Word: teheran
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Iranian protests to London and Washington evoked diplomatic notes to Moscow as strongly worded as Teheran could wish. But words had no great weight last week in the wooded hills and fertile valleys of Azerbaijan. The Teheran Government temporized by appointing a commission made up largely of former premiers to investigate the situation in the northwest. It was a weak expedient, but Teheran had probably heard that Washington's unoffi cial attitude was "What more...
...conditioned by his autocratic father, the late, tough Reza Shah Pahlevi. Like his ten brothers and sisters, Mohamed Reza grew up in awe and admiration of the domineering old martinet who rose from the soil to root a dynasty in nothing more substantial than the high, dry air of Teheran's political intrigue...
This blend of barbarism and benevolence had its inevitable effect on the Crown Prince. He grew into a meek, friendly youth, given to expressing any inward effervescence by racing along the streets of Teheran in fast cars. The better to equip him for his royal duties, the Shah gave the boy five years of European schooling. The Shah had learned to read & write Persian only after becoming Minister of War; the Crown Prince became proficient in French, English and European manners in one of the most expensive private schools in Switzerland. But Mohamed Reza was not allowed to finish...
...Fawzia, Too. The old Shah saw to it that Mohamed Reza on his return to Teheran had a plentiful supply of mistresses. When the time came for the Crown Prince to marry, nothing was too good for him. His bride was Fawzia, 17-year-old sister of Egypt's King Farouk, as beautiful a princess as a prince could wish. They had only one child, a daughter called Shahnaz ("the pet of the Shah"), born in October 1940. Thereafter, it became apparent that the Shah's tastes were quantitative rather than qualitative Fawzia, whose family with a century...
...continued to encourage the corruption of Iranian life. Both, too, disrupted Iran's economic life throughout the war. The British (with the Americans) monopolized the country's inadequate transportation system for Lend-Lease shipments to Russia; the Russians prevented shipment of grain from food-rich Azerbaijan to Teheran and other deficient areas. In the capital there were food riots that lasted three days. Inflation soared. By last year the cost of living had risen tenfold, preparing the way for Communist agitation...