title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: The Shah's first economic plan was geared towards large infrastructure projects and improving the agricultural sector which led to the development of many major dams particularly in Karaj, Safīdrūd, and Dez. The next economic plan was directed and characterized by an expansion in the credit and monetary policy of a nation which resulted in a rapid expansion of Iran's private sector, particularly construction. From the period 1955–1959, real gross fixed capital formation in the private sector saw an average annual increase of 39.3%. The private sector credit rose by 46 percent in 1957, 61 percent in 1958, and 32 percent in 1959 (Central Bank of Iran, Annual Report, 1960 and 1961). By 1963, the Shah had begun a redistribution of land offering compensation to landlords valued on previous tax assessments, and the land obtained by the government was then sold on favorable terms to Iranian peasants. The Shah also initiated the nationalization of forests and pastures, female suffrage, profit-sharing for industrial workers, privatization of state industries, and formation of literacy corps. These developments marked a turning point in Iranian history as the nation prepared to embark on a rapid and aggressive industrialization process.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: 1963–1978 represented the longest period of sustained growth in per capita real income the Iranian economy ever experienced. During the 1963–77 period gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by an average annual rate of 10.5% with an annual population growth rate of around 2.7% placing Iran as one of the fasted growing economies in the world. Iran's GDP per capita was $170 in 1963 and rose to $2,060 by 1977. The growth was not just a result of increased oil revenues. In fact, the non-oil GDPs grew by an average annual rate of 11.5 percent, which was higher than the average annual rate of growth experienced in oil revenues. By the fifth economic planning, oil GDP rose to 15.3% strongly outpacing growth rates in oil revenue which only saw .5% growth. From 1963 to 1977 the industrial and the service sectors experienced annual growth rates of 15.0 and 14.3 percent, respectively. The manufacturing of cars, television sets, refrigerators, and other household goods increased substantially in Iran. For instance, over the small period of 1969 to 1977, the number of private cars produced in Iran increased steadily from 29,000 to 132,000 and the number of television sets produced rose from 73,000 in 1969 to 352,000 in 1975.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: The growth of industrial sectors in Iran led to substantial urbanization of the country. The extent of urbanization rose from 31 percent in 1956 to 49 percent in 1978. By the mid-1970s Iran's national debt was paid off, turning the nation from a debtor to a creditor nation. The balances on the nation’s account for the 1959–78 period actually resulted in a surplus of funds of approximately $15,170 million. The Shah's fifth five-year economic plan sought to achieve a reduction in foreign imports through the use of higher tariffs on consumer goods, preferential bank loans to the industrialists, maintenance of an overvalued rial, and food subsidies in urban areas. These developments led to the development of a new large industrialist class in Iran and the nation’s industrial structure was extremely insulated from threats of foreign competition.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: In 1976, Iran saw its largest ever GDP uptick, thanks in large part to the Shah’s economic policies. According to the World Bank, when valued in 2010 dollars, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi improved the country's GDP on a per capita basis to $10,261, the most it ever was at any point in Iran’s history.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: According to economist Fereydoun Khavand, “During these 15 years, the average annual growth rate of the country fluctuated above 10%. The total volume of Iran's economy increased nearly fivefold during this period. In contrast, during the past 40 years, Iran's average annual economic growth rate has been only about two percent. Considering the growth rate of Iran's population in the post-revolution period, the average per capita growth rate of Iran in the last 40 years is estimated between zero percent and half a percent. Among the main factors hindering the growth rate in Iran are a lack of a favorable business environment, severe investment weakness, very low levels of productivity, and constant tension in the country’s regional and global relations.”


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Many European, American, and Japanese investment firms sought business ventures and to open up headquarters in Iran. According to one American investment banker,


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: By the 1960s and 1970s, Iranian oil revenues experienced rapid growth. By the mid-1960s Iran saw "weakened U.S. influence in Iranian politics" and a strengthening in the power of the Iranian state. According to Homa Katouzian, the perception that the US was the instructor of the Shah’s regime due to their support for the 1953 coup contradicted the reality that "its real influence" in domestic Iranian politics and policy "declined considerably". In 1973 the Shah initiated an oil price hike with his control of OPEC further demonstrating the US no longer had influence over Iranian foreign and economic policies.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: In response to American media outlets criticizing the Shah claimed that Iran’s oil price hikes did little to contribute to the rising inflation in the United States. Pahlavi also hinted at criticism at the US for not taking the lead on anti-communist efforts.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: In 1974 during the oil crisis, the Shah began an atomic nuclear energy policy prompting US Trade Administrator William E. Simon to denounce the Shah as a "nut." In response, US President Nixon publicly apologized to the Shah and through a letter in order to disassociate the president and the United States from the statement. US Simon's statement illustrated the growing American tensions with Iran over the Shah's raising of oil prices. Nixon's apology covered up the reality that Shah's ambitions to become the leader in the Persian Gulf Area and the Indian Ocean basin was placing a serious strain on his relationship with the United States, particularly as India had tested its first atomic bomb in May 1974.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Many critics labeled the Shah as a Western and American "puppet", an accusation that has been disproven as unfounded by contemporary scholars due to the Shah's strong regional and nationalist ambitions which often led Tehran to disputes with its Western allies. In particular, the Carter administration which took control of the White House in 1977 saw the Shah as a troublesome ally and sought change in Iran’s political system.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: By the 1970s, the Shah had become a strongman. His power had dramatically increased both in Iran and internationally, and on the tenth anniversary of the White Revolution, he challenged The Consortium Agreement of 1954 and terminated the agreement after negotiations with the oil consortium resulting in the establishment of 1973 Sale and Purchase Agreement.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Khomeini accused the Shah of false rumors and employed Soviet methods of deception. The accusations were amplified by international media outlets which widely propagated the information and protests were widely shown on Iranian televisions.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Many Iranian students studied across Western Europe and the United States where ideas of liberalism, democracy, and counterculture flourished. Among left-leaning Westerners, the Shah's reign was seen as equivalent to that of right-wing hate figures. Western anti-Shah fervor broadcast by European and American media outlets was ultimately adopted by Iranian students and intellectuals studying the West who accused the shah of Westoxification when it was the students themselves who were adopting Western liberalism they experienced during their studies. These Western ideas of liberalism resulted in utopian visions for revolution and social change. In turn, the Shah criticized Western democracies and equated them to chaos. Furthermore, the Shah chastised Americans and Europeans as being "lazy," and "lacking discipline," and criticized their student radicalism as being caused by Western decline. President Nixon expressed his concern to the Shah that Iranian students in the United States would similarly become radicalized, asking the Shah


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: In 1961, the Francophile Mohammad Reza visited Paris to meet his favourite leader, General Charles de Gaulle of France. Mohammad Reza saw height as the measure of a man and a woman (the Shah had a marked preference for tall women) and the de Gaulle was his most admired leader. Mohammad Reza loved to be compared to his "ego ideal" of General de Gaulle, and his courtiers constantly flattered him by calling him Iran's de Gaulle. During the French trip, Queen Farah, who shared her husband's love of French culture and language, befriended the culture minister André Malraux, who arranged for the exchange of cultural artifacts between French and Iranian museums and art galleries, a policy that remained a key component of Iran's cultural diplomacy until 1979. Many of the legitimising devices of the regime such as the constant use of referendums were modelled after de Gaulle's regime. Intense Francophiles, Mohammad Reza and Farah preferred to speak French rather than Persian to their children. Mohammad Reza built the Niavaran Palace which took up 9,000 square feet and whose style was a blend of Persian and French architecture.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: The Shah's diplomatic foundation was the United States' guarantee that it would protect his regime, enabling him to stand up to larger enemies. While the arrangement did not preclude other partnerships and treaties, it helped to provide a somewhat stable environment in which Mohammad Reza could implement his reforms. Another factor guiding Mohammad Reza in his foreign policy was his wish for financial stability, which required strong diplomatic ties. A third factor was his wish to present Iran as a prosperous and powerful nation; this fuelled his domestic policy of Westernisation and reform. A final component was his promise that communism could be halted at Iran's border if his monarchy was preserved. By 1977, the country's treasury, the Shah's autocracy, and his strategic alliances seemed to form a protective layer around Iran.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Although the U.S. was responsible for putting the Shah in power, he did not always act as a close American ally. In the early 1960s, when the State Department's Policy Planning Staff that included William R. Polk encouraged the Shah to distribute Iran's growing revenues more equitably, slow the rush toward militarisation, and open the government to political processes, he became furious and identified Polk as "the principal enemy of his regime." In July 1964, the Shah, Turkish President Cemal Gürsel, and Pakistani President Ayub Khan announced in Istanbul the establishment of the Regional Cooperation for Development (RCD) organisation to promote joint transportation and economic projects. It also envisioned Afghanistan's joining at some time in the future. The Shah was the first regional leader to grant "de facto" recognition to the State of Israel. Although when interviewed on "60 Minutes" by reporter Mike Wallace, he criticised American Jews for their presumed control over U.S. media and finance-those remarks are widely believed to have only been intended to pacify the Shah's Arab critics, and bilateral relations between Iran and Israel were not adversely affected. In a 1967 memo to President Lyndon B. Johnson, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara wrote that "our sales [to Iran] have created about 1.4 million man-years of employment in the U.S. and over $1 billion in profits to American industry over the last five years," leading him to conclude that Iran was an arms market the United States could not do without. In June 1965, after the Americans proved reluctant to sell Mohammad Reza some of the weapons he asked for, the Shah visited Moscow, where the Soviets agreed to sell some $110 million worth of weaponry; the threat of Iran pursuing the "Soviet option" caused the Americans to resume selling Iran weapons. Additionally, British, French, and Italian arms firms were willing to sell Iran weapons, thus giving Mohammad Reza considerable leverage in his talks with the Americans, who sometimes worried that the Shah was buying more weapons than Iran needed or could handle.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Concerning the fate of Bahrain (which Britain had controlled since the 19th century, but which Iran claimed as its own territory) and three small Persian Gulf islands, the Shah negotiated an agreement with the British, which, by means of a public consensus, ultimately led to the independence of Bahrain (against the wishes of Iranian nationalists). In return, Iran took full control of Greater and Lesser Tunbs and Abu Musa in the Strait of Hormuz, three strategically sensitive islands which were claimed by the United Arab Emirates. During this period, the Shah maintained cordial relations with the Persian Gulf states and established close diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia. Mohammad Reza saw Iran as the natural dominant power in the Persian Gulf region, and tolerated no challenges to Iranian hegemony, a claim that was supported by a gargantuan arms-buying spree that started in the early 1960s. Mohammad Reza supported the Yemeni royalists against republican forces in the Yemen Civil War (1962–70) and assisted the sultan of Oman in putting down a rebellion in Dhofar (1971). In 1971, Mohammad Reza told a journalist: "World events were such that we were compelled to accept the fact that sea adjoining the Oman Sea—I mean the Indian Ocean—does not recognise borders. As for Iran's security limits—I will not state how many kilometers we have in mind, but anyone who is acquainted with geography and the strategic situation, and especially with the potential air and sea forces, know what distances from Chah Bahar this limit can reach".


