Word: peacocking
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...beloved by his 34 million subjects; for years he had harbored the conviction that his leadership was bringing all the benefits of national wealth and well-being to a backward nation. In the end, it had come to this: he departed hated, vilified, denounced. After 37 years on the Peacock Throne, he had been ignominiously driven out of Iran. The public face he put upon it was that he was simply taking a leave. But in all likelihood, his departure means the end of monarchy in a land ruled by kings for more than 2,500 years...
...days as an absolute monarch were ending. From the very beginning of the cold war, the Shah's country had been a cornerstone of the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO)* and a bulwark of Western influence. It was largely the U.S. that restored the ruler to his Peacock Throne after the overthrow of Premier Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. Yet U.S. intelligence failed dismally at assessing the depth and range of opposition to the Shah. Jimmy Carter ordered a U.S. carrier task force to steam from the Philippines to the Persian Gulf as a gesture of support. Three days later...
...step down, if only for a time. Indeed, the Shah's fate seemed inevitable and imminent: sooner rather than later, he would slip away, carrying with him the elusive hope that at least his son Crown Prince Reza, now 18, may some day succeed him on the Peacock Throne. As part of the bargain, Bakhtiar will set up and head a Regency Council that will keep Iran a constitutional monarchy, greatly reducing the powers of the Shah...
After two weeks of mounting tension, the frightening holy days ended last week?and the Shah still sat upon the Peacock Throne. Tehran was like a city that had survived a siege all but unscathed. Shops and schools were reopening, and office workers were returning to their jobs. Chieftain tanks and Russian-built armored cars, which had been in evidence everywhere, were now out of sight. Soldiers ventured into restaurants and parked their automatic weapons in corners as they ate. Locked in a monumental traffic jam, a Western diplomat sighed: "Things are back to normal in Tehran...
Iranian reformers have long sought to abolish the garment, which they consider a symbol of women's subordinate status. But even after the Shah's father, Reza Shah, outlawed the chador in the 1930s, rural women continued to wear them. After his abdication from the Peacock Throne in 1941, chadors began to reappear in Iranian cities. Today, four-fifths of older Iranian women wear the chador, as do an increasing number of younger women. But today's chador does not always fulfill its intended purpose: some are quite diaphanous. In an ironic display of Iranian women...