Princess Ashraf Pahlavi 

Death of Reza Shah’s Controversial Child

Ashraf Pahlavi, twin of Mohammad Reza Shah, the last king of Iran, died on Thursday 1 January 2016; the same day when eighty years ago, a woman from the Iranian royal family took off her Islamic veil and appeared in European style dress and hat in public. Reza Shah, her father, had already started the period of modernization in Iran. Her mother and sister also followed wearing the European dress. She always remembered that day during all the years until the royal system was toppled by Islamists; she continued the idea of freedom and indiscrimination against women by chairing an organization she established for this purpose.

Princess Ashraf, whose life was very similar to controversial and contentious life of Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth's sister, was in fact a friend of hers. According to different sources she had close relations with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the famous Pakistani President, Prince Hussein, king of Jordan and many other political and artistic figures. She had even used her coquetry, when she was twenty seven, to entertain Joseph Stalin for three hours. Pictures of her with fur coats, gifted to her by Kremlin rulers, were all over the yellow newspapers.

The most adventurous child of Reza Shah died 71 years after her father and 34 years after her twin brother, the last Shah of Iran. She, like those two, died in exile and in a hopeless situation. In her 96 years life, the world media described her with all sorts of labels: most powerful child of Reza Shah, richest and most corrupt member of the Pahlavi Dynasty, guardian of the crown, inherited from her father, bon vivant, grateful and ambitious, all said and written about her.

Ashraf was born on 26 October 1920, minutes after Mohammad, the first child of Reza Khan Mirpanj, in Tehran, Sangelaj neighbourhood. Nobody was waiting for her; neither her father, nor her mother who had wished Tajolmoluk Ayromlu to give birth to a son; not even the midwife of Sangelaj Neighbourhood had any idea that Mirpanj's wife might have a twin inside her.

Her biorth marked the dawn of Reza Khan's rise to power. The 3 Esfand coup took place when the twin were two years old, after which their father was named as Sardar Sepah. They were four when their father became the prime minister and were seven when he was crowned. But the people who celebrated the 4 Aban [26 October] nor her mother who donated to poor people on that day, ever mentioned Ashraf and this was because of the long shadow of Mohammad Reza.

Ashraf stayed in the shadow of her brother from the day she was born. She had accepted this discrimination but did nothing more that. Unlike her brother, she chose to fight and defy and get what she wanted. She said: "I was weak. Life made me fight. First in the family and after that with my father, whose slap still rings in my ear, and after that with the whole world. I promised myself to not fight with one person and he was my oldest friend. I loved him before birth. I was ready to get killed for him."

In a tape, she proudly says: "I was the only child who was slapped by Reza Shah."

When Ashraf saw her father, on the evening of 16 September 1942 in Esfahan, after he had resigned and afraid of being caught by Allied Forces, in the middle of crowded and sparse family, and realised the failure of his powerful father, it was as if she defined a mission for herself. Absence of her dictator father gave her an opportunity to come out of her shell. The next morning she decided to go to Tehran, despite British objection, accompanied by her smaller brother.

When Ashraf returned to Tehran, divorced from a husband imposed on her when she was sixteen, opened the doors of her palace to foreign envoys, politicians and businessmen and became the centre of influence and distribution of high ranking positions. From that period on, she intervened with every cabinet formation and selections of prime minister and ministers and parliament MPs and other officials in the country. This method, sometimes implemented without his brother's awareness, turned her into a power centre in Tehran in her twenties. Prime ministers like Soheili, Hajir, Razmara and Dr Eqbal came to power with her support.

In spring of 1947, she went to Moscow, to visit hospitals and health care centres in Russia, and managed to visit Stalin for three hours, a visit originally scheduled for 15 minutes.

Mohammad Ghavam, nephew of Ghavam –Ol Saltaneh and his office chief, says in his diaries that one of the ministers had asked why did they permit Shah's sister to travel abroad, because she could plot against the government. The politician had answered that she is a real man and will not be satisfied with the rule in the south of the country; she may act against my government but will not act against the territorial integrity of the country.

After the war and in the middle of conflicts which had exhausted the government, several politicians claimed that the idea of putting the government in the hands of Dr Mosaddeq, leader of the nationalisation of oil in Iran, was in fact an idea coming out of Ashraf's palace and that she had convinced the Shah. As a result one of people close to Ashraf and the head of royal family faction in parliament, suddenly brought up the proposal of Mosaddeq and it was accepted.

