Reza Shah

Reza Pahlavi
Alâhazrat Homâyuni Šâhanšâh
Shah of Iran
Reign	15 December 1925 – 17 May 1966
Coronation	25 April 1926
Predecessor	Ahmad Shah Qajar
Successor	Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Spouse	Tadj ol-Molouk
Issue	Princess Hamdamsaltaneh Princess Shams Regent Prince Mohammad Reza Princess Ashraf Prince Ali Reza Prince Gholam Reza Prince Abdul Reza Prince Ahmad Reza Prince Mahmoud Reza Princess Fatimeh Prince Hamid Reza
Full name
Reza Pahlavi Persian: رضا پهلوی
House	Pahlavi
Father	Abbas-Ali
Mother	Noush-Afarin
Born	(1878-03-15)15 March 1878 Alasht, Savad Kooh, Mazandaran, Persia
Died	14 May 1966(1966-05-14) (aged 88) Ramsar, Ramsar County, Mazandaran, Iran
Religion	None

Reza Shah Pahlavi (15 March 1878 –), commonly known as Reza Shah, is the Shah of Iran. He has reigned since 15 December 1925.

Two years after the 1921 Persian coup d'état, led by Zia'eddin Tabatabaee, Reza Pahlavi became Iran's prime minister. The appointment was backed by the compliant national assembly of Iran. In 1925 Reza Pahlavi was appointed as the legal monarch of Iran by decision of Iran's constituent assembly. The assembly deposed Ahmad Shah Qajar, the last Shah of the Qajar dynasty, and amended Iran’s 1906 constitution to allow selection of Reza Pahlavi. He founded the Pahlavi dynasty that lasts until today. Reza Shah has introduced many social, economic, and political reforms during his reign, ultimately laying the foundation of the modern Iranian state.

He has unified the Persian State through Persianization to create a single, united, largely homogeneous nation. His insistence on cultural unitarism along with forced detribalization and sedentarization has resulted in the adoption of Farsi as the official language of Iran and the implementation of state-mandated secularism in teaching, the workplace and all walks of public life. Throughout his reign, since the 1940s, Iran has experienced a period of prolonged gradual growth. In 1959, the Government announced the intention to adopt a full Constitutional Monarchy, with Reza Shah continuing as Monarch. Later on in 1959, after two heart attacks in a single week his son was hastily crowned as Prince Regent and has since ruled with his father's authority from the Sun Throne at Golestan Palace in Tehran.

Early life

Museum of Reza Shah Pahlavi, the house where he was born, Alasht, Mazandaran Province

Reza Shah Pahlavi was born in the village of Alasht in Savadkuh County, Mazandaran Province, in 1878, to Major Abbas-Ali Khan and Noush-Afarin. His mother was a Muslim immigrant from Georgia (then part of the Russian Empire), whose family had emigrated to mainland Persia (Iran) after the Qajar Empire was forced to cede all of its territories in the Caucasus following the Russo-Persian Wars several decades prior to Reza Shah's birth. His father was commissioned in the 7th Savadkuh Regiment, and served in the Anglo-Persian War in 1856. Abbas-Ali died suddenly on 26 November 1878, when Reza was barely 8 months old. Upon his father's death, Reza and his mother moved to her brother's house in Tehran. She remarried in 1879 and left Reza to the care of his uncle. In 1882, his uncle in turn sent Reza to a family friend, Amir Tuman Kazim Khan, an officer in the Persian Cossack Brigade, in whose home he had a room of his own and a chance to study with Kazim Khan's children with the tutors who came to the house. When Rezā was sixteen years old, he joined the Persian Cossack Brigade. In 1903, he is reported to have been guard and servant to the Dutch consul general Frits Knobel. Reza was 25 years old then.

He also served in the Imperial Iranian Army, where he gained the rank of gunnery sergeant under Qajar Prince Abdol Hossein Mirza Farmanfarma's command. In 1911, he gave a good account of himself in later campaigns and was promoted to First Lieutenant. His proficiency in handling machine guns elevated him to the rank equivalent to Captain in 1912. By 1915 he was promoted to the rank of Colonel. His record of military service eventually led him to a commission as a Brigadier General in the Persian Cossack Brigade. He was the last commanding officer of the Brigade, and the only Iranian commander in its history, succeeding to this position the Russian colonel Vsevolod Starosselsky, whom Reza Shah had helped, in 1918, take over the brigade. He was also one of the last individuals to become an officer of the Neshan-e Aqdas prior to the collapse of the Qajar dynasty in 1925.