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: From 1968 to 1975 the Iraq deported over 60,000 Iraqis of Iranian descent into Iran causing a rise in tensions. Iran's relations with Iraq, however, were often difficult due to political instability in the latter country. Mohammad Reza was distrustful of both the Socialist government of Abd al-Karim Qasim and the Arab nationalist Baath party. He resented the internationally recognised Iran-Iraq border on the Shatt al-Arab river, which a 1937 treaty fixed on the low watermark on the Iranian side, giving Iraq control of most of the Shatt al-Arab. On 19 April 1969, the Shah abrogated the treaty, and as a result Iran ceased paying tolls to Iraq when its ships used the Shatt al-Arab, ending Iraq's lucrative source of income. He justified his move by arguing that almost all river borders all over the world ran along the "thalweg" (deep channel mark), and by claiming that because most of the ships that used the Shatt al-Arab were Iranian, the 1937 treaty was unfair to Iran. Iraq threatened war over the Iranian move, but when on 24 April 1969 an Iranian tanker escorted by Iranian warships sailed down the Shatt al-Arab without paying tolls, Iraq, being the militarily weaker state, did nothing. The Iranian abrogation of the 1937 treaty marked the beginning of a period of acute Iraqi-Iranian tension that was to last until the Algiers Accords of 1975. The fact that Iraq had welcomed the former SAVAK chief General Teymur Bakhtiar to Baghdad, where he regularly met with representatives of the Tudeh Party and the Confederation of Iranian Students, added to the difficult relations between Iran and Iraq. On 7 August 1970, Bakhtiar was badly wounded by a SAVAK assassin who shot him five times, and he died five days later; Alam wrote in his diary that Mohammad Reza rejoiced at the news.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: On 7 May 1972, Mohammad Reza told a visiting President Richard Nixon that the Soviet Union was attempting to dominate the Middle East via its close ally Iraq, and that to check Iraqi ambitions would also be to check Soviet ambitions. Nixon agreed to support Iranian claims to have the "thalweg" in the Shatt al-Arab recognised as the border and to generally back Iran in its confrontation with Iraq. Mohammad Reza financed Kurdish separatist rebels in Iraq, and to cover his tracks, armed them with Soviet weapons which Israel had seized from Soviet-backed Arab regimes, then handed over to Iran at the Shah's behest. The initial operation was a disaster, but the Shah continued attempts to support the rebels and weaken Iraq. Then, in 1975, the countries signed the Algiers Accord, which granted Iran equal navigation rights in the Shatt al-Arab as the "thalweg" was now the new border, while Mohammad Reza agreed to end his support for Iraqi Kurdish rebels. The Shah also maintained close relations with King Hussein of Jordan, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and King Hassan II of Morocco. Beginning in 1970, Mohammad Reza formed an unlikely alliance with the militantly left-wing regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, as both leaders wanted higher oil prices for their nations, leading Iran and Libya joining forces to press for the "leapfrogging" of oil prices.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: The U.S.-Iran relationship grew more contentious as the U.S. became more dependent on Mohammad Reza to be a stabilising force in the Middle East, under the Nixon Doctrine. In a July 1969 visit to Guam, President Nixon had announced the Nixon Doctrine, which declared that the United States would honour its treaty commitments in Asia, but "as far as the problems of international security are concerned ... the United States is going to encourage and has a right to expect that this problem will increasingly be handled by, and the responsibility for it taken by, the Asian nations themselves." The particular Asian nation the Nixon Doctrine was aimed at was South Vietnam, but the Shah seized upon the doctrine, with its message that Asian nations should be responsible for their own defense, to argue that the Americans should sell him arms without limitation, a suggestion that Nixon embraced. A particular dynamic was established in American-Iranian relations from 1969 onward, in which the Americans gave in to whatever Mohammad Reza demanded, as they felt they needed a strong Iran as a pro-American force in the Middle East and could not afford to lose Iran as an ally. Further adding to the Shah's confidence was the Sino-Soviet border conflict of 1969, which forced the Red Army to make a major redeployment to the Chinese border. Mohammad Reza, who always feared the prospect of a Soviet invasion, welcomed the Sino-Soviet war and the resulting reduction of Red Army divisions along the Soviet-Iranian border as giving him more room internationally.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Under Nixon, the United States finally agreed to sever all contact with any Iranians opposed to the Shah's regime, a concession that Mohammad Reza had been seeking since 1958. The often very anti-American tone of the Iranian press was ignored because Mohammad Reza supported the U.S. in the Vietnam War and likewise the Americans ignored the Shah's efforts to raise oil prices, despite the fact it cost many American consumers more. After 1969, a process of "reverse leverage" set in, when Mohammad Reza began to dictate to the United States as the Americans needed him more than he needed the Americans. The American National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger wrote in 1982 that because of the Vietnam War, it was not politically possible in the 1970s for the United States to fight a major war: "There was no possibility of assigning any American forces to the Indian Ocean in the midst of the Vietnam War and its attendant trauma. Congress would have tolerated no such commitment; the public would not have supported it. Fortunately, Iran was willing to play this role." Consequently, the Americans badly needed Iran as an ally, which allowed Mohammad Reza to dictate to them. This experience greatly boosted the Shah's ego, as he felt he was able to impose his will on the world's most powerful nation.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: The Americans initially rejected Mohammad Reza's suggestion that they join him in supporting the Iraqi Kurdish "peshmerga" fighting for independence on the grounds that an independent Kurdistan would inspire the Turkish Kurds to rebel, and they had no interest in antagonising the NATO member Turkey. Some of the Shah's advisers also felt it was unwise to support the "peshmerga", saying that if the Iraqi Kurds won independence, then the Iranian Kurds would want to join them. When Nixon and Kissinger visited Tehran in May 1972, the Shah convinced them to take a larger role in what had, up to then, been a mainly Israeli-Iranian operation to aid Iraqi Kurds in their struggles against Iraq, against the warnings of the CIA and State Department that the Shah would ultimately betray the Kurds. He did this in March 1975 with the signing of the Algiers Accord that settled Iraqi-Iranian border disputes, an action taken without prior consultation with the U.S., after which he cut off all aid to the Kurds and prevented the U.S. and Israel from using Iranian territory to provide them assistance.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: As a way of increasing pressure on Baghdad, the "peshmerga" had been encouraged by Iran and the U.S. to abandon guerrilla war for conventional war in April 1974, so the years 1974–75 saw the heaviest fighting between the Iraqi Army and the "peshmerga". The sudden cut-off of Iranian support in March 1975 left the Kurds very exposed, causing them to be crushed by Iraq. The British journalist Patrick Brogan wrote that "...the Iraqis celebrated their victory in the usual manner, by executing as many of the rebels as they could lay their hands on." Kissinger later wrote in his memoirs that it was never the intention of the U.S. or Iran to see the "peshmerga" actually win, as an independent Kurdistan would have created too many problems for both Turkey and Iran; rather, the intention was to "irritate" Iraq enough to force the Iraqis to change their foreign policy.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: The Shah also used America's dependence on Middle Eastern oil as leverage; although Iran did not participate in the 1973 oil embargo, he purposely increased production in its aftermath to capitalise on the higher prices. In December 1973, only two months after oil prices were raised by 70 per cent, he urged OPEC nations to push prices even higher, which they agreed to do, more than doubling the price. Oil prices increased 470 per cent over a 12-month period, which also increased Iran's GDP by 50 per cent. Despite personal pleas from President Nixon, the Shah ignored any complaints, claimed the U.S. was importing more oil than any time in the past, and proclaimed that "the industrial world will have to realise that the era of their terrific progress and even more terrific income and wealth based on cheap oil is finished."


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: With Iran's great oil wealth, the Shah became the preeminent leader of the Middle East, and self-styled "Guardian" of the Persian Gulf. In 1961 he defended his style of rule, saying "When Iranians learn to behave like Swedes, I will behave like the King of Sweden."


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: During the last years of his regime, the Shah's government became more autocratic. In the words of a U.S. Embassy dispatch: "The Shah's picture is everywhere. The beginning of all film showings in public theaters presents the Shah in various regal poses accompanied by the strains of the National Anthem ... The monarch also actively extends his influence to all phases of social affairs ... there is hardly any activity or vocation in which the Shah or members of his family or his closest friends do not have a direct or at least a symbolic involvement. In the past, he had claimed to take a two-party system seriously and declared, 'If I were a dictator rather than a constitutional monarch, then I might be tempted to sponsor a single dominant party such as Hitler organised'."


