Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was born on the 26th of October 1919 to Reza Khan, a Brigadier-General of the Persian Cossack Brigade who became Shah in 1925. He grew up in a household defined by fear and contradiction under a father who denied him affection and used violence against subordinates.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi took the oath of office on the 17th of September 1941 after his father Reza Shah abdicated on the 16th of September 1941 following the Anglo-Soviet invasion. The 21-year-old Crown Prince assumed power as the only viable option after the British failed to install a Qajar monarch.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled to Baghdad and Rome after a failed coup attempt against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh before returning to power on the 19th of August 1953. The CIA and British Secret Intelligence Service funded Operation Ajax to depose Mosaddegh, and the Shah signed a decree dismissing the prime minister after his twin sister Princess Ashraf visited him in Rome on the 29th of July 1953.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi launched the White Revolution in 1963, a series of reforms including land redistribution and nationalizing key industries that allowed women to vote. The reforms caused opposition from religious scholars, leading to nationwide demonstrations where at least 200 people were killed and Ayatollah Khomeini was exiled to Iraq on the 4th of October 1965.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi assumed the title Shahanshah on the 26th of October 1967, 26 years into his reign, in a lavish coronation ceremony in Tehran. The 1971 celebration of the 2,500-year anniversary of the Persian Empire marked a shift in the Iranian calendar to the beginning of the First Persian Empire measured from Cyrus the Great's coronation.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi exploited the 1973 oil embargo to double oil prices, causing Iranian oil incomes to double to 4.6 billion dollars in 1973-1974 and spike to 17.8 billion dollars the following year. This economic growth established the Shah as the dominant figure of OPEC and made Iran one of the fastest-growing economies among both the developed world and the developing world before he left for exile in January 1979.