After Dr Mosaddeq was appointed as Prime Minister, Ashraf tried to tame this old man. When confronted by his stubbornness, she turned against him and convinced everyone that Mosaddeq was about to put an end to the rule of Pahlavi royal dynasty and to transfer the rule to his mother's dynasty. She convince the Shah as well as her smaller brother, Alireza, to fight Mosaddeq. It was said that she had several meetings with Russian ambassador to Tehran as well.

Following the above actions, Dr Mosaddeq, in his second year if office, asked the Shah to expel his mother and sister, who were plotting against the government. He stood for this position and was successful. But the impossible happened. Ashraf met Ghavam Ol-Saltaneh, her ancient foe, in a casino in Monte Carlo and made friends with him. The past discords were cleared and she proposed him to position of prime minister. Through this path, Mosaddeq's government was toppled in 1953 and Ghavam came to power. But in 30 Tir, with the resistance of the people, there was a revolution which pushed the Shah to retreat and brought Mosaddeq back to power.

Ashraf did not stop there. She went on to visit anybody she knew in London, Paris, Swiss and Mont Carlo. Her villa in Juan-les-Pins became a political centre and resulted in an agreement, with the presence of CIA. She returned to Tehran, despite Dr Mossadeq's order, with a fake passport and met Mostafa Moghaddam and Rashidian and Mohammad Ali Massoudi. As her presence in Tehran was revealed, she was taken to the airport by Mossadeq's threats and sent to exile.

It has been said and written that Ashraf's actions was instrumental in the success of the 1953 coup d'état. After the victory in returning the Shah and the fall of Dr Mossadeq's government, nothing else could hinder Ashraf from climbing to the top. The poor financial situation of Shah and his family, which became more evident during the period of exile, lead the royal family to show a great deal of temptation towards gaining wealth; nobody was more successful in this matter than Ashraf Pahlavi.

She saw herself as the second person in the country, after her brother. Therefore she had no tolerance with Shah's three wives and considered nobody as close and having a goodwill than herself to the Shah. But in Shah's final days, there is no mention of hostile behaviour between her and Queen Farah and Amir Abbas Hoveyda, with whom she been close as well; until the time when she was in exile again and the revolution had toppled the Shah.

Ashraf had reasons in crisis years to believe that Dr Mossadeq and Soraya Esfandiari, the Queen of the time, had a close familial relationship. When Shapur Bakhtiar was chosen as the prime minister by her brother, she thought this leader of the opposition [Bakhtiar] and a close family member to Queen Farah, had a reason to say farewell to Shah in the airport, while he was leaving the country for good.

In their latest exile, the Shah and Ashraf were rich and more experienced. It has been said that the Shah of Iran considered her sister's extravagance as a reason why people turned their back against him. He had once asked his Royal Minister to tell Princess Ashraf that one cannot be a hero for the women in the country and be active on the international scene and also seeking to be the General Secretary of the UN and also engage in all sorts of immoral activities, all at the same time. But not even the closest advisor to the king could not tell such things to Ashraf Pahlavi.

When during the revolution, the people shouted "After the Shah, it is America's turn" and after the students occupied the US embassy in Tehran and created the deepest crisis of the past cold war period, Ashraf Pahlavi turned her back against Hamilton Jordan, President Carter's envoy to Tehran and said that she is not going to shake hands with any American official.

In her last days, Ashraf Pahlavi took another action which will remain as her legacy; she was the only member of the royal family who helped high ranking officials, who were driven to exile by the revolution, to live in Europe and America. She became the only child of Reza Shah who showed respect for officials and was grateful.

On the first day of January, when she stopped breathing and her life support systems were cut off, it was quite a while that she could not feel anything. Before Alzheimer swept her memory, she insisted on the fact that the British had toppled her father and the Americans had toppled her brother. She was so persistent in her thought that once she told a reporter that the slogans people shouted in the streets, "Death to America" is the response to the betrayal of Americans against her father and brother.

Her wealth has been described as legendry and big numbers has been mentioned for it. This is result of two things. She had well educated people around her who helped her invest in the right places. She got every lesson from her father's life and did not deposit her money in foreign banks. Instead she invested in property and stock exchange. The second reason was her extravagant life style.

This wealth and the inheritance and tax disputes about her wealth, distanced her from her favourite apartment in Beckman in Manhattan and made her leave the US. She could not even live in Seychelles or southern France. She went to Mont Carlo and died there, before the legal meetings about her wealth came to an end. She had one son from her first husband, Shahram Ghavam (Pahlavi-nia). After Ashraf, the only living child of Reza Shah is Gholam Reza Pahlavi.

From; BBC Persian