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: However, by 1975, Mohammad Reza had abolished the two-party system of government in favour of a one-party state under the Rastakhiz ("Resurrection") Party. This was the merger of the New Iran Party, a centre-right party, and the People's Party, a liberal party. The Shah justified his actions by declaring: "We must straighten out Iranians' ranks. To do so, we divide them into two categories: those who believe in Monarchy, the constitution and the Six Bahman Revolution and those who don't ... A person who does not enter the new political party and does not believe in the three cardinal principles will have only two choices. He is either an individual who belongs to an illegal organisation, or is related to the outlawed Tudeh Party, or in other words a traitor. Such an individual belongs to an Iranian prison, or if he desires he can leave the country tomorrow, without even paying exit fees; he can go anywhere he likes, because he is not Iranian, he has no nation, and his activities are illegal and punishable according to the law." In addition, the Shah had decreed that all Iranian citizens and the few remaining political parties become part of Rastakhiz.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: From 1973 onward, Mohammad Reza had proclaimed his aim as that of the "tamaddon-e-bozorg", the "Great Civilisation," a turning point not only in Iran's history, but also the history of the entire world, a claim that was taken seriously for a time in the West. On 2 December 1974, "The New Yorker" published an article by Paul Erdman that was a conjectural future history entitled "The Oil War of 1976: How The Shah Won the World: The World as We Knew It Came to an End When the Shah Of Iran Decided to Restore The Glory of Ancient Persia with Western Arms". In 1975, U.S. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller declared in a speech: "We must take His Imperial Majesty to the United States for a couple of years so that he can teach us how to run a country." In 1976, a pulp novel by Alan Williams was published in the United States under the title "A Bullet for the Shah: All They Had To Do Was Kill the World's Most Powerful Man", whose sub-title reveals much about how the American people viewed the Shah at the time (the original British title was the more prosaic "Shah-Mak").


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: The great wealth generated by Iran's oil encouraged a sense of nationalism at the Imperial Court. The Empress Farah recalled of her days as a university student in 1950s France about being asked where she was from:When I told them Iran ... the Europeans would recoil in horror as if Iranians were barbarians and loathsome. But after Iran became wealthy under the Shah in the 1970s, Iranians were courted everywhere. Yes, Your Majesty. Of course, Your Majesty. If you please, Your Majesty. Fawning all over us. Greedy sycophants. Then they loved Iranians. Mohammad Reza shared the Empress's sentiments as Westerners came begging to his court looking for his largesse, leading him to remark in 1976:


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Now we are the masters and our former masters are our slaves. Everyday they beat a track to our door begging for favors. How can they be of assistance? Do we want arms? Do we want nuclear power stations? We have only to answer, and they will fulfill our wishes. Because the House of Pahlavi were a parvenu house as Reza Khan had begun his career as a private in the Persian Army, rising up to the rank of general, taking power in a coup d'état in 1921, and making himself Shah in 1925, Mohammad Reza was keen to gain the approval of the older royal families of the world, and was prepared to spend large sums of money to gain that social acceptance.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Amongst the royalty that came to Tehran looking for the Shah's generosity were King Hussein of Jordan, the former King Constantine II of Greece, King Hassan II of Morocco, the princes and princesses of the Dutch House of Orange, and the Italian Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy, whom the Shah had once courted in the 1950s. He coveted the British Order of the Garter, and had, prior to courting Maria Gabriella, inquired about marrying Princess Alexandra of Kent, granddaughter of King George V, but in both cases he was rebuffed in no uncertain terms. As an Iranian, Mohammad Reza greatly enjoyed supporting the Greek branch of the House of Glücksburg, knowing the Greeks still celebrated their victories over the Persians in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. He enjoyed close relations with Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, as demonstrated by the fact that he was the guest of honour at the Persepolis celebrations in 1971. Ethiopia and Iran, along with Turkey and Israel, were envisioned as an "alliance of the periphery" that would constrain Arab power in the greater Middle East.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: In an era of high oil prices, Iran's economy boomed while the economies of the Western nations were trapped in stagflation (economic stagnation and inflation) after the 1973–74 oil shocks, which seemed to prove the greatness of Mohammad Reza both to himself and to the rest of the world. In 1975, both the British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and the French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing made pleading phone calls to Mohammad Reza asking him for loans, which ultimately led the Shah to give a US$1 billion loan to the United Kingdom and another US$1 billion to France. In a televised speech in January 1975 explaining why he was lending Britain a sum equal to US$1 billion, Mohammad Reza declared in his usual grandiose style: "I have known the most dark hours when our country was obliged to pass under the tutelage of foreign powers, amongst them England. Now I find that England has not only become our friend, our equal, but also the nation to which, should we be able, we will render assistance with pleasure," going on to say that since he "belonged to this [European] world," he did not want Europe to collapse economically. As Britain had often dominated Iran in the past, the change in roles was greatly gratifying to Mohammad Reza.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Courtiers at the Imperial court were devoted to stroking the Shah's ego, competing to be the most sycophantic, with Mohammad Reza being regularly assured he was a greater leader than his much admired General de Gaulle, that democracy was doomed, and that based on Rockefeller's speech, that the American people wanted Mohammad Reza to be their leader, as well as doing such a great job as Shah of Iran. According to historian Abbas Milani, all of this praise boosted Mohammad Reza's ego, and he went from being a merely narcissistic man to a megalomaniac, believing himself a man chosen by Allah Himself to transform Iran and create the "Great Civilisation." When one of the Shah's courtiers suggested launching a campaign to award him the Nobel Peace Prize, he wrote on the margin: "If they beg us, we might accept. They give the Nobel to "kaka siah" ["any black face"] these days. Why should we belittle ourselves with this?" Befitting all this attention and praise, Mohammad Reza started to make increasingly outlandish claims for the "Great Civilisation", telling the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci in a 1973 interview with "L'Europeo":Halfway measures, compromises, are unfeasible. In other words, either one is a revolutionary or one demands law and order. One can't be a revolutionary with law and order. And even less with tolerance ... when Castro came to power, he killed at least 10,000 people ... in a sense, he was really capable, because he's still in power. So am I, however! And I intend to stay there, and to demonstrate that one can achieve a great many things by the use of force, show even that your old socialism is finished. Old, obsolete, finished ... I achieve more than the Swedes ... Huh! Swedish socialism! It didn't even nationalize forests and water. But I have ... my White Revolution ... is a new original kind of socialism and ... believe me, in Iran we're far more advanced than you and we really have nothing to learn from you. In an interview with "Der Spiegel" published on 3 February 1974, Mohammad Reza declared: "I would like you to know that in our case, our actions are not just to take vengeance on the West. As I said, we are going to be a member of your club". In a press conference on 31 March 1974, Mohammad Reza predicted what Iran would be like in 1984, saying:In the cities, electric cars would replace the gas engines and mass transportation systems would be switched to electricity, monorail over the ground or electric buses. And, furthermore, in the great era of civilization that lies ahead of our people, there will be least two or three holidays a week. In 1976, Mohammad Reza told the Egyptian journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal in an interview: "I want the standard of living in Iran in ten years' time to be exactly on a level with that in Europe today. In twenty years' time we shall be ahead of the United States".


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Reflecting his need to have Iran seen as "part of the world" (by which Mohammad Reza meant the western world), all through the 1970s he sponsored conferences in Iran at his expense, with for example in one week in September 1975 the International Literacy Symposium meeting in Persepolis, the International Congress of Philosophy meeting in Mashhad and the International Congress of Mithraic Studies meeting in Tehran. He also sought to hold the 1984 Summer Olympics in Tehran. For most ordinary Iranians, struggling with inflation, poverty, air pollution (Iranian cities in the 1970s were amongst the most polluted in the world), having to pay extortion payments to the police who demanded money from even those performing legal jobs such as selling fruits on the street, and daily traffic jams, the Shah's sponsorship of international conferences were just a waste of money and time. Furthermore, conferences on pre-Islamic practices such as the cult of Mithra fuelled religious anxieties. Though Mohammad Reza envisioned the "Great Civilisation" of a modernised Iran whose standard of living would be higher than those of the United States and at the forefront of modern technology, he did not envision any political change, making it clear that Iran would remain an autocracy.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: In his "White Revolution" starting in the 1960s, Mohammad Reza made major changes to modernise Iran. He curbed the power of certain ancient elite factions by expropriating large and medium-sized estates for the benefit of more than four million small farmers. He took a number of other major measures, including extending suffrage to women and the participation of workers in factories through shares and other measures. In the 1970s, the governmental programme of free-of-charge nourishment for children at school known as "Taghziye Rāyegan" (Persian: تغذیه رایگان lit. "free nourishment") was implemented. Under the Shah's reign, the national Iranian income showed an unprecedented rise for an extended period.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Improvement of the educational system was made through the creation of new elementary schools. In addition, literacy courses were set up in remote villages by the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces, this initiative being called "Sepāh-e Dānesh" (Persian: سپاه دانش) meaning "Army of Knowledge". The Armed Forces were also engaged in infrastructural and other educational projects throughout the country "Sepāh-e Tarvij va Ābādāni" (Persian: سپاه ترویج و آبادانی lit. "army for promotion and development") as well as in health education and promotion "Sepāh-e Behdāsht" (Persian: سپاه بهداشت lit. "army for hygiene"). The Shah instituted exams for Islamic theologians to become established clerics. Many Iranian university students were sent to and supported in foreign, especially Western, countries and the Indian subcontinent.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Between 1967 and 1977, the number of universities increased in number from 7 to 22, the number of institutions of advanced learning rose from 47 to 200, and the number of students in higher education soared from 36,742 to 100,000. Iran's literacy programs were among the most innovative and effective anywhere in the world, so that by 1977 the number of Iranians able to read and write had climbed from just 27 percent to more than 80 percent.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: In the field of diplomacy, Iran realised and maintained friendly relations with Western and East European countries as well as the state of Israel and China and became, especially through its close friendship with the United States, more and more a hegemonial power in the Persian Gulf region and the Middle East. The suppression of the communist guerrilla movement in the region of Dhofar in Oman with the help of the Iranian army after a formal request by Sultan Qaboos was widely regarded in this context.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: As to infrastructural and technological progress, the Shah continued and developed further the policies introduced by his father. His programmes included projects in technologies such as steel, telecommunications, petrochemical facilities, power plants, dams and the automobile industry. The Aryamehr University of Technology was established as a major new academic institution.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: International cultural cooperation was encouraged and organised, such as the 2,500 year celebration of the Persian Empire and Shiraz Arts Festival. As part of his various financial support programmes in the fields of culture and arts, the Shah, along with King Hussein of Jordan made a donation to the Chinese Muslim Association for the construction of the Taipei Grand Mosque.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: The Shah also led a massive military build-up and began the construction of many nuclear facilities. By 1977, Iran was considered the fifth strongest nation in the world according to a report by Georgetown University. The Shah announced the days of foreign exploitation in Iran were over and exclaimed statements such as


