Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was born with his twin sister, Ashraf, on the 26th of October 1919, yet he was not royalty by birth. His father, Reza Khan, was a Brigadier-General of the Persian Cossack Brigade who would not become Shah until 1925, leaving the young prince to grow up in a household defined by fear and contradiction. Reza Khan was a dominating man with a violent temper who liked to kick subordinates in the groin who failed to follow his orders, creating a deeply scared and insecure boy who lacked self-confidence. The father believed that showing love to his sons caused homosexuality later in life, so he denied his favorite son affection when he was young, addressing him as shoma, the formal sir, rather than the informal you. This harsh upbringing produced a man of marked contradictions, described by historian Marvin Zonis as both gentle and cruel, withdrawn and active, dependent and assertive, weak and powerful. The psychological scars of this childhood would follow him to the throne, where he would mask his lack of self-esteem with masculine bravado, impulsiveness, and arrogance.
The Flight From The Throne
The collapse of the Iranian military that his father had worked so hard to build humiliated the young Crown Prince during the Anglo-Soviet invasion of 1941. When Soviet air forces bombed Tehran, thousands of terrified officers and men took off their uniforms to desert and run away, despite having not yet seen combat. The Shah's father flew into a rage and attacked one of his generals, Ahmad Nakhjavan, striking him with his riding crop and tearing off his medals before the son persuaded him to have the general court-martialed instead. This humiliation foreshadowed the future Shah's obsession with military spending and his vow to never see Iran defeated like that again. Following the invasion, Reza Shah was forced to abdicate on the 16th of September 1941, and the 21-year-old Mohammad Reza took the oath of office the next day. The streets filled with people welcoming the new Shah jubilantly, seemingly more enthusiastic than the Allies would have liked, as the British had hoped to put a Qajar back on the throne but were forced to accept Mohammad Reza as the only viable option.The Coup That Made Him King
In 1953, the Shah fled the country to Baghdad and then to Rome after a failed coup attempt against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, leaving him to spend his time in nightclubs with Queen Soraya or his latest mistress. The CIA and British Secret Intelligence Service had funded a covert operation known as Operation Ajax to depose Mosaddegh, but the initial attempt failed when the Shah's own army refused to act. It was only when his twin sister Princess Ashraf visited him in Rome on the 29th of July 1953 to berate him into signing a decree dismissing Mosaddegh that the plot was revived. The Shah was bribed with one million dollars in Iranian currency by CIA officer Kermit Roosevelt Jr., who had stored the money in a large safe. On the 19th of August 1953, pro-Shah partisans, bribed with 100,000 dollars, marched out of south Tehran into the city center, overturning Tudeh trucks and beating up anti-Shah activists. The deposed Mosaddegh was arrested and tried, with the king intervening to commute his sentence to three years, followed by life in internal exile, allowing the Shah to return to power and begin his long struggle to neutralize the prime minister who had briefly held the real power.