Does the downfall of the 'Shah of Shahs' hold lessons for the regime that deposed him?

In his new book, Scott Anderson looks back at the 1979 revolution in search of parallels with another period of potentially seismic change in Iran

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, at the time ruler of Iran, with his wife Farah and their son Reza. Getty Images

Earlier this week Iranian exiles, including some not long released from Tehran’s Evin prison, made their way to Cairo’s Al Rifa’i Mosque to pay respects at the tomb of the last Shah.

It is an event on July 27 that commemorates the loss of the imperial order and this year represented the 45th anniversary of the death of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

It came just weeks after the Shah’s former patron, the US, bombed the regime that ousted the monarchy in what US President Donald Trump has called the 12-day war.

Author Scott Anderson has written a definitive account of the last days of the monarchy in King of Kings (Shahanshah) with the subtitle Unmaking of the Modern Middle East.

The current predicament of the religious leaders who preside over the new Iranian system could hardly be more present. His continuing conversations with Iranian contacts both within the country and in the diaspora mean that Anderson sees sentiment as having shifted to a more nationalistic plane, something that bolsters the Islamic Republic regime.

“I feel that the events of the last month have just set any [opposition] movement way back by years,” he tells The National from his west coast of the US home. “Now the regime can paint anybody who is in opposition as 'lackeys of the Americans who just bombed our country and killed several hundred of our innocent civilians'.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, during a ceremony in Tehran, 1967. Getty Images

There is a contrast with the beleaguered Shah in 1979 who saw the US as his last resort when one of the periodic outbursts of unrest turned into people power-style demonstrations that eventually overwhelmed his security forces. When it came to it, the book painfully illustrates how no help was there.

Look west

The Shah had gone to great lengths to woo America, something the book demonstrates very well. But in the 1970s America was distracted by its economic problems, not least the inflation caused by the oil price shock. Jimmy Carter, US president at the time, unlike Donald Trump, was not willing to intervene in the affairs of his ally. Worse, Washington’s Cold War considerations allowed a dithering president to place his faith in a misguided calculation on how Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini would rule.

“There started to be this idea within the Carter administration: ‘Well, you know, if the ayatollahs take over, that's not the worst thing for us, because at least they'll be anti-communist’. And really, in the last few months of the revolution, you saw this growing acquiescence of the Carter administration,” said Anderson.

From right, Jimmy Carter, US president at the time, with the Shah of Iran Reza Palhevi, US first lady Rosalynn Carter and empress Farah Pahlavi of Iran, during a welcoming ceremony at the White House in 1977. Getty Images

It was an ill-fated visit to the White House in 1977, where the welcome ceremony was disrupted by tear gas and police clashing with anti-Shah protesters, that set off the fateful demonstrations in Iran. The incident on the Ellipse was broadcast on Iranian TV. As Gary Sick, a White House adviser at the time, observed, if Iranians saw a sparrow fall from the tree, it was the CIA that killed it. So too the live images of the Washington clashes sparked revolt in Iran.

Self-regard

What ultimately paved Khomeini’s way to power lay in the Shah himself. Anderson says Reza Shah believed his own Shahanshah propaganda on the country’s modernisation but failed to see how that created dangers. “Obviously the Shah was extending prosperity,” he said. “There was a huge number of scholarships. There was a certain lifestyle available in Tehran. The economic factor however isn't strong enough to save him. You had the streets flooded with young men, overwhelming men, coming from the countryside and from villages that really hadn't changed much of 300 years. Suddenly they are being exposed to this very westernised culture in the major Iranian cities. It would just cause a massive disjunction.”

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini greets the crowd at Tehran University after his return to Iran from exile in France during the Iranian Revolution. Getty Images

It was no coincidence that the Shah lost his vizier Asadollah Alam, who died in April 1978. During one of Alam’s stints as prime minister, the state mobilised to crush massive demonstrations in 1963. It was also under Alam’s firm hand that the Shah staged his grandiose and grating Persepolis celebrations of 2,500 years of the Persian empire, described as the most expensive party ever staged.

“Alam was his alter-ego for 20-odd years, and actually he was the one who crushed things in 1963 as the prime minister at the time,” said Anderson. “He crushed the clerical revolts and oversaw Khomeini getting sent into exile. Ironically, the Americans saw that as the Shah's response. It wasn't the Shah's response, but the Shah took credit for it. The Americans finally saw the Shah as a strongman, and so that was kind of a secret that he always had with us.”

Ailing monarch

The Shah himself was ill with the cancer that killed Alam, during the 1978 events. Subordinates feuded and the military high command was left no clear orders.

“One cliche I heard over and over about the Shah is he would oscillate between being tough when the revolution was happening and then being an appeaser,” said Anderson. “In fact he did both simultaneously. He declares martial law but then orders the troops not to fire on demonstrators or only as the very last resort,” Anderson said.

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi during a visit to London in 1959. Getty Images

Anderson reviews the myth of the feared Savak secret police and says that, compared to the record of today’s IRGC or Basji militia, it was a something of a paper tiger. “I think they've acted much more brutally,’ he said. “I mean the prisons in Islamic Iran are far greater than they ever were under the Shah as far as political prisoners are concerned. You have this very pervasive security system now that's loyal to the regime."

Modern technology assists the system of control in a way unimaginable in the Shah's day. “Iranians are very sophisticated when it comes to technology and things like that, so I think that they have a much broader surveillance system that is far advanced in technological terms than anything the shah’s ever could have dreamt of creating.”

Breaking point

King of Kings recounts a scene at Tabriz airbase in October 1978 as pilots handed in their resignations. The commanding general phoned his counterpart in Shiraz where resignations were also piling up on the commander's desk. His response was to tell the men that he too supported Khomeini and told his men to return to barracks. Four months later he led his pilots in a switch to the revolution and ended up as the interim defence minister.

A victorious group of men carrying arms drive around the city on the victory day of the Iranian Revolution in Tehran, February 1979. Getty Images

No such fog of confusion has yet set in for the present day regime, despite assassinations by Israel at the highest level. There is also a clear-cut focus on who is the real enemy under the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Certainly very late into the game the Shah always perceived his danger coming to the left,” says Anderson. “He saw the [Khomeinists] as a bunch of medievalists and had nothing but disdain for the ayatollahs. So Savak was always geared to looking at the danger of the left and they're on the Shah's payroll so they gave it to him.

“I think he thought it was much more rooted in tribalism.”

Turn back the clock

Generations of monarchists have rallied around the US-based exiled son of the late Shah of Iran.

Reza Pahlavi, who was then the 17-year old Crown Prince, is now a globe-trotting advocate for a reborn monarchy.

He called on Iranians to rise against the regime during the US and Israeli attacks and has since met foreign dignitaries including former UK prime minister Boris Johnson to further his cause.

Despite the loyal pilgrimages made to the Cairo mausoleum annually, Anderson does not see a new imperial order in Iran. "I think it is utter fantasy," he says. "You have got to remember 80 per cent of Iran's population has been born since the revolution. Iran is a very young country."