Establishment and early years In 1925,
Reza Khan, a former brigadier-general of the
Persian Cossack Brigade, deposed the
Qajar dynasty and declared himself king (
shah), adopting the dynastic name of
Pahlavi, which recalls the
Middle Persian language of the
Sasanian Empire. He had chosen the last name Pahlavi for himself in November 1919. By the mid-1930s, Reza Shah's strong
secular rule had the support of the middle and upper classes, but caused opposition among some groups, particularly the
Shia clergy. In 1935, Reza Shah issued a decree asking foreign delegates to use the term Iran in formal correspondence, in accordance with the fact that "Persia" was a term used by Western people for the country called "Iran" in Persian. To avoid confusion with
Iraq, the Iranian government later announced in 1959 that both "Persia" and "Iran" were acceptable in official use and could be used interchangeably.
World War II Reza Shah preferred to obtain technical assistance from
Germany,
France,
Italy, and other European countries. This created problems for Iran after 1939, when Germany and the United Kingdom became enemies during
World War II. At the outbreak of the war, Reza Shah proclaimed Iran to be a
neutral country, but Britain insisted that German engineers and technicians in Iran were spies with missions to sabotage British oil facilities in
Khuzestan. The British embassy demanded that Iran expel all German citizens, but Reza Shah refused, claiming this would adversely affect his planned development projects. In April 1941, war reached Iran's borders when
Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, with assistance from
Germany and
Italy, launched the
1941 Iraqi coup d'état, sparking the
Anglo-Iraqi War in May 1941. Germany and Italy quickly sent the pro-
Axis forces in Iraq military aid. However, during the period from May to July 1941, the British and their allies defeated the pro-Axis forces in Iraq and later in
Syria and Lebanon.
Allied occupation of Iran In June 1941, Nazi Germany broke the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and
invaded the
Soviet Union, Iran's northern neighbor. The Soviets quickly allied themselves with the
Allied countries, and in July and August 1941, the British demanded that the Iranian government expel all Germans from Iran. Reza Shah refused to expel the Germans, and on 25 August the British and Soviets launched a
surprise invasion; Reza Shah's government quickly surrendered after less than a week of fighting. The invasion's strategic purpose was to secure a supply line to the Soviet Union (later named the
Persian Corridor), secure the oil fields and the
Abadan Refinery (of the UK-owned
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company), and limit German influence in Iran. As a result of the invasion, Reza Shah was forced to
abdicate and was succeeded as Shah by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, his 21-year-old son. During the rest of World War II, Iran became a major conduit for
British and American aid to the Soviet Union and an avenue through which
over 120,000 Polish refugees and
Polish Armed Forces fled the Axis advance. At the 1943
Tehran Conference, the
Allied "Big Three"—
Joseph Stalin,
Franklin D. Roosevelt, and
Winston Churchill—issued the
Tehran Declaration to guarantee the post-war independence and boundaries of Iran.
Post-war conflict and recovery The Allied nations reassured the Iranian government that all foreign troops would leave the country by March 1946. Amid these assurances, the
Tudeh Party of Iran, a
communist party backed by the Soviet Union, became increasingly militant. In 1945, the Iranian government took action, including deploying armed forces to restore order in Tudeh-dominated northern regions. While the party's strongholds in
Tehran and
Isfahan were successfully suppressed, Soviet troops stationed in
Azerbaijan province prevented Iranian forces from entering the region. The ensuing dispute triggered the
Iran crisis, one of the first confrontations of the
Cold War. By January 1946, the
Azerbaijan People's Government and the
Republic of Mahabad had been established as unrecognized
secessionist states
supported by the Soviets and the Tudeh party. After negotiating oil concessions, Soviet forces withdrew from Iran proper in May 1946, and the two puppet states swiftly reabsorbed by the Iranian army. Oil concessions made to the Soviet Union were later revoked.
