The World

Nasser consulted a leader of the Muslim Brothers, Sayyid Qutb, a pale, heavy-lidded bachelor who had been disgusted by American decadence during his studies in Colorado and preached jihad against the materialistic west. The modern history of the Arab world can be written through these two men. Once Qutb realized Nasser was opposed to his views, he ordered his assassination. In October 1954, while Nasser was speaking live on the radio in Alexandria, a Brother shot at him and missed. Nasser, a born thespian, played it to the hilt. ‘Let them kill me,’ he cried, ‘so long as I’ve instilled pride, honour, and freedom in you. If Gamal Abdel Nasser should die, each of you shall be Gamal Abdel Nasser.’ Nasser, advised by the CIA but also employing ex-Nazis, now used his General Intelligence Service, the Mukhabarat –

the essential tool of all Arab rulers – to purge the jihadists. He hanged Qutb, but his works were read across the House of Islam by all sects – including the Shiite lecturer in philosophy and sharia in Iran, Ruhollah Khomeini.

As Farouk settled into luxurious Italian exile with a new starlet, Kim Roosevelt arrived to advise his ex-brother-in-law, Shah Mohammad Reza, who at thirty-four was in danger of being exiled or murdered. He had suffered bitterly from the humiliations of his father’s downfall and Anglo-Soviet occupation, but he had the acumen to govern. ‘There’s no more lonely unhappy life,’ said the shah, ‘than that of the man who decides to rule instead of reign.’ He gained stature first in 1946 when Tabriz was recovered from the Soviets, and then in 1949 when, visiting Teheran University, he was shot in cheek and shoulder by an assassin who was himself shot on the spot. A wave of sympathy permitted the shah to pass new powers to appoint governments, a first step in his mission to modernize Iran and make it a great power.

The shah had to deal with a rising Communist Party; the Tudeh, a mercurial ayatollah Kashani, who backed a terrorist movement called Fadayan-e Islam or Devotees of Islam; a conservative army; and, in the parliament (Majlis), the return of a veteran politician, Mohammad Mosaddegh and his National Front, who spearheaded the call to nationalize British oil. In the face of anti-British fury, the shah appointed a forceful general, Ali Razmara, to negotiate with the British, but he was assassinated by Fadayan-e Islam. The shah sought another premier, but the Majlis voted to nationalize British oil and then for Mosaddegh, now backed by the religious leader Ayatollah Kashani, to succeed Razmara. On 28 April 1951, the shah duly appointed Mosaddegh, who three days later nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Mosaddegh, now sixty-nine, was an unlikely revolutionary. Educated in Paris, he was a semi-royal, super-wealthy landowner – his mother was a Qajar princess, his wife granddaughter of a shah – but he was also a valetudinarian who, pyjama-clad, governed from bed. Detesting the British – ‘You have no idea how crafty they are, how evil,’ he told an American envoy – this neurotic funambulist tried to balance the Communists on one side, shah, army and ayatollahs on the other. The only way to do so was to assume autocratic powers himself.

In July 1952, Mosaddegh challenged the shah’s control of the army; the shah dismissed him but, faced with riots organized by both the Communists and the ayatollahs, recalled him. Mosaddegh, now taking command of the military, backed by the ayatollahs and the Communists, assumed emergency powers. He tried to appease the Communists but only succeeded in disappointing them while convincing everyone else that he was either becoming a despot or turning Communist. In January 1953, Ayatollah Kashani turned against him. The Communists attempted to seize power. An army conspiracy plotted with the shah. Abroad, Winston Churchill, seventy-eight, prime minister for the second time, agreed with Eisenhower that Mosaddegh was in danger of being overwhelmed by the Communists.

The shah felt beleaguered – ‘The bastard was out for blood,’ he later recalled of Mosaddegh – consoled only by Soraya, his half-German, half-Iranian second wife, the love of his life. The queen dispensed with his Swiss mentor Perron, whom she called a ‘woman-hating homosexual who spread poison’. Shah Mohammad was shy and yet sexually voracious, his eyes revealing: ‘Dark brown, almost black, shining, at times hard, at times sad or gentle, they exuded charm and reflected his soul.’ Soraya calmed him with sex, the only thing, along with flying planes, that soothed him. He slept with a pistol under his pillow.