The World

The shah welcomed 600 guests – including the US vice-president Agnew, the Soviet president Podgorny, Hussein of Jordan, Prince Philip and his daughter Princess Anne, and Emperor Haile Selassie – to Persepolis, where they stayed in a specially built Golden City of luxurious circular tents, marked with the insignia of the Cyrus Cylinder and lined with Persian carpets woven with the face of each potentate. As 50,000 specially imported songbirds trilled, the guests of honour ate a feast, prepared by Maxim’s of Paris and featuring paon à l’impériale (imperial peacock) and 330 pounds of caviar, off Limoges plates, at a 230-foot table, lubricated by 2,500 bottles of Dom Pérignon champagne, 1,000 bottles of Bordeaux and 1,000 bottles of Burgundy, then they watched thousands of Iranian troops dressed in newly fashioned uniforms play Iranian heroes from Darius and Khosrow to Qajars and Pahlavis.

Yet there was disquiet: the songbirds dropped out of the sky, dead from the heat, there was a fight between French and Swiss waiters, Princess Anne murmured that she never wanted to eat peacock again. Farah hated ‘these ghastly celebrations’, later admitting the party had outraged religious Iranians ‘without our being really aware of it’. ‘Should I serve heads of state bread and radishes instead?’ asked the shah. In his Iraqi exile, Ayatollah Khomeini raged against that ‘Satanic feast’.

The shah had been spoiled by success. ‘For twenty-seven years, I’ve been at the centre of international affairs,’ he told Alam; ‘it’s hardly surprising I should be blessed with foresight.’ He still had a sense of humour, teasing his mother about her sex life with Reza Shah.

Yet Alam ‘noticed alarming changes’: rigidity and arrogance. ‘The Iranian people love me,’ he said ‘and will never forsake me.’ In February 1971, the shah made the self-congratulatory declaration that ‘Iran’s leadership of the Middle East is acknowledged across the world.’ Unsurprisingly he functioned in a conspiratorial world, convinced America was run by ‘an organization working in secret powerful enough to dispose of the Kennedys and anyone else who gets in its way’. He believed he was protected by a murderous providence: ‘I’ve learned by experience a tragic end awaits anyone who crosses swords with me: Nasser’s no more; John and Robert Kennedy died by assassins, their brother Edward disgraced, Khrushchev toppled …’

In October 1967, he had promoted himself to shahanshah – king of kings. Yet Alam begged him to liberalize the autocracy. When Farah suggested elections, he mocked her: ‘You’re becoming quite the revolutionary yourself. I’d like to see you run this country …’ The shah micromanaged SAVAK: 2,000 political prisoners were arrested and tortured. ‘Sophisticated societies have efficient systems of interrogation,’ he later explained. ‘In cases of betrayal of one’s country, anything goes.’

Even his love life spun out of control: ‘A girl named Gilda,’ wrote Alam, ‘is spreading rumours around Teheran that His Majesty is head over heels in love with her.’ Gilda was ‘a beauty but vain and ruthlessly ambitious’.

‘Bloody woman,’ said the shah. ‘I met her a few times … The rumours are getting close to the Queen.’ Farah’s mother then threatened him with divorce ‘to the effect that her daughter had not become accustomed to luxury’.

‘Crap,’ said the shah. ‘After much debate,’ wrote Alam, ‘we agreed the bloody girl Gilda must be found a husband.’ But the shah still lived for his ‘visits’: ‘I passed on a letter addressed to His Majesty by a charming young creature,’ recorded Alam. ‘He was greatly flattered,’ until Empress Farah came to ask what they were talking about.

‘Affairs of state,’ replied the shah with a straight face.

In March 1972, the shah entertained a secret female visitor who was there to discuss affairs of state. The seventy-three-year-old Golda Meir, Israeli prime minister, a tough Zionist veteran (née Golda Mabovich in Kyiv) whom Ben-Gurion had predictably called ‘the only man in my cabinet’, found much in common with the shah, and together they backed the Kurds against Iraq.

Golda Meir was now receiving warnings of war from an extraordinary agent right at the centre of Egyptian power. Sadat promoted Nasser’s son-in-law Dr Ashraf Marwan, married to Mona Nasser, to be his chief adviser on foreign affairs. Yet a month later, in December, Marwan met a Mossad agent at London’s Royal Lancaster Hotel to offer his services to Israel. Mossad called him the Angel. His motives were family bitterness, frustrated ambition and conspiratorial glee. Now he began to warn that Sadat was planning a surprise attack. The intelligence was compelling, but Sadat twice delayed the war, undermining Marwan’s credibility.