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: The Shah sought to protect Iran’s interests through various means such as funding foreign rebellions in Iraq, military support in Oman, financial/military action, and diplomacy promoting the CIA to conclude,


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Despite criticism from western critics, the Shah was seen as a master statesman through his domestic reforms, popular base in Iran, successful opposition to radical Arab neighbors, and ambitions for regional stability and prosperity, particularly in the two superpowers and other European powers. The fall of the Pahlavi order in 1979, removed the Shah’s stabilizing efforts leading to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, destabilizing Pakistani politics, the emergence of Saudi Arabia as a major oil power, the rise of Saddam Hussein and Ba'athists in regional conflicts, and the subsequent Wahhabi-Salafi militancy.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Under the Shah's leadership, Iran experienced an impressive transformation of the economy. From 1925 to 1976 Iran's economy had grown 700 times, per capita 200 times, and domestic capital formation 3,400 times most of which occurred during the reign of the second Pahlavi Monarch, Mohammadreza Pahlavi. Iran enjoyed an average annual industrial growth rate of over 20% from 1963 to 1976. From 1965 to 1976 Iranian per capita income rose 8 times from $195 to $1,600. By 1978 per capita income surpassed $2,400. Much of the growth was not due to oil income. Among the OPEC oil-producing nations experts agreed only Iran's growth was due to an intelligent development plan while the growth seen in nations such as Saudi Arabia and Libya was solely based upon oil revenues.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Iran's growth was expected to continue, with half of the Iranian families expected to own cars by 1985, per capita income reaching $4500, Iran would produce twenty million tons of steel annually, one million tons of aluminum, one million cars, three million television sets, one million tons of paper, and a large number of engineers.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: During the Shah's rule, Iran's average income level was nearing that of Western European nations, and Iranians experienced an unprecedented amount of prosperity and opportunity with an emerging middle class. Iran's growing prosperity coupled with goals of independence allowed for increasing autonomy from Western nations like the US. From 1963 to 1977 Iran experienced an average annual growth rate of 10.5% making it one of the world's fastest-growing economies and Iran experienced its largest GDP growth ever. The economic growth was not simply based on oil, in fact, nonoil revenues grew at a faster rate of 11.5% annually.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: During the 1960s and 1970s, Iran’s society and the economy experienced a great transformation as a result of rapid industrialization. The state invested in infrastructure to develop industry and provided financial capital resulting in profitable conditions for private Iranian companies. As a result, Iran’s development across the industrialization scale, technological advancement, economic growth, urbanization, and per capita income increase was extraordinary compared to other developing nations. World Bank data during this period reveals Iran had an annual real growth rate of 9.6% for middle-income categories which was the highest of any other country in the developing world. Investment, savings, consumption, employment, and per capita income also demonstrated exceptional growth. Gross domestic investment grew at an average yearly rate of 16% and reached 33% of the GDP by 1977-1978. Iranian consumption grew on average by 18% a year. Iran’s middle class was far larger than any other developing country. Iran’s economic growth was compared to that of rapidly industrializing Asian countries such as South Korea. Since the revolution, Iran’s economic growth and rapid industrialization have plummeted.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: During the early 1970s, with the success of the Shah's White Revolution, Iran had become a country of economic opportunity and its international status was rising. From 1959 and 1970 the Gross national product (GNP) approximately tripled rising from $3.8 to $10.6 billion and by the late 1960s Iran become one of the middle east’s most flourishing spots for investment among foreign investors due to financial stability and rise in purchasing power. Many foreign power struggled to compete for relations with Iran due to the rising potential of its growing marketplace. Iran Air also became one of the fastest growing airlines in the world and many Iranian construction companies some funded by the state had been involved in many construction projects such as Pre-Fab Inc. which created the precast concrete benches for the Āryāmehr Stadium.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: The overthrow of the Shah came as a surprise to almost all observers. The first militant anti-Shah demonstrations of a few hundred started in October 1977, after the death of Khomeini's son Mostafa. On 7 January 1978, an article "Iran and Red and Black Colonization" was published in the newspaper "Ettela'at" attacking Ruhollah Khomeini, who was in exile in Iraq at the time; it referred to him as a homosexual, a drug addict, a British spy and claimed he was an Indian, not an Iranian. Khomeini's supporters had brought in audio tapes of his sermons, and Mohammad Reza was angry with one sermon, alleging corruption on his part, and decided to hit back with the article, despite the feeling at the court, SAVAK and "Ettela'at" editors that the article was an unnecessary provocation that was going to cause trouble. The next day, protests against the article began in the holy city of Qom, a traditional centre of opposition to the House of Pahlavi.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Mohammad Reza was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 1974. As it worsened, from the spring of 1978, he stopped appearing in public, with the official explanation being that he was suffering from a "persistent cold." In May 1978, the Shah suddenly cancelled a long planned trip to Hungary and Bulgaria. He spent the entire summer of 1978 at his Caspian Sea resort, where two of France's most prominent doctors, Jean Bernard and Georges Flandrin, treated his cancer. To try to stop his cancer, Bernard and Flandrin had Mohammad Reza take prednisone, a drug that can cause depression and impair thinking.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: As nationwide protests and strikes swept Iran, the court found it impossible to get decisions from Mohammad Reza, as he became utterly passive and indecisive, content to spend hours listlessly staring into space as he rested by the Caspian Sea while the revolution raged. The seclusion of the Shah, who normally loved the limelight, sparked all sorts of rumors about the state of his health and damaged the imperial mystique, as the man who had been presented as a god-like ruler was revealed to be fallible. A July 1978 attempt to deny the rumors of Mohammad Reza's declining health (by publishing a crudely doctored photograph in the newspapers of the Emperor and Empress walking on the beach) instead further damaged the imperial mystique, as most people realised that what appeared to be two beach clogs on either side of the Shah were merely substitutes inserted for his airbrushed aides, who were holding him up as he now had difficulty walking by himself.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: In June 1978, Mohammad Reza's French doctors first revealed to the French government how serious his cancer was, and in September the French government informed the American government that the Shah was dying of cancer; until then, U.S. officials had no idea that Mohammad Reza had even been diagnosed with cancer four years earlier. The Shah had created a very centralised system in which he was the key decision-maker on all issues, and as historian Abbas Milani noted, he was mentally crippled in the summer of 1978 owing to his tendency to be indecisive when faced with a crisis which, combined with his cancer and the effects of the anti-cancer drugs, made his mood "increasingly volatile and unpredictable. One day, he was full of verve and optimism and the next day or hour he fell into a catatonic stupor," bringing the entire government to a halt. Milani wrote that the Shah was in 1978 "beset with depression, indecision and paralysis, and his indecision led to the immobilisation of the entire system." Empress Farah grew so frustrated with her husband that she suggested numerous times that he leave Iran for medical treatment and appoint her regent, saying she would handle the crisis and save the House of Pahlavi. The very masculine Mohammad Reza vetoed this idea, saying he did not want Farah to be "Joan of Arc," and it would be too humiliating for him as a man to flee Iran and leave a woman in charge.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: The Shah-centred command structure of the Iranian military, and the lack of training to confront civil unrest, was marked by disaster and bloodshed. There were several instances where army units had opened fire, the most significant being the events on 8 September 1978. The day, which later became known as "Black Friday", thousands of people had gathered in Tehran's Jaleh Square for a religious demonstration. With the population generally refusing to recognise martial law, the soldiers opened fire, killing and seriously injuring a large number of people. Black Friday played a crucial role in further radicalising the protest movement. The massacre so reduced the chance for reconciliation that is became known as "the point of no return" for the revolution.