Reza Shah
Reza Shah Pahlavi was an Iranian military officer and monarch who was the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty and Shah of Iran from 1925 to 1941. Originally an army officer, he became a politician, serving as minister of war and prime minister of Iran, and was elected shah following the deposition of Ahmad Shah, the last monarch of the Qajar dynasty.
Joining the Persian Cossack Brigade at age 14, he rose through the ranks, becoming a brigadier-general by 1921. In February 1921, as leader of the entire Cossack Brigade based in Qazvin province, he marched towards Tehran and seized the capital. He forced the dissolution of the government and installed Zia ol Din Tabatabaee as the new prime minister. Reza Khan's first role in the new government was commander-in-chief of the army and the minister of war. Two years after the coup, Seyyed Zia appointed Reza Pahlavi as Iran's prime minister, backed by the compliant national assembly of Iran. In 1925, the constituent assembly deposed Ahmad Shah Qajar, the last Qajar shah, and amended Iran's 1906 constitution to allow the election of Reza Pahlavi as the Shah of Iran. He founded the Pahlavi dynasty that lasted until it was overthrown in 1979 by the Iranian Revolution.
In an effort to reduce British and Russian influence, Reza Shah initially sought partnerships with the United States and Weimar Germany until 1931. Thereafter, he turned to the First Republic of Czechoslovakia and Denmark, drawing on the Czech industrial firm Škoda Works and Scandinavian engineering consortium Kampsax to advance the development of Iran’s infrastructure, military, and industry during the 1930s. Reza Shah's reign ended when he was forced to abdicate after the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941, during the Second World War; he was succeeded by his eldest son, Mohammad Reza Shah. A modernizer, Reza Shah clashed with the Shia clergy and introduced social, economic, and political reforms during his reign, ultimately laying the foundations of the modern Iranian state. Therefore, he is regarded by many as the founder of modern Iran.
His legacy remains controversial to this day. His defenders say that he was an essential reunifying and modernising force for Iran, while his detractors assert that his reign was often despotic, with his failure to modernise Iran's large peasant population eventually sowing the seeds for the Iranian Revolution nearly four decades later, which ended over 2,500 years of Iranian monarchy. Moreover, his insistence on ethnic nationalism and cultural unitarism, along with forced detribalisation and sedentarisation, resulted in the suppression of several ethnic and social groups. Although he was of Iranian Mazanderani descent, his government carried out an extensive policy of Persianization trying to create a single, united and largely homogeneous nation, similar to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's policy of Turkification in Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. In the spring of 1950, he was posthumously named as Reza Shah the Great by Iran's National Consultative Assembly.
Early life
Reza Khan was born on 15 March 1878 in the town of Alasht in Savadkuh County, Mazandaran province, to Major Abbas-Ali Khan and his wife Noush-Afarin.His mother, Noush-Afarin Ayromlu, was an immigrant from Georgia or Yerevan, whose family had emigrated to Qajar Iran when it was forced to cede all of its territories in the Caucasus following the Russo-Persian Wars several decades prior to Reza Shah's birth. His father was a Mazanderani, and a member of the Palani clan, who was commissioned in the 7th Savadkuh Regiment, and served in the Second Herat War of 1856.
Abbas-Ali died suddenly on 26 November 1878, when Reza was 8 months old. Upon his father's death, Reza and his mother moved to her brother's house in Tehran. She remarried in 1879 and left Reza to the care of his uncle. In 1882, his uncle in turn sent Reza to a family friend, Amir Tuman Kazim Khan, an officer in the Persian Cossack Brigade, in whose home he had a room of his own and a chance to study with Kazim Khan's children with the tutors who came to the house. When Reza was sixteen years old, he joined the Persian Cossack Brigade. In 1903, when he was 25 years old, he is reported to have been guard and servant to the Dutch consul general Fridolin Marinus Knobel. Maurits Wagenvoort, who met and spoke to Reza at a meeting of the "Babi-circle of Hadsji Achont" in Tehran in 1903, in a publication from 1926 speaks of him as the "gholam of His Presence the Dutch Consul" and noted his very keen interest in Western politics.
Reza served in the Imperial Army. His initial career started as a private under Qajar Prince Abdol-Hossein Farman Farma's command. Farman Farma noted that Reza had potential and sent him to military school where he gained the rank of gunnery sergeant. In 1911, he gave a good account of himself in later campaigns and was promoted to First Lieutenant. His proficiency in handling machine guns elevated him to the rank equivalent to captain in 1912. By 1915, he was promoted to the rank of Colonel. His record of military service eventually led him to a commission as a brigadier general in the Persian Cossack Brigade. In November 1919, he chose the last name Pahlavi, which later became the name of the dynasty he founded.
