Mohammed Reza himself was driven into exile by the nationalists under Mohammed Mossadegh in the early s, but was restored to power again by British and US agents in Perversely, it was only with the quadrupling of crude oil prices in the s that Mohammed Reza was to emancipate himself from British and US control, but by then it was too late. While many in Iran would no doubt like to see the end of clerical rule, they would almost certainly prefer not a restoration of the monarchy but a democratic republic.
It is the reputation of Mohammed Mossadegh, not that of his old adversary of , that is rising in Iran. The issue is complicated by the trend in the Arab world towards what might be called "republican monarchies". The sons of men who overturned the old British-installed Arab monarchies are now seeking to inherit their fathers' rule. That has already happened in Syria and may well also happen in Iraq, Egypt and Libya. However, none of those Arab rulers has so far put a crown on his head. Meanwhile, there is no longer British pressure for a restoration of the monarchy, or indeed British pressure for anything in the Middle East.
Ultimately, Leila's death has less to do with politics and more to do with the complex of social realities we know as culture. Modern Iranian life is marked by a terrible symmetry.
Iranians in Iran are desperate to leave, while Iranians outside Iran are desperate to return. The exiles have enjoyed worldly success, but those who have stayed enjoy Iran, and each group envies the other. Beyond the grief of a mother, this will always be a regret for me that nothing could ever fill. A society united by strong family ties was detonated in The generations were split apart and scattered all over the world. That, far more than the complexion of the regime in power in Tehran, was the real significance of both the Iranian Revolution and the lonely death of Princess Leila.
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Coronavirus Explore our guides to help you through the pandemic. Latest News. Profits up six-fold at Jellybean Factory E-learning group Shaw Academy agrees its second rescue deal in three years Frustration mounts over court delays as more judges sought The princess led a life of discreet, largely uneventful leisure. The ambassadors' parties, the Swiss skiing trips, the 16th arrondissement dinners, the gallery openings, San Lorenzo's, nights at Tramps, the friends with Ferraris and surnames that include Von and titles that include Monsieur Le.
As a Pahlavi princess, Leila couldn't have worked even if she had needed or wanted to. Instead, she spent her time helping her brother run the Mihan Foundation, an Iranian cultural organisation dedicated to building links between Iran and the West. She liked poetry and spent entire nights translating the works of the mystic Persian poet Rumi into French or English. She liked to manipulate photographs on her computer, a 'talent' she attributed to her sensitivity to natural and aesthetic beauty.
She had a few boyfriends, one of whom was serious. The relationship apparently ended badly. She went skiing. She spent a year in California. She had a flat in New York - where she had two pet dogs - and stayed with her mother or grandmother when in Paris. When she was there, she would visit the Persian antiquities gallery in the Louvre. She gave the occasional interview to gossip magazines which reveal very little other than a sensitive, slightly dreamy, quiet and kind woman who spoke a lot about her mother - 'I feel so close to her I have such confidence in her wisdom I can tell her everything He had always had the best interests of his country at heart.
She liked watching football. She 'liked to meet people from all trades, class and origins'. She smoked Marlboro Lights, though not too heavily, and drank occasionally and in moderation. And was desperately, deeply, unhappy.
Quite when things began to go wrong is hard to say. By her late twenties, she was painfully thin and spoke to friends of a variety of ailments: headaches, muscle and joint aches, chronic fatigue. In pictures from the early part of the decade, there is no apparent wasting. By last year, she is obviously seriously unwell. Last summer the princess went to Cairo for a ceremony to commemorate the 20th anniversary of her father's death.
She was thin, but complained to an old friend that she was overweight. I've got an extra five kilos on me. I am like a pig now,' she told him.
A few weeks later, she was in Paris to model for Valentino. While there, she gave an interview to a French magazine. She spoke at length about the Shah's death, and how it had affected her, but said that she knew she had to 'get on with her life'.
Many different avenues are open for me, but I struggle to concentrate on one alone. Quite a few people can't see that, behind my title, I am still a woman who can love.
