Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) succeeded his father, Reza Shah, in September 1941 after the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran forced the elder Pahlavi's abdication. He ruled Iran for nearly 38 years, making him one of the longest-reigning monarchs in modern Middle Eastern history.

His early reign was marked by a constitutional struggle with Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. After briefly fleeing the country, the Shah was restored to power in August 1953 through Operation Ajax, a coup organized by the U.S. CIA and British MI6 — a episode later acknowledged by the CIA in declassified documents released in 2013.

From the 1960s onward, the Shah pursued the White Revolution, a top-down modernization program launched in 1963 that included land reform, female suffrage, and literacy campaigns. He aligned Iran closely with the United States, becoming a key pillar of the Nixon Doctrine in the Persian Gulf and one of the largest purchasers of American arms in the 1970s. Iran under the Shah was a founding member of OPEC and played a central role in the 1973 oil price increases.

Domestically, his rule grew increasingly autocratic. The secret police agency SAVAK, established in 1957 with U.S. and Israeli assistance, became notorious for surveillance and torture of dissidents. In 1975 he abolished Iran's two-party system in favor of a single party, Rastakhiz.

Mass protests beginning in 1977–1978 united secular nationalists, leftists, and Shi'a clerics behind Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The Shah left Iran on 16 January 1979; Khomeini returned from exile on 1 February. The Shah died of cancer in Cairo on 27 July 1980. His son, Reza Pahlavi, remains a prominent figure in the Iranian opposition abroad.