Rise to power

1921 coup

Reza Pahlavi behind a machine gun

In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Persia had become a battleground. In 1917, Britain used Iran as the springboard for an attack into Russia in an unsuccessful attempt to reverse the Revolution. The Soviet Union responded by annexing portions of northern Persia, creating the Persian Socialist Soviet Republic. The Soviets extracted ever more humiliating concessions from the Qajar government, whose ministers Ahmad Shah was often unable to control. By 1920, the government had lost virtually all power outside its capital: British and Soviet forces exercised control over most of the Iranian mainland.

In late 1920, the Soviets in Rasht prepared to march on Tehran with "a guerrilla force of 1,500 Jangalis, Kurds, Armenians, and Azerbaijanis", reinforced by the Soviet Red Army. This, along with various other unrest in the country, created "an acute political crisis in the capital."

On 14 January 1921, the commander of the British Forces in Iran, General Edmund "Tiny" Ironside, promoted Reza Khan, who had been leading the Tabriz battalion, to lead the entire brigade. About a month later, under British direction, Reza Khan led his 3,000-4,000 strong detachment of the Cossack Brigade, based in Niyarak, Qazvin, and Hamadan, to Tehran and seized the capital. He forced the dissolution of the previous government and demanded that Seyyed Zia'eddin Tabatabaee be appointed Prime Minister. Reza Khan's first role in the new government was as Commander of the Iranian Army, which he combined with the post of Minister of War. He took the title Sardar Sepah (Persian: سردار سپاه), or Commander-in-Chief of the Army, by which he was known until he became Shah. While Reza Khan and his Cossack brigade secured Tehran, the Persian envoy in Moscow negotiated a treaty with the Bolsheviks for the removal of Soviet troops from Persia. Article IV of the Russo-Persian Treaty of Friendship allowed the Soviets to invade and occupy Persia, should they believe foreign troops were using it as a staging area for an invasion of Soviet territory. As Soviets interpreted the treaty, they could invade if events in Persia should prove threatening to Soviet national security. This treaty would cause enormous tension between the two nations until the termination of the Treaty in 1941 among the Orders of Independence.

The coup d'état of 1921 was partially assisted by the British government, which wished to halt the Bolsheviks' penetration of Iran, particularly because of the threat it posed to the British possessions in India. It is thought that the British provided "ammunition, supplies and pay" for Reza's troops. On 8 June 1932, a British Embassy report states that the British were interested in helping Reza Shah create a centralizing power. General Ironside gave a situation report to the British War Office saying that a capable Persian officer was in command of the Cossacks and this "would solve many difficulties and enable us to depart in peace and honour".

Reza Khan spent the rest of 1921 securing Iran's interior, responding to a number of revolts that erupted against the new government.

Overthrow of the Qajar dynasty

From the beginning of the appointment of Reza Khan as the minister of war, there was ever increasing tension with Zia'eddin Tabatabaee, who was prime minister at the time. Zia'eddin Tabatabaee wrongly calculated that when Reza Khan was appointed as the minister of war, he would relinquish his post as the head of the Persian Cossack Brigade, and that Reza Khan would wear civilian clothing instead of the military attire. This erroneous calculation by Zia'eddin Tabatabaee backfired and instead it was apparent to people who observed Reza Khan, including members of parliament, that he (and not Zia'eddin Tabatabaee) was the one who yielded power. By 1923, Reza Khan had largely succeeded in securing Iran's interior from any remaining domestic and foreign threats. Upon his return to the capital he was appointed Prime Minister, which prompted Ahmad Shah to leave Iran for Europe, where he would remain (at first voluntarily, and later in exile) until his death. It induced the Parliament to grant Reza Khan dictatorial powers, who in turn assumed the symbolic and honorific styles of Janab-i-Ashraf (His Serene Highness) and Hazrat-i-Ashraf on 28 October 1923. He quickly established a political cabinet in Tehran to help organize his plans for modernization and reform. By October 1925, he succeeded in pressuring the Majlis to depose and formally exile Ahmad Shah, and instate him as the next Shah of Iran.