Constitutional changes and his wife
Farah Diba upon his 1967
coronation as the
Shah of Iran. His wife was crowned as
Shahbanu. Emerging victorious from crisis of 1946, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi began pushing
constitutional changes to promote social reform and increase the power of the monarchy, though he was advised against this course of action by foreign diplomats, who considered it unwise to upset the
separation of powers. On 4 February 1949, during a visit to the
University of Tehran, an assailant opened fire on the Shah, wounding him with two bullets. That evening, the government declared
martial law, and a special session of parliament imposed harsh measures against political enemies of the monarchy. The assailant was suspected of having links to the religious extremist group
Fada'iyan-e Islam, which had previously carried out assassinations of secular political figures, as well as the Tudeh party. Both groups were subsequently outlawed, and their leaders arrested. In an atmosphere of national support for the monarchy, parliament voted in favor of the Shah's bill calling for a
constituent assembly to re-examine the constitution. To staff the assembly, the Shah selected individuals who were sympathetic to his aims.
Mohammad-Sadegh Tabatabaei, a long-time ally of the Pahlavi dynasty, was appointed its leader. While the assembly was being organized, the Shah pushed through laws
criminalizing newspaper criticism of the royal family, and transferring
crown land holdings from general state ownership to his personal control. In March, he announced the convocation of the body and raised the question of convening a
Senate for the first time, as permitted under the constitution but never previously implemented. The constituent assembly met for three weeks beginning on 21 April 1949. On 8 May, it approved major changes to the constitution: the Shah was granted the right to
dissolve parliament; the authority to hold new elections so that a new parliament would be formed within three months of dismissing the old one; and the establishment of a bicameral legislature, with a
National Assembly as the
lower house and a Senate as the
upper house. A minor amendment also revised the process for implementing future constitutional changes. In January 1950, the first Iranian senate commenced, with the Shah appointing half of its 60 members.
White Revolution Iran adopted a modified version of its national flag in 1964, changing its ratio from 1:3 to 4:7. It retained the stripes of its green, white, and red horizontal tricolour with the traditional "Lion and Sun" (
Shir-o-Khorshid) emblem in the centre. On 12–16 October 1971, an elaborate set of celebrations and festivities for the
2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire occurred in commemoration of the founding of the
Achaemenid Empire by
Cyrus the Great.
Collapse of the monarchy The Shah's government suppressed its opponents with the help of Iran's security and intelligence secret police,
SAVAK. Such opponents included
communists,
socialists, and
Islamists. By the mid-1970s, relying on increased oil revenues, Mohammad Reza began a series of even more ambitious and bolder plans for the progress of his country and the march toward the "
White Revolution". However, his socioeconomic advances increasingly irritated the clergy. Islamic leaders, particularly the exiled cleric
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, were able to focus this discontent with an ideology tied to Islamic principles that called for the overthrow of the Shah and a return to Islamic traditions. and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi toasting each other at
Niavaran Palace on 31 December 1977. Khomeini appointed the politically moderate
Mehdi Bazargan as
prime minister, who served from 11 February to 6 November 1979. Barzagan resigned under Khomeini's growing extremism, authoritarianism and de facto control, after he first attempted to resign in March. The Islamic Revolution dissolved the SAVAK and replaced it with the
SAVAMA. It was run after the revolution, according to U.S. sources and Iranian exile sources in the U.S. and in Paris, by General
Hossein Fardoust, who was deputy chief of SAVAK under Mohammad Reza's reign and a friend from boyhood of the deposed monarch.
Exile and present-day Mohammad Reza fled the country on 16 January 1979, seeking medical treatment in
Egypt,
Mexico, the United States, and
Panama, and finally resettled with his family in Egypt as a guest of
Anwar Sadat. On his death on 27 July 1980, his son
Reza Pahlavi, who was formally invested as Crown Prince on 26 October 1967, succeeded him as head of the Pahlavi dynasty. In 2013, Reza Pahlavi established the
Iran National Council in Paris, which serves as a
government in exile to reclaim the former throne after a potential overthrow of the current Islamic Republic government. However, in February 2019, Pahlavi launched an initiative called the Phoenix Project of Iran. According to the National Interest, this is "designed to bring the various strains of the opposition closer to a common vision for a post-clerical Iran." == Government and politics ==