DEATH TO THE SHAH

Nobody expected the Iranian Revolution. Not even the revolutionaries.

- BY DANIEL IMMERWAHR

In 1979, Ruhollah Khomeini, pictured here at a rally in Qom, returned from exile to a revolution already in motion.

Strange to think, but there was a time when the United States’most steadfast ally in the Middle East was Iran. In 1953, the C.I.A. had backed a coup that ousted Mohammad Mossadegh, the popular Prime Minister, and restored power to the monarchy of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah. For a quarter of a century thereafter, Washington watched in satisfaction as the Shah kept the peace while a U.S.-dominated consortium sold off Iran's oil.

There was rather a lot of oil, making the Shah one of the world’s wealthiest men. For his forty-eighth birthday, in 1967, he staged a glitzy coronation for himself. Standing before a golden throne, he steadied onto his head a crown rimed with 3,380 diamonds. His third wife, Empress Farah, processed in a bejewelled, mink-edged Christian Dior cloak that took eight attendants to carry. After the ceremony, the royal couple waved stiffly to the crowds from a horse-drawn gilded carriage that had been crafted in Vienna by one of Europe's last remaining coach-makers. Planes dropped 17,532 roses, one for each glorious day of the Shah's glorious life.

Iran’s display of floral ballistics hinted at another beneficiary of its oil revenues: the military. In 1972, President Richard Nixon gave the Shah carte blanche to buy any arms he desired short of nuclear bombs. The Shah amassed the world’s fifth-largest military, his toy chest brimming with supersonic jets, laser-guided bombs, and helicopter gunships. Reportedly, he relaxed by reading arms catalogues.