Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was the second and last Shah of Iran, ruling from September 1941 until his overthrow in the Iranian Revolution of February 1979. Born on October 26, 1919, in Tehran, he was the eldest son of Reza Shah, a former cavalry officer who founded the Pahlavi dynasty by deposing the Qajar king in 1925.

Educated in Switzerland at Le Rosey, he returned to Iran and was made crown prince. When British and Soviet forces jointly invaded Iran in 1941 to secure oil and supply lines, they forced Reza Shah into exile and installed the twenty-one-year-old Mohammad Reza on the Peacock Throne. His early reign was constrained by parliament and by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951.

A 1953 coup organized by the CIA and British MI6 toppled Mossadegh and consolidated the Shah's autocratic power. Through the 1960s he launched the White Revolution, a top-down modernization program of land reform, women's suffrage, and literacy drives, financed by surging oil revenues after 1973. His secret police, SAVAK, jailed and tortured opponents, while a 1971 Persepolis pageant for the 2,500th anniversary of the Persian monarchy drew global ridicule for its expense.

Inflation, urban inequality, and Shia clerical opposition led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini converged in mass protests through 1978. The Shah left Iran on January 16, 1979, and wandered between Egypt, Morocco, the Bahamas, Mexico, and the United States while seeking cancer treatment. He died of complications from non-Hodgkin lymphoma in Cairo on July 27, 1980.

The name Mohammad is Arabic, meaning praiseworthy, and Reza means contentment. He bore the masculine forms.