Word: reza
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Like any expectant father, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi himself drove his young wife to the hospital. It was early morning, but the Teheran streets were already thick with traffic, and the royal couple were quickly noticed. When the car stopped at the Mother's Aid Society Hospital, a crowd gathered outside. Just before noon, Queen Farah Diba, a robust, 22-year-old commoner who still holds the Iranian schoolgirls' record for the high and standing broad jump, gave birth. "Your Majesty, it's a boy!" cried Dr. Jahanshah Saleh, who is both the Queen's obstetrician and Iran's Minister...
...last year married Farah Diba, who had caught his eye while a blue-jean-clad student of architecture in Paris. The baby came ten months later. Even the day was lucky; it was the 34th anniversary of the day the Shah's father, a onetime army non-com named Reza Khan, seized the throne by military coup and established the Pahlevi dynasty...
...hurry to build roads, dams and schools (and on the upkeep of his regime), Iran's handsome Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi has spent all the $265 million a year his country gets from oil revenues and quite a bit more. Now Iran faces a balance of payments deficit of $130 million over the next two years. Until recently, the Shah has ignored the unpopular advice of Western economic advisers, who told him the deficit could have been avoided by vigorously curbing domestic inflation, and by clamping down on the import of luxury items that use up the hard currencies...
...prepare young Mohammed for power, Reza Shah relentlessly pushed him into the "manly sports," in 1931 abruptly packed him off (aboard a Russian cruiser) to La Rosee school in Switzerland. A U.S. schoolmate recalls that the experience was something of a shock all around. Striding into the school lounge, the young prince announced: "When I enter a room, everyone rises." His fellow students merely stared at him in polite amazement. In time, Mohammed won a kind of plebiscite from them by getting himself elected captain of the school soccer team...
Back to Barracks. When Mohammed finally returned home, an attractive, smiling young man smartly clad in European clothes, Reza Shah took one disgusted look and slapped him back in uniform at the local military academy. His smiles gone, Mohammed went back to following Reza Shah to reviews and parades, and in 1939 just as obediently trekked off to Egypt and brought back the bride his father had selected, the pretty Princess Faw-zia, sister of King Farouk...