Rise to power
1921 coup
In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Persia had become a battleground. In 1917, Britain used Iran as the springboard to launch an expedition into Russia as part of their intervention in the Russian Civil War on the side of the White movement. The Soviet Union responded by annexing portions of northern Persia, creating the Persian Socialist Soviet Republic. The Soviets extracted ever more humiliating concessions from the Qajar government, whose ministers Ahmad Shah was often unable to control. By 1920, the government had lost virtually all power outside its capital: British and Soviet forces exercised control over most of the Iranian mainland. In late 1920, the Soviets in Rasht prepared to march on Tehran with "a guerrilla force of 1,500 Jangalis, Kurds, Armenians, and Azerbaijanis", reinforced by the Soviet Red Army. This, along with various other unrest in the country, created "an acute political crisis in the capital".On 14 January 1921, the commander of the British Forces in Iran, General Edmund "Tiny" Ironside, promoted Reza Khan, who had been leading the Tabriz battalion, to lead the entire brigade. About a month later, under British direction, Reza Khan led his 3,000-4,000 strong detachment of the Cossack Brigade, based in Niyarak, Qazvin, and Hamadan, to Mehrabad. As negotiations with the Qajar representatives broke down and the Cossacks advanced toward the capital, Sardar Homayoun ordered the artillery units to fire on the approaching forces in an attempt to halt the uprising. A young officer named Mahmud Mir-Djalali, who was serving as the artillery unit commander at the old gates of Tehran, controlling access to the city, made the ultimate decision to disobey these orders. Instead of opening fire on the Cossacks, he commanded that the gates of Tehran be opened, allowing Reza Khan and his forces to enter the city unchallenged and seize the capital. Additionally, Mir-Djalali personally had two cannon rounds fired over Golestan Palace, serving as a signal that the coup had reached the heart of the city. The sound of the cannon fire reportedly terrified Ahmad Shah Qajar, breaking his already wavering resolve to resist. He retreated to the Farahabad Palace, where he ultimately surrendered to Reza Khan.
He forced the dissolution of the previous government and demanded that Zia ol Din Tabatabaee be appointed prime minister. Reza Khan's first role in the new government was as commander of the Iranian Army, which he combined with the post of Minister of War. He took the title Sardar Sepah, or Commander-in-Chief of the Army, by which he was known until he became Shah. While Reza Khan and his Cossack brigade secured Tehran, the Persian envoy in Moscow negotiated a treaty with the Bolsheviks for the removal of Soviet troops from Persia. Article IV of the Russo-Persian Treaty of Friendship allowed the Soviets to invade and occupy Persia, should they believe foreign troops were using it as a staging area for an invasion of Soviet territory.
The coup d'état of 1921 was partially assisted by the British government, which wished to halt the Bolsheviks' penetration of Iran, particularly because of the threat it posed to the British Raj. It is thought that the British provided "ammunition, supplies and pay" for Reza's troops. On 8 June 1932, a British Embassy report states that the British were interested in helping Reza Shah create a centralizing power. General Ironside gave a situation report to the British War Office saying that a capable Persian officer was in command of the Cossacks and this "would solve many difficulties and enable us to depart in peace and honour". Reza Khan spent the rest of 1921 securing Iran's interior, responding to a number of revolts that erupted against the new government. The Kucheck Khan government called itself the "Persian Soviet Socialist Republic."
Overthrow of the Qajar dynasty
From the beginning of the appointment of Reza Khan as the minister of war, there was ever increasing tension with Zia ol Din Tabatabaee, who was prime minister at the time. Zia ol Din Tabatabaee wrongly calculated that when Reza Khan was appointed as the minister of war, he would relinquish his post as the head of the Persian Cossack Brigade, and that Reza Khan would wear civilian clothing instead of the military attire. This erroneous calculation by Zia ol Din Tabatabaee backfired and instead it was apparent to people who observed Reza Khan, including members of parliament, that he was the one who wielded power.By 1923, Reza Khan had largely succeeded in securing Iran's interior from any remaining domestic and foreign threats. Upon his return to the capital he was appointed prime minister, which prompted Ahmad Shah to leave Iran for Europe, where he would remain until his death. It induced the Parliament to grant Reza Khan dictatorial powers, who in turn assumed the symbolic and honorific styles of Janab-i-Ashraf and Hazrat-i-Ashraf on 28 October 1923. He quickly established a political cabinet in Tehran to help organize his plans for modernization and reform.
By October 1925, Reza Khan succeeded in pressuring the Majlis to depose and formally exile Ahmad Shah, and instate him as the next Shah of Iran. Initially, he had planned to declare the country a republic, as his contemporary Atatürk had done in Turkey, but abandoned the idea in the face of British and clerical opposition. The Majlis, convening as a constituent assembly, declared him the Shah of Iran on 12 December 1925, pursuant to the Persian Constitution of 1906. Three days later, on 15 December, he took his imperial oath and thus became the first shah of the Pahlavi dynasty. Reza Shah's coronation took place much later, on 25 April 1926. It was at that time that his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was proclaimed crown prince.