Shah of Iran
David Leigh Rob Evans www.theguardian.com
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was the king of Iran, known as the Shah, between 1941 and 1979. Born in 1919, he succeeded his father, who had refused to cooperate with the allies during the second world war.
https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/icons/homescreen/apple-touch-icon.svg
the Guardian
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was the king of Iran, known as the Shah, between 1941 and 1979. Born in 1919, he succeeded his father, who had refused to cooperate with the allies during the second world war. The allies forced his father off the throne and the new Shah allowed them to do what they wanted.

The Shah was a pro-western dictator. In the early 1950s there was a struggle for power between him and the prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, a fervent nationalist.

When the Shah was forced to flee the country, the British and American governments financed a coup to overthrow Mosaddeq and restore their man to power. The Shah ran a brutally repressive regime, enforced by the notorious Savak secret police. He was backed all the way by the British and American governments.

But many Iranians were angered by his autocratic rule and the spectacle of rampant corruption throughout his government.

The carnival of corruption was so conspicuous inside the Shah's Iran that it was bound to trouble Britain's own diplomats stationed there. They saw bribery every day. But many of them no doubt simply failed to grasp that their own government was implicated.

Certainly, Britain's naval attache in Tehran, who wrote a report on possible warship sales, emerges as a naive figure: "The most potent [influence] is the perennial Iranian problem of graft. The Shah has said that all defence deals are to be on a government-to-government basis to eliminate inducements. So far as is known, the British play square, but there is much evidence that others do not and that even the admirals are not clean ... It is not, of course, suggested that we should descend to this unhealthy practice."[document]

Somewhat less upright - and rather more knowing - was one of his army colleagues in Iran, Major David Randel. Randel, of the Royal Corps of Signals, was working in the embassy as an aide to Lester Suffield [biography] for the Defence Sales Organisation [profile], and (in his lawyer's words), he "saw no reason why he should not get his share".

The Chieftain tanks needed radios. The Iranian armed forces already had US equipment that could be converted. And the British firm Plessey was pitching its own product.

But thanks to Randel's assistance it was Racal, Sir Ray Brown's [biography] old electronics firm, that was educated in the correct arts of bribery. Racal was directed to the ubiquitous Shapoor Reporter [biography] and tipped an extra £255,000 into his pockets, some supposedly for the Shah and some to keep for himself. A Racal subsidiary was duly awarded the £4.5m contract to install the radios in the Shah's new tanks.

Randel, as he had intended, "got his share". Racal's sales director, Frank Nurdin, met the major in a pub and furtively swapped an empty briefcase for one containing £25,000 in notes.

It was what the major's old boss back at the Ministry of Defence, Harold Hubert, would no doubt have termed a "douceur" - a sweetener. And the sweetness of this transaction gave Randel ideas. He embarked on a career of soliciting further bribes.

This was eventually his undoing. It was a demonstration of how quickly the virus of corruption could be caught - and once caught, how contagiously it spread. Randel was far from the only British government official in this corrupt atmosphere who would set out to "get his share". Eventually the Iranians could stomach the Shah no more. He provoked widespread opposition in disparate sectors, such as students, intellectuals, religious leaders and industrial workers.

In January 1979 he was forced to leave Iran and replaced by an Islamist-led government. The Shah led a peripatetic life, moving from Mexico to the US, Panama, then Egypt, where he died in July 1980.