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Hoping to calm the situation, on 2 October 1978, the Shah granted a general amnesty to dissidents living abroad, including Ayatollah Khomeini. But by then it was too late. October 1978 was characterized by extreme unrest and open opposition to the monarchy; strikes paralyzed the country, and in early December a "total of 6 to 9 million"—more than 10% of the country—marched against the Shah throughout Iran. In October 1978, after flying over a huge demonstration in Tehran in his helicopter, Mohammad Reza accused the British ambassador Sir Anthony Parsons and the American ambassador William H. Sullivan of organising the demonstrations, screaming that he was being "betrayed" by the United Kingdom and the United States. The fact that the BBC's journalists tended to be very sympathetic towards the revolution was viewed by most Iranians, including Mohammad Reza, as a sign that Britain was supporting the revolution. This impression turned out to be crucial, as the Iranian people had a very exaggerated idea about Britain's capacity to "direct events" in Iran. In a subsequent internal inquiry, the BBC found many of its more left-wing journalists disliked Mohammad Reza as a "reactionary" force, and sympathised with a revolution seen as "progressive". Mohammad Reza spent much of his time working out various conspiracy theories about who was behind the revolution, with his favourite candidates being some combination of Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union. Milani wrote that Mohamad Reza's view of the revolution as a gigantic conspiracy organised by foreign powers suggested that there was nothing wrong with Iran, and the millions of people demonstrating against him were just dupes being used by foreigners, a viewpoint that did not encourage concessions and reforms until it was too late. For much of 1978, Mohammad Reza saw his enemies as "Marxist" revolutionaries rather than Islamists. The Shah had exaggerated ideas about the power of the KGB, which he thought of as omnipotent, and often expressed the view that all of the demonstrations against him had been organised in Moscow, saying only the KGB had the power to bring out thousands of ordinary people to demonstrate. In October 1978, the oil workers went on strike, shutting down the oil industry and with it, Mohammad Reza's principal source of revenue. The Iranian military had no plans in place to deal with such an event, and the strike pushed the regime to the economic brink.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: The revolution had attracted support from a broad coalition ranging from secular, left-wing nationalists to Islamists on the right, and Khomeini, who was temporarily based in Paris after being expelled from Iraq, chose to present himself as a moderate able to bring together all the different factions leading the revolution. On 3 November, a SAVAK plan to arrest about 1,500 people considered to be leaders of the revolution was submitted to Mohammad Reza, who at first tentatively agreed, but then changed his mind, disregarding not only the plan, but also dismissing its author, Parviz Sabeti. On 5 November 1978, Mohammad Reza went on Iranian television to say "I have heard the voice of your revolution" and promise major reforms. In a major concession to the opposition, on 7 November 1978, Mohammad Reza freed all political prisoners while ordering the arrest of the former prime minister Amir-Abbas Hoveyda and several senior officials of his regime, a move that both emboldened his opponents and demoralised his supporters. On 21 November 1978, the Treasury Secretary of the United States Michael Blumenthal visited Tehran to meet Mohammad Reza and reported back to President Jimmy Carter, "This man is a ghost", as by now the ravages of his cancer could not longer be concealed. In late December 1978, the Shah learned that many of his generals were making overtures to the revolutionary leaders and the loyalty of the military could not longer be counted upon. In a sign of desperation, the following month Mohammad Reza reached out to the National Front, asking if one of their leaders would be willing to become prime minister.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: The Shah was especially interested in having the National Front's Gholam Hossein Sadighi as prime minister. Sadighi had served as interior minister under Mosaddegh, had been imprisoned after the 1953 coup, and pardoned by Mohammad Reza on the grounds that he was a "patriot". Sadighi remained active in the National Front and had often been harassed by SAVAK, but was willing to serve as prime minister under Mohammad Reza in order to "save" Iran, saying he feared what might come after if the Shah was overthrown. Despite the opposition of the other National Front leaders, Sadighi visited the Niavaran palace several times in December 1978 to discuss the terms under which he might become prime minister, with the main sticking point being that he wanted the Shah not to leave Iran, saying he needed to remain in order to ensure the loyalty of the military. On 7 December 1978, it was announced that President Carter of the U.S., President Giscard d'Estaing of France, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany and Prime Minister James Callaghan of the United Kingdom would meet in Guadeloupe on 5 January 1979 to discuss the crisis in Iran. For Mohammad Reza this announcement was the final blow, and he was convinced that the Western leaders were holding the meeting to discuss how best to abandon him.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: On 16 January 1979, Mohammad Reza made a contract with Farboud and left Iran at the behest of Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar (a longtime opposition leader himself), who sought to calm the situation. As Mohammad Reza boarded the plane to take him out of Iran, many of the Imperial Guardsmen wept while Bakhtiar did little to hide his disdain and dislike for the Shah. Spontaneous attacks by members of the public on statues of the Pahlavis followed, and "within hours, almost every sign of the Pahlavi dynasty" was destroyed. Bakhtiar dissolved SAVAK, freed all political prisoners, and allowed Ayatollah Khomeini to return to Iran after years in exile. He asked Khomeini to create a Vatican-like state in Qom, promised free elections, and called upon the opposition to help preserve the constitution, proposing a "national unity" government including Khomeini's followers. Khomeini rejected Bakhtiar's demands and appointed his own interim government, with Mehdi Bazargan as prime minister, stating that "I will appoint a state. I will act against this government. With the nation's support, I will appoint a state." In February, pro-Khomeini revolutionary guerrilla and rebel soldiers gained the upper hand in street fighting, and the military announced its neutrality. On the evening of 11 February, the dissolution of the monarchy was complete.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: The US State Department drew criticism for doing little to communicate with Tehran or discourage protest and opposition to the Shah. The intelligence community within the US has also been subject due to criticism particularly for reporting to President Jimmy Carter “Iran is not in a revolutionary or even a ‘pre-revolutionary’ situation.” President Jimmy Carter was also blamed for his lack of support for the Shah while failing to deter opposition. Within Iran, the revolution is widely believed to have been a British plot to overthrow the Shah. This theory would come to be known as the 1979 Iranian Revolution Conspiracy Theory. The theory was supported by the Shah of Iran who believed his increasing control over oil markets and his 1973 nationalization of Iranian oil prompted international oil companies to unseat him.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Explanations for the overthrow of Mohammad Reza include his status as a dictator put in place by a non-Muslim Western power, the United States, whose foreign culture was seen as influencing that of Iran. Additional contributing factors included reports of oppression, brutality, corruption, and extravagance. Basic functional failures of the regime have also been blamed—economic bottlenecks, shortages and inflation; the regime's over-ambitious economic programme; the failure of its security forces to deal with protests and demonstrations; and the overly centralised royal power structure.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: International policies pursued by the Shah in order to increase national income by remarkable increases in the price of oil through his leading role in the Organization of the Oil Producing Countries (OPEC) have been stressed as a major cause for a shift of Western interests and priorities, and for a reduction of their support for him reflected in a critical position of Western politicians and media, especially of the administration of U.S. President Jimmy Carter regarding the question of human rights in Iran, and in strengthened economic ties between the United States of America and Saudi Arabia in the 1970s.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: In October 1971, Mohammad Reza celebrated the twenty-five-hundredth anniversary of the Iranian monarchy; "The New York Times" reported that $100 million was spent on the celebration. Next to the ancient ruins of Persepolis, the Shah gave orders to build a tent city covering , studded with three huge royal tents and fifty-nine lesser ones arranged in a star-shaped design. French chefs from Maxim's of Paris prepared breast of peacock for royalty and dignitaries from around the world, the buildings were decorated by Maison Jansen (the same firm that helped Jacqueline Kennedy redecorate the White House), the guests ate off Limoges porcelain and drank from Baccarat crystal glasses. This became a major scandal, as the contrast between the dazzling elegance of the celebration and the misery of the nearby villages was so dramatic that no one could ignore it. Months before the festivities, university students went on strike in protest. Indeed, the cost was so sufficiently impressive that the Shah forbade his associates to discuss the actual figures. However, he and his supporters argued that the celebrations opened new investments in Iran, improved relationships with the other leaders and nations of the world, and provided greater recognition of Iran.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Other actions that are thought to have contributed to his downfall include antagonising formerly apolitical Iranians—especially merchants of the bazaars—with the creation in 1975 of a single-party political monopoly (the "Rastakhiz" Party), with compulsory membership and dues, and general aggressive interference in the political, economic, and religious concerns of people's lives; and the 1976 change from an Islamic calendar to an Imperial calendar, marking the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus as the first day, instead of the migration of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina. This supposed date was designed so that the year 2500 would fall on 1941, the year when his own reign started. Overnight, the year changed from 1355 to 2535. During the extravagant festivities to celebrate the 2500th anniversary, the Shah was quoted as saying at Cyrus's tomb: "Rest in peace, Cyrus, for we are awake".


