IRAN: The Rhythm Recurs

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Old Reza Shah came from a family of small landholders in Mazanderan Province, rose to be colonel in the Iranian Army. When the decrepit regime of Ahmed Shah tottered after World War I, Reza Khan became successively Commander in Chief of the Iranian Army. Minister of War, Premier, finally Shah of Shahs—all in less than five years.

Young Mohamed Reza was brought up in a palace atmosphere of despotic splendor. From Iran's jewel-studded Peacock Throne his father grimly ordered his enemies murdered or jailed, ruled his "court with a caprice that ranged from slapping ministers in the face to kicking subjects in the crotch. (Once, rumor had it, the young Prince himself felt the royal boot and landed in a palace fountain.)

In 15 years the old Shah's splenetic energy also bulldozed medieval Iran into building an 860-mile railroad to span the country from north to south, erecting schools and factories, changing the country's name from provincial Persia to national Iran, abandoning the veil for women, accepting movies and traffic lights.

This blend of barbarism and benevolence had its inevitable effect on the Crown Prince. He grew into a meek, friendly youth, given to expressing any inward effervescence by racing along the streets of Teheran in fast cars. The better to equip him for his royal duties, the Shah gave the boy five years of European schooling. The Shah had learned to read & write Persian only after becoming Minister of War; the Crown Prince became proficient in French, English and European manners in one of the most expensive private schools in Switzerland. But Mohamed Reza was not allowed to finish. The Shah, suddenly bitten with suspicion that his son was wasting his time, ordered him home for a more rigorous personal preparation in the duties of kingship.

The Kingdom. In 1941, when Germany's attack made aid to Russia through Iran an essential of Allied victory, the Allies took a long, hard look at old Reza Shah Pahlevi. They suspected some of his hangers-on of intrigue with Germany and, in any case, Reza Shah was too strong a character to be left athwart the Lend-Lease supply line to the U.S.S.R. So he was deposed, last year in far away Johannesburg died, full of bitter memories. Mohamed Reza, the wavy-haired young playboy, ascended the jeweled Peacock Throne of Iran.

Since the days of Darius and Cyrus, the kingdom had descended far. It was still large (a fifth as big as the U.S.) and its mountains and desert contrasts were still dramatically scenic. But of Mohamed Reza's 15 million subjects a few thousand lived in lavish luxury, and almost all the rest in ragged poverty. At least eleven million of them had venereal disease. Most of the adults were opium addicts. Four out of every five children born died in infancy. Three out of every four who survived never learned to read or write.