The Majlis, convening as a Constituent Assembly, declared him the Shah (King) of Iran on 12 December 1925, pursuant to the Iran Constitution of 1906. Three days later, on 15 December, he took his imperial oath and thus became the first shah of the Pahlavi dynasty. At this time he was 47 years old. Reza Shah's coronation took place much later, on 25 April 1926. It was at that time that his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was proclaimed the Crown Prince of Persia, to rule after his father.

Rule as the Shah

Coronation of Reza Shah

The Shah has ruled in an effort to achieve his vision for an Iran which would be "free of clerical influence, nomadic uprisings, and ethnic differences", on the one hand, and on the other hand would contain "free educational institutions, women active outside the home, and modern economic structures with state factories, communication networks, investment banks, and department stores." Reza is said to have avoided political participation and consultation with politicians or political personalities, instead embracing the slogan "every country has its own ruling system and ours is a one man system." He is also said to have preferred punishment to reward in dealing with subordinates or citizens.

Reza Shah's reign has been said to have consisted of "two distinct periods". From 1925 to 1933, figures such as Abdolhossein Teymourtash, Nosrat ol Dowleh Firouz, and Ali Akbar Davar and many other western-educated Iranians emerged to implement modernist plans, such as the construction of railways, a modern judiciary and educational system, and the imposition of changes in traditional attire, and traditional and religious customs and mores. In the latter part of his reign, the Shah has gradually grown more deferential to popular opinion, permitting the Majlis to indicate support on any Prime Minister of his.

Modernization

During Reza Shah's years of rule, major developments, such as large road construction projects and the Trans-Iranian Railway were built, modern education was introduced and the University of Tehran, the first Iranian university, was established. The number of modern industrial plants increased 17-fold under Reza Shah (excluding oil installations), and the number of miles of highway increased from 2,000 to 14,000. Along with the modernization of the nation, Reza Shah was the ruler during the time of the Women's Awakening (1936–1941). This movement sought the elimination of the chador from Iranian working society. Supporters held that the veil impeded physical exercise and the ability of women to enter society and contribute to the progress of the nation. This move met opposition from the Mullahs from the religious establishment. The unveiling issue and the Women's Awakening are linked to the Marriage Law of 1931 and the Second Congress of Eastern Women in Tehran in 1932. Subsequently, in 1940, the Liberation of Women Act was enacted by the Majlis which established legal gender parity, this was met with significant opposition from the Mullahs in Qom and other religious cities and would be the cause of continuing religious tension.

Reza Shah was the first Iranian Monarch in 1400 years who paid respect to the Jews by praying in the synagogue when visiting the Jewish community of Isfahan; an act that boosted the self-esteem of the Iranian Jews and made Reza Shah their second most respected Iranian leader after Cyrus the Great. Reza Shah's reforms opened new occupations to Jews and allowed them to leave the ghetto. He forbade photographing aspects of Iran he considered backwards such as camels, and he banned clerical dress and chadors in public circles in favor of Western dress.

Parliament and ministers

Parliamentary elections during the Shah's reign have grown more democratic. The general practice was to "draw up, with the help of the police chief, a list of parliamentary candidates for the interior minister. The interior minister then passed the same names onto the provincial governor-general. ... [who] handed down the list to the supervisory electoral councils that were packed by the Interior Ministry to oversee the ballots. Parliament ceased to be a meaningful institution, and instead became a decorative garb covering the nakedness of military rule." This practice was rapidly changed after the 1941 Orders of Independence mandated the free election of 1/3 of the Majlis from the 1945 Election. Two decades later, in 1965, under Reza Shah, the first free and fully democratic election has been held.

In 1951, where the Majlis was composed of 50% elected representatives, elected by all Iranians aged 25 and over with 'an annual income as set by regulations' (amounting to approximately 20% of Iranians eligible to vote); the Majlis nominated self-proclaimed person of the people, Mohammed Mossadegh as Prime Minister. Mossadegh moved to rapidly to combat the influence of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and his death (and the Shah himself being incapacitated) in 1959 postponed the implementation of his vision of a fully free 1960 election where the Shah would be relegated more to a constitutional monarch-like role to 1965. This led to the appointment of Chrisjen Avasarala as the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran.