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: It has been argued that the White Revolution was "shoddily planned and haphazardly carried out", upsetting the wealthy while not going far enough to provide for the poor or offer greater political freedom. In 1974, Mohammad Reza learned from his French doctors that he was suffering from the cancer that was to kill him six years later. Though this was such a carefully guarded secret that not even the Americans were aware of it (as late as 1977 the CIA submitted a report to President Carter describing the Shah as being in "robust health"), the knowledge of his impending death left Mohammad Reza depressed and passive in his last years, a man no longer capable of acting.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Some achievements of the Shah—such as broadened education—had unintended consequences. While school attendance rose (by 1966 the school attendance of urban seven- to fourteen-year-olds was estimated at 75.8%), Iran's labour market could not absorb a high number of educated youth. In 1966, high school graduates had "a higher rate of unemployment than did the illiterate", and the educated unemployed often supported the revolution.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: During his second exile, Mohammad Reza travelled from country to country seeking what he hoped would be temporary residence. First he flew to Aswan, Egypt, where he received a warm and gracious welcome from President Anwar El-Sadat. He later lived in Marrakesh, Morocco as a guest of King Hassan II. Mohammad Reza loved to support royalty during his time as Shah and one of those who benefitted had been Hassan, who received an interest-free loan of US$110 million from his friend. Mohammad Reza expected Hassan to return the favour, but he soon learned Hassan had other motives. Richard Parker, the American ambassador to Morocco reported "The Moroccans believed the Shah was worth about $2 billion, and they wanted to take their share of the loot". After leaving Morocco, Mohammad Reza lived in Paradise Island, in the Bahamas, and in Cuernavaca, Mexico, near Mexico City, as a guest of José López Portillo. Richard Nixon, the former president, visited the Shah in summer 1979 in Mexico. An American doctor, Benjamin Kean who examined Mohammad Reza in Cuernavaca later wrote:There was no longer any doubt. The atmosphere had changed completely. The Shah's appearance was stunningly worse ... Clearly he had obstructive jaundice. The odds favored gallstones, since his fever, chills and abdominal distress suggested an infection of the biliary tract. Also he had a history of indigestion. Besides the probable obstruction – he now had been deeply jaundiced for six to eight weeks – he was emaciated and suffering from hard tumor nodes in the neck and a swollen spleen, signs that his cancer was worsening, and he had severe anemia and very low white blood counts. The Shah suffered from gallstones that would require prompt surgery. He was offered treatment in Switzerland, but insisted on treatment in the United States. President Carter did not wish to admit Mohammad Reza to the U.S. but came under pressure from many quarters, with Henry Kissinger phoning Carter to say he would not endorse the SALT II treaty that Carter had just signed with the Soviet Union unless the former Shah was allowed into the United States, reportedly prompting Carter more than once to hang up his phone in rage in the Oval Office and shout "Fuck the Shah!". As many Republicans were attacking the SALT II treaty as an American give-away to the Soviet Union, Carter was anxious to have the endorsement of a Republican elder statesman like Kissinger to fend off this criticism. Mohammad Reza had decided not to tell his Mexican doctors he had cancer, and the Mexican doctors had misdiagnosed his illness as malaria, giving him a regime of anti-malarial drugs that did nothing to treat his cancer, which caused his health to go into rapid decline as he lost . In September 1979, a doctor sent by David Rockefeller reported to the State Department that Mohammad Reza needed to come to the United States for medical treatment, an assessment not shared by Kean, who stated that the proper medical equipment for treating Mohammad Reza's cancer could be found in Mexico and the only problem was the former Shah's unwillingness to tell the Mexicans he had cancer. The State Department warned Carter not to admit the former Shah into the U.S., saying it was likely that the Iranian regime would seize the American embassy in Tehran if that occurred. Milani suggested there was a possible conflict of interest on the part of Rockefeller, noting that his Chase Manhattan Bank had given Iran a $500 million loan under questionable conditions in 1978 (several lawyers had refused to endorse the loan) which placed the money in an account with Chase Manhattan, that the new Islamic republic had been making "substantial withdrawals" from its account with Chase Manhattan, and that Rockefeller wanted Mohammad Reza in the US, knowing full well it was likely to cause the Iranians to storm the U.S. embassy, which in turn would cause the U.S. government to freeze Iranian financial assets in America—such as the Iranian account at Chase Manhattan.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: On 22 October 1979, President Jimmy Carter reluctantly allowed the Shah into the United States to undergo surgical treatment at the New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center. While there, Mohammad Reza used the name of "David D. Newsom", Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs at that time, as his temporary code name, without Newsom's knowledge. The Shah was taken later by U.S. Air Force jet to Kelly Air Force Base in Texas and from there to Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base. It was anticipated that his stay in the United States would be short; however, surgical complications ensued, which required six weeks of confinement in the hospital before he recovered. His prolonged stay in the United States was extremely unpopular with the revolutionary movement in Iran, which still resented the United States' overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddegh and the years of support for the Shah's rule. The Iranian government demanded his return to Iran, but he stayed in the hospital. Mohammad Reza's time in New York was highly uncomfortable; he was under a heavy security detail as every day, Iranian students studying in the United States gathered outside his hospital to shout "Death to the Shah!", a chorus that Mohammad Reza heard. The former Shah was obsessed with watching news from Iran, and was greatly upset at the new order being imposed by the Islamic Republic. Mohammad Reza could no longer walk by this time, and for security reasons had to be moved in his wheelchair under the cover of darkness when he went to the hospital while covered in a blanket, as the chances of his assassination were too great.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: There are claims that Reza's admission to the United States resulted in the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the kidnapping of American diplomats, military personnel, and intelligence officers, which soon became known as the Iran hostage crisis. In the Shah's memoir, "Answer to History", he claimed that the United States never provided him any kind of health care and asked him to leave the country. From the time of the storming of the American embassy in Tehran and the taking of the embassy staff as hostages, Mohammad Reza's presence in the United States was viewed by the Carter administration as a stumbling block to the release of the hostages, and as Zonis noted "... he was, in effect, expelled from the country". Mohammad Reza wanted to go back to Mexico, saying he had pleasant memories of Cuernavaca, but was refused. Mexico was a candidate to be a rotating member of the UN Security Council, but needed the vote of Cuba to be admitted, and the Cuban leader Fidel Castro told President José López Portillo that Cuba's vote was conditional on Mexico not accepting the Shah again.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: He left the United States on 15 December 1979 and lived for a short time in the Isla Contadora in Panama. This caused riots by Panamanians who objected to the Shah being in their country. General Omar Torrijos, the dictator of Panama kept Mohammad Reza as a virtual prisoner at the Paitilla Medical Center, a hospital condemned by the former Shah's American doctors as "an inadequate and poorly staffed hospital", and in order to hasten his death allowed only Panamanian doctors to treat his cancer. General Torrijos, a populist left-winger had only taken in Mohammad Reza under heavy American pressure, and he made no secret of his dislike of Mohammad Reza, whom he called after meeting him "the saddest man he had ever met". When he first met Mohammad Reza, Torrijos taunted him by telling him "it must be hard to fall off the Peacock Throne into Contadora" and called him a ""chupon"", a Spanish term meaning an "orange" that has all the juice squeezed out of it, which is slang for someone who is finished.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Torrijos added to Mohammad Reza's misery by making his chief bodyguard a militantly Marxist sociology professor who spent much time lecturing Mohammad Reza on how he deserved his fate because he had been a tool of the "American imperialism" that was oppressing the Third World, and charged Mohammad Reza a monthly rent of US$21,000, making him pay for all his food and the wages of the 200 National Guardsmen assigned as his bodyguards. The new government in Iran still demanded his and his wife's immediate extradition to Tehran. A short time after Mohammad Reza's arrival in Panama, an Iranian ambassador was dispatched to the Central American nation carrying a 450 page long extradition request. That official appeal alarmed both the Shah and his advisors. Whether the Panamanian government would have complied is a matter of speculation amongst historians.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: In January 1980, the Shah gave his last television interview to British journalist David Frost on Contadora Island that was re-broadcast by ABC in the U.S. on 17 January. The Shah talks about his wealth, his illness, the SAVAK, the torture during his reign, Khomeini and his threat of extradition to Iran.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: The only consolation for Mohammad Reza during his time in Panama were letters from Princess Soraya saying that she still loved him and wanted to see him one last time before he died. Mohammad Reza in the letters he sent to Paris declared he wanted to see Soraya one last time as well, but said that the Empress Farah could not be present, which presented some complications as Farah was continually by his deathbed.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: After that event, the Shah again sought the support of Egyptian president Anwar El-Sadat, who renewed his offer of permanent asylum in Egypt to the ailing monarch. He returned to Egypt in March 1980, where he received urgent medical treatment, including a splenectomy performed by Michael DeBakey. On 28 March 1980, Mohammad Reza's French and American doctors finally performed an operation meant to have been performed in the fall of 1979. Kean recalled: The operation went beautifully. That night, however, was terrible. The medical team-American, Egyptian, French-was in the pathology lab. The focus was on the Shah's cancerous spleen, grotesquely swollen to 20 times normal. It was one-foot long, literally the size of a football. But I was drawn to the liver tissues that had also been removed. The liver was speckled with white. Malignancy. The cancer had hit the liver. The Shah would soon die ... The tragedy is that a man who should have had the best and easiest medical care had, in many respects, the worst. By that point, it was arranged by President Sadat that Soraya would quietly visit Mohammad Reza on his deathbed in Egypt without Farah present, but Milani noted the two were "star-crossed lovers" and Mohammad Reza died before Soraya could come to Egypt from her home in Paris.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: In 1974 the Shah's doctor, Abdol Karim Ayadi, diagnosed the Shah with splenomegaly after he complained of a swollen abdomen. On 1 May 1974, French Professor Georges Flandrin flew into Tehran to treat the Shah. Upon the first visit, Georges was able to diagnose the Shah with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The Shah's diagnosis of cancer would not be revealed to him until 1978. Medical reports given to the Shah were falsified and altered in order to state that the Shah was in good health to conceal his cancer from him. In 1976, the Shah met with French physicians in Zurich who were disturbed by his abnormal blood count. They discovered he was being treated with a wrong medication, worsening his condition.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: In 1979, the Shah left Iran. First, the Shah found refuge in the Bahamas but was later forced to leave. He then sought treatment in Mexico. Multiple recommendations urged the Shah to seek treatment in the United States. In response, the Shah stated:


