Iranian princess Ashraf Pahlavi, late shah’s twin, dies aged 96

The Iran shah’s twin sister Ashraf Pahlavi is seen upon her arrival in France, in the 1950s. AFP

Princess Ashraf (centre), the sister of the late shah of Iran, leaves the American Cathedral in Paris on November 6, 2001 following funeral services for princess Soraya Esfiandiary-Bakhtiary, the second wife of the late Iranian monarch. AFP

From left, chief of Elysee Palace Protocol Jacques Senard, Claude Pompidou, French president Georges Pompidou and princess Ashraf Pahlavi at the Elysee Palace in Paris. AP Photo

Princess Ashraf Pahlavi talks with secretary-general Kurt Waldheim of the United Nations in Mexico City. AP Photo

DUBAI // Iranian princess Ashraf Pahlavi, the twin sister of the country’s deposed shah whose glamorous life epitomised the excesses of her brother’s rule, has died after decades in exile. She was 96.

Many in Iran before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution believed princess Ashraf served as the true power behind her brother, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and pushed him into taking power in a 1953 coup engineered by the US.

Immortalised in her royal prime by an Andy Warhol portrait with bright red lips and raven-black hair, princess Ashraf’s years out of power more resembled a Shakespearean tragedy. Assassins killed her son on a Paris street just after the Islamic Revolution, her twin brother died of cancer shortly after, while a niece died of a 2001 drug overdose in London and a nephew killed himself in Boston 10 years later.

Still, she always defended her brother’s rule and held onto her royal past.

“At night, when I go into my room, that’s when all the thoughts come flooding in,” the princess told The Associated Press in a 1983 interview in Paris. “I stay up until 5 or 6 in the morning. I read, I watch a cassette, I try not to think. But the memories won’t leave you.”

Reza Pahlavi, a son of the shah, announced his aunt’s death in a Facebook post on Thursday night. Her personal website said she died Thursday, without elaborating. A longtime adviser to princess Ashraf in New York could not be immediately reached for comment Friday.

Born October 26, 1919, princess Ashraf was the daughter of the monarch Reza Shah, who came to power in a 1921 coup engineered by Britain and later was forced to abdicate the throne after a 1941 invasion by Britain and Russia. By 1953, America helped orchestrate the coup that overthrew Iran’s popularly elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, over fears he was tilting toward the Soviet Union. That brought her brother to power and set the stage for decades of mistrust between the countries.

But the shah was "a man of indecision," according to a long-classified CIA account of the coup first published by The New York Times in 2000. To push the coup along, the plotters reached out to "the shah's dynamic and forceful twin sister" who already had been in touch with US and British agents, according to the account. After "considerable pressure" by her and a US general, the shah reportedly agreed.

As her brother’s government ruled in opulence and its secret police tortured political activists, princess Ashraf focused on women’s rights in an appointment to the United Nations. She travelled widely and became known for gambling on the French Riviera, the French press dubbing her “La Panthere Noire,” or “the Black Panther.” She survived a 1977 apparent assassination attempt in Cannes that killed her aide and wounded her chauffer.

The political opposition during the shah’s era criticised princess Ashraf over allegations of corruption, as well as her highly publicised love affairs with Iranian actors and public figures. She and her sister, Shams, also were among the first Iranian women to go in public with their hair uncovered, breaking traditional norms in the Shiite country.

After her brother’s 1979 overthrow in Iran’s Islamic Revolution, princess Ashraf shuttled between homes in Paris, New York and Monte Carlo. She published a memoir and remained outspoken immediately after the overthrow.

“After the death of my brother, if we had had the $65 billion some people said we had we would have retaken Iran just like that,” she told the AP in 1983.

Princess Ashraf married and divorced three times in her life and had three children. She gradually faded from public view in later years, though she attended US president Richard Nixon’s funeral in 1994. And she always maintained she regretted nothing.

“I would want to do the same thing. It’s passed, now, only memories. But there were 50 years of grandeur, of glory,” she once said.

* Associated Press