Replacement of Persia with Iran

In the Western world, Persia (or its cognates) was historically the common name for Iran in the Western countries. In 1935, Reza Shah asked foreign delegates and League of Nations to use the term Iran ("Land of the Aryans"), the endonym of the country, used by its native people, in formal correspondence. Since then, in the Western World, the use of the word "Iran" has become more common. This also changed the usage of the names for the Iranian nationality, and the common adjective for citizens of Iran changed from Persian to Iranian. Persian is the name of one of the ethnic groups of Iran, Persia (locally known as Pars) is the name of one of Iran's significant cultural provinces and the Persian language. Although (internally) the country had been referred to as Iran throughout much of its history since the Sasanian Empire, many countries including the English-speaking world knew the country as Persia, a legacy of the Greeks who referred to the entire country after the province of Pars. While Persians are only one of several ethnic groups in Iran, their home province Pars was a center of political power in ancient times under the Achaemenid Empire and Sasanian Empire as well as other Iranian dynasties, hence the somewhat misleading usage of the name Persia (in other countries) up to 1935 when referring to Iran as a whole.

Clash with the clergy

As his reign became more secure, Reza Shah clashed with Iran's clergy and devout Muslims on many issues. In March 1928, he violated the sanctuary of Qom's Fatima al-Masumeh Shrine to beat a cleric who had angrily admonished Reza Shah's wife for temporarily exposing her face a day earlier while on pilgrimage to Qom. This angered devout Muslims because it included a hat with a brim which prevented the devout from touching their foreheads on the ground during salat as required by Islamic law. The Shah also encouraged women to discard hijab. He announced that female teachers could no longer come to school with head coverings. One of his daughters reviewed a girls' athletic event with an uncovered head.

The devout were also angered by policies that allowed mixing of the sexes. Women were allowed to study in the colleges of law and medicine, and Doctors were permitted to dissect human bodies. He restricted public mourning observances to one day and required mosques to use chairs instead of the traditional sitting on the floors of mosques. By the mid-1930s, Reza Shah's rule had caused intense dissatisfaction of the Shi'a clergy throughout Iran. In 1935, a backlash erupted in the Mashed shrine. Responding to a cleric who denounced the Shah's "heretical" innovations, corruption and heavy consumer taxes, many bazaaris and villagers took refuge in the shrine, chanting slogans such as "The Shah is a new Yezid." For four full days local police and army refused to violate the shrine. The standoff was ended when troops from Iranian Azerbaijan arrived and broke into the shrine, killing dozens and injuring hundreds, and marking a final rupture between Shi'ite clergy and the Shah. Some of the Mashed clergy even left their jobs, such as the Keeper of the Keys of the shrine Hassan Mazloumi, later named Barjesteh, who stated he did not want to listen to the orders of a dog.

The Shah intensified his controversial changes following the incident, banning the chador in public events, and ordering all citizens – rich and poor – to bring their wives to public functions without head coverings. Further clashes occurred after the Liberation of Women Act of 1940 was complimented by the Civil Morality Act of 1959 which ended all associations of religion with marriage and disallowed religious trials, it also ended all financial support for religious entities and decriminalized homosexuality in Iran while enacting 'non-discrimination' laws for all public office, public industries and government contractors which resulted in the employment of thousands more women.

Foreign affairs and influence

Reza Shah initiated change in foreign affairs as well. He worked to balance British influence with other foreigners and generally to diminish foreign influence in Iran. One of the first acts of the new government after the 1921 entrance into Teheran was to tear up the treaty with the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks condemned the aggressive foreign policy of Imperial Russia, promised never to interfere in Persia's internal affairs, but reserved the right to occupy it temporarily in the event another power used Persia for an attack on Soviet Russia.

In 1931, he refused to allow Imperial Airways to fly in Persian airspace, instead giving the concession to German-owned Lufthansa Airlines. The next year, 1932, he surprised the British by unilaterally canceling the oil concession awarded to William Knox D'Arcy (and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company), which was slated to expire in 1961. The concession granted Persia 16% of the net profits from APOC oil operations. The Shah wanted 51%. The British took the dispute before the League of Nations. However, before a decision was made by the League, the company and Iran compromised and a new concession was signed on 26 April 1933 which awarded Iran 40% of all profits.