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: After some initial denials, the Shah agreed to travel to the U.S. for treatment. He later left the U.S. for Panama. While the Shah was in Panama, one of Ruhollah Khomeini's close advisors, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh had a meeting with Hamilton Jordan, Jimmy Carter's Chief of Staff. Ghotbzadeh requested that the CIA kill the Shah while he was in Panama. Fearing for his life, the Shah left Panama delaying further surgery. He fled to Rabat, Morocco where he stayed with King Hassan II and then to Cairo, Egypt, with his condition worsening.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Michael DeBakey, an American heart surgeon, was called to perform a splenectomy. Although DeBakey was world-renowned in his field, his experience performing this surgery was limited. When performing the splenectomy, the tail of the pancreas was injured. This led to infection and subsequent death of the Shah in the following days.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: In his hospital bed, the Shah was asked to describe his feelings for Iran and its people and to define the country. The Shah, a fervent nationalist, responded "Iran is Iran." After pausing for minutes, he said "Its land, people, and history," and "Every Iranian has to love it." He continued on to repeat "Iran is Iran" over and over. Shortly after, the Shah slipped into a coma and died at 09:15 AM on 27 July 1980 at age 60. He kept a bag of Iranian soil under his death bed.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Egyptian President Sadat gave the Shah a state funeral. In addition to members of the Pahlavi family, Anwar Sadat, Richard Nixon and Constantine II of Greece attended the funeral ceremony in Cairo.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Mohammad Reza is buried in the Al Rifa'i Mosque in Cairo, a mosque of great symbolic importance. Also buried there is Farouk of Egypt, Mohammad Reza's former brother-in-law. The tombs lie to the left of the entrance. Years earlier, his father and predecessor, Reza Shah had also initially been buried at the Al Rifa'i Mosque.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: In 1969, Mohammad Reza sent one of 73 Apollo 11 Goodwill Messages to NASA for the historic first lunar landing. The message still rests on the lunar surface today. He stated in part, "we pray the Almighty God to guide mankind towards ever increasing success in the establishment of culture, knowledge and human civilisation". The Apollo 11 crew visited Mohammad Reza during a world tour.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Shortly after his overthrow, Mohammad Reza wrote an autobiographical memoir "Réponse à l'histoire" ("Answer to History"). It was translated from the original French into English, Persian ("Pasokh be Tarikh"), and other languages. However, by the time of its publication, the Shah had already died. The book is his personal account of his reign and accomplishments, as well as his perspective on issues related to the Iranian Revolution and Western foreign policy toward Iran. He places some of the blame for the wrongdoings of SAVAK, and the failures of various democratic and social reforms (particularly through the White Revolution), upon Amir Abbas Hoveyda and his administration.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Hussein-Ali Montazeri, who was once the designated successor to Ruhollah Khomeini, said that the Shah did not kill even 10 per cent of what Ruhollah Khomeini's regime had killed.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Recently, the Shah's reputation has experienced something of a revival in Iran, with some people looking back on his era as a time when Iran was more prosperous and the government less oppressive. Journalist Afshin Molavi reported that some members of the uneducated poor—traditionally core supporters of the revolution that overthrew the Shah—were making remarks such as, "God bless the Shah's soul, the economy was better then", and found that "books about the former Shah (even censored ones) sell briskly", while "books of the Rightly Guided Path sit idle". On 28 October 2016, thousands of people in Iran celebrating Cyrus Day at the Tomb of Cyrus, chanted slogans in support of him, and against the current Islamic regime of Iran and Arabs, and many were subsequently arrested.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Under Mohammad Reza's father, the government supported advancements by women against child marriage, polygamy, exclusion from public society, and education segregation. However, independent feminist political groups were shut down and forcibly integrated into one state-created institution, which maintained many paternalistic views. Despite substantial opposition from Shiite religious jurists, the Iranian feminist movement, led by activists such as Fatemah Sayyeh, achieved further advancement under Mohammad Reza. His regime's changes focused on the civil sphere, and private-oriented family law remained restrictive, although the 1967 and 1975 Family Protection Laws attempted to reform this trend. During the reign of the Shah, women gained the right to freely choose any profession, for example first female Iranian ministers such as Farrokhroo Parsa and judges such as Shirin Ebadi, while Mehrangiz Dowlatshahi became the first female cabinet member and ambassador of Iran. These activities alienated Islamic traditionalists and hastened the fall of the Shah.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: From his mother, Mohammad Reza inherited an almost messianic belief in his own greatness and that God was working in his favour, which explained the often passive and fatalistic attitudes that he displayed as an adult. In 1973, Mohammad Reza told the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci:A king who does not need to account to anyone for what he says and does is unavoidably doomed to loneliness. However, I am not entirely alone, because a force others can't perceive accompanies me. My mystical force. Moreover, I receive messages. I have lived with God besides me since I was 5 years old. Since, that is, God sent me those visions.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Mohamed Reza often spoke in public and in private from childhood onward of his belief that God had chosen him for a "divine mission" to transform Iran, as he believed that dreams he had as a child of the Twelve Imams of Shia Islam were all messages from God. In his 1961 book "Mission for My Country", Mohammad Reza wrote: From the time I was six or seven, I have felt that perhaps there is a supreme being, who is guiding me. I don't know. Sometimes the thought disturbs me because then, I ask myself, what is my own personality, and am I possessed of free will? Still, I often reflect, if I am driven-or perhaps I should say supported-by another force, there must be a reason. In his biography of the Shah, Marvin Zonis has argued that Mohammad Reza really believed in these claims of divine support. Shia Islam has no tradition of describing Shahs being favoured with messages from all, very few Shahs had ever claimed that their dreams were divine messages, and most people in the West laughed at Mohammad Reza's claim that his dreams were messages from God. Reza Khan, who was less religious, dismissed these visions as nonsense, and told his son to have more common sense.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Fereydoon Hoveyda, a veteran diplomat who served as the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations (1971–1979), and the brother of Amir-Abbas Hoveyda, the Prime Minister under the Shah (1965–1977) executed after the Islamic revolution, and himself a critic of the régime who died in exile, says that "when it comes to religion and spirituality, many passages of the monarch's and Khomeini's publications are interchangeable", which he perceives as the continuity of the Iranian civilization, where the religion changes but the spirit remains.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Mohammad Reza inherited the wealth built by his father Reza Shah who preceded him as king of Iran and became known as the richest person in Iran during his reign, with his wealth estimated to be higher than 600 million rials and including vast amounts of land and numerous large estates especially in the province of Mazandaran obtained usually at a fraction of their real price. Reza Shah, facing criticism for his wealth, decided to pass on all of his land and wealth to his eldest son Mohammad Reza in exchange for a sugar cube, known in Iran as "habbe kardan". However, shortly after obtaining the wealth Mohammad Reza was ordered by his father and then king to transfer a million toman ($500,000) to each of his siblings. By 1958, it was estimated that the companies possessed by Mohammad Reza had a value of $157 million (in 1958 USD) with an estimated additional $100 million saved outside Iran. Rumours of his and his family's corruption began to surface which greatly damaged his reputation. This formed one of the reasons for the creation of the Pahlavi Foundation and the distribution of additional land to the people of some 2,000 villages inherited by his father, often at very low and discounted prices. In 1958, using funds from inherited crown estates, Mohammad Reza established the Pahlavi Foundation which functioned as a tax-exempt charity and held all his assets, including 830 villages spanning a total area of 2.5 million hectares. According to "Business Insider", Mohammad Reza had set up the organisation "to pursue Iran's charitable interests in the U.S." At its height, the organisation was estimated to be worth $3 billion; however, on numerous occasions, the Pahlavi Foundation was accused of corruption. Despite these charges, in his book "Answer to History", Pahlavi affirms that he "never made the slightest profit" out of the Foundation.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: In a 1974 interview which was shown in a documentary titled "Crisis in Iran", Mohammad Reza told Mike Wallace that the rumours of corruption were "the most unjust thing that I have heard," calling them a "cheap accusation" whilst arguing the allegations were not as serious as those regarding other governments, including that of the United States. In November 1978, after Pahlavi dismissed Prime Minister Jafar Sharif-Emami and appointed a military government, he pledged in a televised address "not to repeat the past mistakes and illegalities, the cruelty and corruption." Despite this, the royal family's wealth can be seen as one of the factors behind the Iranian revolution. This was due to the oil crises of the 1970s which increased inflation resulting in economic austerity measures which made lower class workers more inclined to protest.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Mohammad Reza's wealth remained considerable during his time in exile. While staying in the Bahamas he offered to purchase the island that he was staying on for $425 million (in 1979 USD); however, his offer was rejected by the Bahamas which claimed that the island was worth far more. On 17 October 1979, again in exile and perhaps knowing the gravity of his illness, he split up his wealth amongst his family members, giving 20% to Farah, 20% to his eldest son Reza, 15% to Farahnaz, 15% to Leila, 20% to his younger son, in addition to giving 8% to Shahnaz and 2% to his granddaughter Mahnaz Zahedi.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: On 14 January 1979, an article titled "Little pain expected in exile for Shah" by The Spokesman Review newspaper found that the Pahlavi dynasty had amassed one of the largest private fortunes in the world; estimated then at well over $1 billion. It also stated that a document submitted to the ministry of justice, in protest of the royal family's activity in many sectors of the nation's economy, detailed the Pahlavis dominating role in the economy of Iran. The list showed that the Pahlavi dynasty had interests in, amongst other things, 17 banks and insurance companies, including a 90 per cent ownership in the nation's third-largest insurance company, 25 metal enterprises, 8 mining companies, 10 building materials companies, including 25 per cent of the largest cement company, 45 construction companies, 43 food companies, and 26 enterprises in trade or commerce, including a share of ownership in almost every major hotel in Iran; the Pahlavis also had major interests in real estate. Mohammad Reza was also known for his interest in cars and had a personal collection of 140 classic and sports cars including a Mercedes-Benz 500K Autobahn cruiser, one of only six ever made. The first Maserati 5000 GT was named the "Shah of Persia", it was built for Mohammad Reza, who had been impressed by the Maserati 3500 and requested Giulio Alfieri, Maserati's chief engineer, to use a modified 5-litre engine from the Maserati 450S on the 3500GT's chassis.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Mohammad Reza was Sovereign of many orders in Iran, and received honours and decorations from around the world. Mohammad Reza used the style "His Majesty" until his imperial coronation in 1967, ascending to the title of Shahanshah, when he adopted the style "His Imperial Majesty". Mohammad Reza also held many supplementary titles such as Bozorg Artestaran, a military rank superseding his prior position as captain. On 15 September 1965, Mohammad Reza was granted the title of "Aryamehr" ('Light of the Aryans') by an extraordinary session of the joint Houses of Parliament.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: From 24 April 1926 until his accession, Mohammad Reza's arms notably consisted of two Shahbaz birds in the centre, a common symbol during the Achaemenid period, with the Pahlavi Crown placed above them. Upon his accession, he adopted his father's coat of arms which included a shield composed of the Lion and the Sun symbol in first quarter, the Faravahar in the second quarter, the two-pointed sword of Ali (Zulfiqar) in third quarter and the Simurgh in the fourth quarter. Overall in the centre is a circle depicting Mount Damavand with a rising sun, the symbol of the Pahlavi dynasty. The shield is crowned by the Pahlavi crown and surrounded by the chain of the Order of Pahlavi. Two lions rampant regardant, holding scimitars supports the coat of arms on either side. Under the whole device is the motto: "Mara dad farmud va Khod Davar Ast" ("Justice He bids me do, as He will judge me" or, alternatively, "He gave me power to command, and He is the judge").