I know that it is not easy to find an ideal companion, especially as I have the example of an exceptional father and two brilliant brothers always before me. I know that I am open, tolerant, warm, but I am strict on certain principles and values, such as keeping your word once you have given it, and punctuality. Soon afterwards, she checked in to The Priory, the rehab clinic favoured by the rich and famous in Roehampton, south London.
It was not the first time she'd had such treatment. Stays in luxury detox centres in the US had failed to help her. According to some, she had rejected several clinics as insufficiently luxurious in comparison with those she was used to in the US.
In November, Leila's grandmother, to whom she had always been very close, died. She was buried in Passy cemetery in Paris. But she seemed OK. She wasn't obviously depressed. In January, Leila was back in London.
She was always very casual. We went out for dinner at Yass, [the Iranian restaurant in South Kensington],' he recalls. We all ordered kebabs and rice, the classic Iranian dish, but she wanted nothing. She told me she'd eaten a single egg in three days.
I told her she was going to kill herself, but she brushed it off. The next night, we went to a friend's house and she just drank tea and then went on to San Lorenzo's. She ate nothing there either, but she went off afterwards to a party that a tycoon type was throwing, and told me later she had had a great time. In February, Leila went skiing in Switzerland. By March she was back in the UK. She told friends she was planning to sell her apartment in New York and buy somewhere in London, and keep busy by setting up a business dealing and exhibiting Persian art.
A friend of her mother's had offered to fund any venture she wanted to try. Seconal is the commercial name of the barbiturate quinalbarbitone. Its generic name is secobarbital. Its chemical name is sodium 5-allyi 1-methylbutyl barbiturate. Users sometimes call it Seccy, Seggs or Seggy. It is highly addictive and, because a slight overdose is often fatal, is extremely dangerous.
Like all barbiturates, Seconal is a non-selective central nervous system depressant that is primarily used as a sedative hypnotic. Take one or two and everything - breathing, heartrate, thinking - slows down. In lesser doses it works as an anticonvulsant. In larger doses, it is used for the short-term treatment of insomnia.
Rohypnol, or flunitrazepam, is known as the 'date-rape drug'. It is a powerful benzodiazepine and thus related to Valium. It is an effective sleeping pill which comes in 1 and 2mg tablets. The maximum therapeutic dose is 2mg. Its effects are fairly long-lasting, but flunitrazepam taken alone is unlikely to produce death, even if an overdose is taken. Palfium or Dextromoramide is a very potent painkiller related to morphine and thus heroin.
Both Rohypnol and Seconal are physically addictive, and use of all three drugs rapidly builds up tolerance. Which is why when she died Leila was swallowing 40 Seconal and 30 Palfium or Rohypnol a day. The postmortem also revealed traces of cocaine in her system.
It's difficult to stay when she started taking the pills. Severe stomachaches - like those she complained of after leaving university - are a symptom of barbiturate withdrawal or dependence. The 'fatigue' noted by her mother in the earlys might have been a symptom or a cause of the drug abuse.
We know that Mangad Iqbal, a doctor at London's exclusive Brompton Medical Centre, told the coroner's inquest into Leila's death that the princess had said she had been addicted to Seconal since That may or may not be the truth, as addicts exaggerate a lot.
Dr Iqbal wrote out prescriptions for several hundred pills for the princess over a two-year period. The first was for 30 Seconal and 90 Rohypnol. Cameras rarely pursued him, and most Iranians, both in the country and among the diaspora, rarely saw a photograph of him before his death.
Pahlavi's older brother Reza, first in line to the throne, carried the family mantle from a base in suburban Washington, D. Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford University and the author of a new book on the Shah, noted a family record of depressive behavior.
In nearly every major profile of him prepared by the CIA, or British and American embassies, there is some allusion to this brooding, melancholy tendency. One report calls him 'Hamlet-like. The sad young man [who] killed himself apparently shared both qualities.
However, the family put the suicide in national terms in a message on Reza Pahlavi's website, noting that Alireza was "deeply disturbed by all the ills fallen upon his beloved homeland" and "struggled for years to overcome his sorrow.
Muhammad Sahimi, an Iran watcher who writes for the website Tehran Bureau, says he considered the rationale a stretch.
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