Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (26 October 1919-27 July 1980) was the Shah of Iran from 16 September 1941 to 11 February 1979, succeeding Reza Shah Pahlavi. Mohammad succeeded his father as shah after the United Kingdom and Soviet Union invaded Iran and deposed him during World War II, and he was a puppet of the United States and United Kingdom even after the war, fighting against communism and Islamism. In 1979, he was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution by Ayatollah Khomeini and his Islamist supporters, and he died in exile in Egypt.
Biography[]
Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi was born on 26 October 1919 in Tehran, Persia, the son of the half-Persian, half-Georgian military commander Reza Shah Pahlavi and his Azerbaijani wife Tadj ol-Molouk. Although he was born a commoner, he would become his father's heir when he led a 1925 coup that ended the Qajari dynasty and established the Pahlavi dynasty, and he succeeded his father as Shah when the United Kingdom and Soviet Union deposed him during World War II. Mohammad would be a puppet of the UK and United States for the rest of his reign, and he established secularism in Iran, allowing vices such as alcohol and gambling to occur under his rule, angering traditionalist Islamist clerics. He put down dissent with the SAVAK police, and democratically-elected socialist prime minister Mohammed Mosaddegh was deposed in Operation Ajax in 1953 by the British and Americans to prevent Iran from entering the Eastern Bloc. The USA gave Iran planes, guns, and support against communism in exchange for oil, and the people of Iran suffered under the decadent Pahlavi family. Ayatollah Khomeini, a major cleric, was banished from the country, living in Paris, France. However, he returned in 1979 as protests against the regime intensified, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps was formed out of armed protesters. Pahlavi's government was overthrown while he was seeking cancer treatment in the USA, and many of his former ministers were executed or assassinated in the following months and years. Khomeini became the Supreme Leader of Iran, and Pahlavi would die in exile in Egypt, leaving Iran as a dangerous theocracy run by bigots.