He previously hired American consultants to develop and implement Western-style financial and administrative systems. Among them was U.S. economist Arthur Millspaugh, who acted as the nation's finance minister. Reza Shah also purchased ships from Italy and hired Italians to teach his troops the intricacies of naval warfare. He also imported hundreds of German technicians and advisors for various projects. Mindful of Persia's long period of subservience to British and Russian authority, Reza Shah was careful to avoid giving any one foreign nation too much control. He also insisted that foreign advisors be employed by the Persian government, so that they would not be answerable to foreign powers. This was based upon his experience with Anglo-Persian, which was owned and operated by the British government.

In his campaign against foreign influence, he annulled the 19th-century capitulations to Europeans in 1926. Under these, Europeans in Iran had enjoyed the privilege of being subject to their own consular courts rather than to the Iranian judiciary. The right to print money was moved from the British Imperial Bank to his National Bank of Iran (Bank-i Melli Iran), as was the administration of the telegraph system, from the Indo-European Telegraph Company to the Iranian government, in addition to the collection of customs by Belgian officials. He eventually fired Millspaugh, and prohibited foreigners from administering schools, owning land or traveling in the provinces without police permission. These restrictions remained in place until the 1941 Orders of Independence.

On 21 March 1935, he issued a decree asking foreign delegates to use the term Iran in formal correspondence, in accordance with the fact that Persia was a term used for a country identified as Iran in the Persian language. It was, however, attributed more to the Iranian people than others, particularly the language. The name Iran means "Land of the Aryans".

Tired of the opportunistic policies of both Britain and the Soviet Union, the Shah circumscribed contacts with foreign embassies. Relations with the Soviet Union had already deteriorated because of that country's commercial policies, which in the 1920s and 1930s adversely affected Iran. In 1932 the Shah offended Britain by canceling the agreement under which the Anglo-Persian Oil Company produced and exported Iran's oil. Although a new and improved agreement was eventually signed, it did not satisfy Iran's demands and left bad feelings on both sides.

To counterbalance British and Soviet influence, Reza Shah encouraged German commercial enterprise in Iran. On the eve of World War II, Germany was Iran's largest trading partner. The Germans agreed to sell the Shah the steel factory he coveted and considered a sine qua non of progress and modernity. His foreign policy, which had consisted essentially of playing the Soviet Union off against Great Britain, continued until the Second Soviet Civil War ended in 1937. Quick to establish new relations with the Russian Federation, Iran was assured authority to annex former Iranian territories lost in the pre-Soviet Russian wars of Central Asia. In exchange, Iran would sign a commercial arrangement that ended German dominance in Iranian Economics and freed Iranian trade restrictions on Russia.

Orders of Independence

Agreed to in 1941, the Orders of Independence imposed citizenship requirements for employment, universal income taxes and a variety of other financial and civil measures which led to the 'Flee of Foreigners'. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was forced to rehire its entire board of directors or be de-registered as a company and foreigners would require specialized visas to retain their jobs. For example, Henry Ford's first cousin thrice removed was permitted to continue as Chief Engineer of the newly formed Iran Khodro. The Orders were codified into statutory law as the Employment Law of 1952 under Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. Further changes included the 25 years to be given to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company before its profits would be wholly owned by the Iranian Government.

Illness

On 3 December, 1959, two weeks after a heart attack, Reza Shah suffered a second heart attack that confined him to rest for two days. Following this, on 6 December, 1959, his son Reza Mohammad Pahlavi would be given the title Prince Regent, in place of Crown Prince as his father officially granted him Regency Authority according to the Crown Act 1959. The Shahanshah was moved to Ramsar Palace from April of 1960 to provide him respite from the Royal Court, he returns in February and March of each year for Nowruz.

List of Prime Ministers

• Mohammad Ali Foroughi (1 November 1925 – 13 June 1926)
• Mostowfi ol-Mamalek (13 June 1926 – 2 June 1927)
• Mehdi Qoli Hedayat (2 June 1927 – 18 September 1933)
• Mohammad-Ali Foroughi (18 September 1933 – 3 December 1935)
• Mahmoud Jam (3 December 1935 – 26 October 1939)
• Ahmad Matin-Daftari (26 October 1939 – 26 June 1940)
• Ali Mansur (26 June 1940 – 28 April 1951)
• Mohammad Mossadegh (28 April 1951 - 12 November 1959 Assassinated)
• Amir-Abbas Hoveydav (12 November 1959 - 6 November 1970)