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: The Pahlavi imperial family employed rich heraldry to symbolise their reign and ancient Persian heritage. An image of the imperial crown was included in every official state document and symbol, from the badges of the armed forces to paper money and coinage. The image of the crown was the centerpiece of the imperial standard of the Shah.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: The personal standards consisted of a field of pale blue, the traditional colour of the Iranian imperial family, at the centre of which was placed the heraldic motif of the individual. The Imperial Iranian national flag was placed in the top left quadrant of each standard. The appropriate imperial standard was flown beside the national flag when the individual was present. In 1971, new designs were adopted.


title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

text: Mohammad Reza published several books in the course of his kingship and two later works after his downfall. Amongst others, these include:


title: North Sentinel Island

text: North Sentinel Island is one of the Andaman Islands, an Indian archipelago in the Bay of Bengal which also includes South Sentinel Island. It is home to the Sentinelese, an indigenous people in voluntary isolation who have defended, often by force, their protected isolation from the outside world.


title: North Sentinel Island

text: The Andaman and Nicobar Islands Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Act of 1956 prohibits travel to the island, and any approach closer than five nautical miles (9.26 km), in order to protect the remaining tribal community from “mainland” infectious diseases which they (likely) have no acquired immunity against. The area is patrolled by the Indian Navy.


title: North Sentinel Island

text: Nominally, the island belongs to the South Andaman administrative district, part of the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In practice, Indian authorities recognise the islanders' desire to be left alone, restricting outsiders to remote monitoring (by boat and sometimes air) from a reasonably safe distance; The Indian government will not prosecute the Sentinelese for killing people in the event that an outsider ventures ashore. The island is a protected area of India. In 2018, the Government of India excluded 29 islands – including North Sentinel – from the Restricted Area Permit (RAP) regime, in a major effort to boost tourism. In November 2018, the government's home ministry stated that the relaxation of the prohibition on visitations was intended to allow researchers and anthropologists (with pre-approved clearance) to finally visit the Sentinel islands.


title: North Sentinel Island

text: The Sentinelese have repeatedly attacked approaching vessels, whether the boats were intentionally visiting the island or simply ran aground on the surrounding coral reef. The islanders have been observed shooting arrows at boats, as well as at low-flying helicopters. Such attacks have resulted in injury and death. In 2006, islanders killed two fishermen whose boat had drifted ashore, and in 2018 an American Christian missionary was killed after bribing local fishermen to transport him to the island.


title: North Sentinel Island

text: North Sentinel lies west of the town of Wandoor in South Andaman Island, west of Port Blair, and north of its counterpart South Sentinel Island. It has an area of about and a roughly square outline.


title: North Sentinel Island

text: North Sentinel is surrounded by coral reefs, and lacks natural harbours. The entire island, other than the shore, is forested. There is a narrow, white-sand beach encircling the island, behind which the ground rises , and then gradually to between near the centre. Reefs extend around the island to between from the shore. A forested islet, Constance Island, also "Constance Islet", is located about off the southeast coastline, at the edge of the reef.


title: North Sentinel Island

text: The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake tilted the tectonic plate under the island, lifting it by . Large tracts of the surrounding coral reefs were exposed and became permanently dry land or shallow lagoons, extending all the island's boundaries—by as much as on the west and south sides—and uniting Constance Islet with the main island.


title: North Sentinel Island

text: The island is largely covered in tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forest. Due to the lack of surveys, the exact composition of the terrestrial flora and fauna remain unknown. In his 1880 expedition to the island, Maurice Vidal Portman reported an open, "park-like" jungle with numerous groves of bulletwood ("Manilkara littoralis") trees, as well as huge, buttressed specimens of Malabar silk-cotton tree ("Bombax ceiba")"." Indian boar ("Sus scrofa cristatus") are apparently found on the island and a major food source for the Sentinelese, with reports by Portman referring to a "huge heap" of pig skulls near a Sentinelese village. The IUCN Red List lists North Sentinel as being an important habitat for coconut crabs ("Birgus latro"), which have been otherwise extirpated from most of the other Andaman Islands except from South Sentinel and Little Andaman. North Sentinel Island, along with South Sentinel, is also considered a globally Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International, as despite the lack of surveys, the pristine habitat likely supports a diversity of birdlife.


title: North Sentinel Island

text: The marine life surrounding the island have also not been well surveyed. A large coral reef is known to circle the island, and mangroves are also known to fringe its banks. A c. 1999 report from divers near the island indicate that the reefs around the island were bleached in the 1998 El Niño, but had since seen new growth of coral. Sharks have allegedly also been seen in the waters off the island. Sea turtles likely also occur near the island, as Portman referred to them also being a major food source for the Sentinelese and one was sighted on a 1999 survey of the surrounding waters. Dolphins were also sighted on the same survey.


title: North Sentinel Island

text: The Onge, one of the other indigenous peoples of the Andamans, were aware of North Sentinel Island's existence; their traditional name for the island is "Chia daaKwokweyeh". They also have strong cultural similarities with what little has been remotely observed amongst the Sentinelese. However, Onges brought to North Sentinel Island by the British during the 19th century could not understand the Sentinelese language, so a significant period of separation is likely.


title: North Sentinel Island

text: British surveyor John Ritchie observed "a multitude of lights" from an East India Company hydrographic survey vessel, the "Diligent", as it passed by the island in 1771. Homfray, an administrator, travelled to the island in March 1867.


title: North Sentinel Island

text: Towards the end of the same year's summer monsoon season, "Nineveh", an Indian merchant ship, was wrecked on a reef near the island. The 106 surviving passengers and crewmen landed on the beach in the ship's boat and fended off attacks by the Sentinelese. They were eventually found by a Royal Navy rescue party.


title: North Sentinel Island

text: An expedition led by Maurice Vidal Portman, a government administrator who hoped to research the natives and their customs, landed on North Sentinel Island in January 1880. The group found a network of pathways and several small, abandoned villages. After several days, six Sentinelese, an elderly couple and four children, were kidnapped and taken to Port Blair. The colonial officer in charge of the operation wrote that the entire group, "sickened rapidly, and the old man and his wife died, so the four children were sent back to their home with quantities of presents". A second landing was made by Portman on 27 August 1883 after the eruption of Krakatoa was mistaken for gunfire and interpreted as the distress signal of a ship. A search party landed on the island and left gifts before returning to Port Blair. Portman visited the island several more times between January 1885 and January 1887.


title: North Sentinel Island

text: Indian exploratory parties under orders to establish friendly relations with the Sentinelese made brief landings on the island every few years beginning in 1967. In 1975 Leopold III of Belgium, on a tour of the Andamans, was taken by local dignitaries for an overnight cruise to the waters off North Sentinel Island. The cargo ship MV "Rusley" ran aground on coastal reefs in mid-1977, and the MV "Primrose" did so in August 1981. The Sentinelese are known to have scavenged both wrecks for iron. Settlers from Port Blair also visited the sites to recover the cargo. In 1991, salvage operators were authorised to dismantle the ships.


title: North Sentinel Island

text: After the "Primrose" grounded on the North Sentinel Island reef on 2 August 1981, crewmen several days later noticed that some men carrying spears and arrows were building boats on the beach. The captain of "Primrose" radioed for an urgent drop of firearms so his crew could defend themselves. They did not receive any because a large storm stopped other ships from reaching them, but the heavy seas also prevented the islanders from approaching the ship. A week later, the crewmen were rescued by a helicopter under contract to the Indian Oil And Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC).


title: North Sentinel Island

text: The first peaceful contact with the Sentinelese was made by Triloknath Pandit, a director of the Anthropological Survey of India, and his colleagues on 4 January 1991. Although Pandit and his colleagues were able to make repeated friendly contact, dropping coconuts and other gifts to the Sentinelese, no progress was made in understanding the Sentinelese language, and the Sentinelese repeatedly warned them off if they stayed too long. Indian visits to the island ceased in 1997.


title: North Sentinel Island

text: The Sentinelese survived the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and its after-effects, including the tsunami and the uplifting of the island. Three days after the earthquake, an Indian government helicopter observed several islanders, who shot arrows and threw spears and stones at the helicopter. Although the tsunami disturbed the tribal fishing grounds, the Sentinelese appear to have adapted.


title: North Sentinel Island

text: In January 2006, Sunder Raj and Pandit Tiwari, two Indian fishermen were fishing illegally in prohibited waters and were killed by the Sentinelese when their boat drifted too close to the island. There were no prosecutions.


title: North Sentinel Island

text: In November 2018, John Allen Chau, a 26-year-old American missionary trained and sent by Missouri-based All Nations, was killed during an illegal trip to the restricted island, planning to "preach christianity" to the Sentinelese. Seven individuals were taken into custody by Indian police on suspicion of abetting Chau's illegal access to the island. Entering a radius of around the island is illegal under Indian law. The fishermen who illegally ferried Chau to North Sentinel said they saw tribesmen drag his body along a beach and bury it. Despite efforts by Indian authorities, which involved a tense encounter with the tribe, Chau's body was not recovered. Indian officials made several attempts to recover the body but eventually abandoned those efforts. An anthropologist involved in the case told "The Guardian" that the risk of a dangerous clash between investigators and the islanders was too great to justify any further attempts.


title: North Sentinel Island

text: North Sentinel Island is inhabited by the Sentinelese, indigenous people in voluntary isolation who defend their isolation by force. Their population was estimated to be between 50 and 400 people in a 2012 report. India's 2011 census indicates 15 residents in 10 households, but that too was merely an estimate, described as a "wild guess" by the "Times of India".