated into nearly 30 languages. The Emperor was the first in a projected trilogy about dictators. The second installment, Shah of Shahs, traces the rise and fall of Iran's Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Kapuscinski labored for years on a third volume, about Uganda's Idi Amin, but apparently could not find words for his excesses. When the Soviet Union foundered in the late 1980s, he abandoned Amin and headed for Moscow. The result, Imperium, is a perceptive travelogue-memoir of living under communism...
Driving in Northern Tehran with family one weekend this summer, we passed a former palace of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Pahlavi—who came to power after a 1953 coup orchestrated by the Central Intelligence Agency and British intelligence toppled the democratically-elected Mossadeq government—had dozens of palaces, all throughout Iran. The palaces, situated on large tracts of land, are surrounded by towering walls, which serve as an aggressive delineation of space reserved for one man in a country crowded with the poor...
...Shah's era, Ebadi had been one of Iran's first woman judges. A devout Muslim, she supported Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's revolution against the Pahlavi dynasty, only to find herself out of a job under the Islamic regime. That sparked a long battle against Iran's clerics for women's equality and rights for children, workers, artists and others. Though Ebadi is careful to push for change within the law, that has not kept her out of trouble. In 2000 she spent 23 days in prison, and she has received regular death threats...
Open criticism of the government last week reached a level not seen since the fall of Shah Reza Pahlavi. In a letter to Khamenei, angry reformist Majlis members denounced his repressive policies and compared him unflatteringly with his predecessor. "The popular revolution brought freedom and independence in the name of Islam," they wrote. "But now you lead a system in which legitimate freedoms and the rights of the people are being trampled in the name of Islam." Khamenei's allies responded immediately, with judicial officials shutting down Iran's two leading reformist dailies for daring to publish parts...
...even though Mossadegh was as anti-Soviet as he was anti-British. On Aug. 19, 1953, after the deaths of about 300 people in street riots, the 71-year-old Premier was overthrown. He was replaced by a retired army general, Fazollah Zahedi. The American-friendly Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who had earlier fled the country, returned triumphantly, resumed the throne and reasserted his control...