Word: shahs
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...figures are there if one wants them. It is estimated that more than 300,000 people have been in and out of the Shah's prisons during his 19-year reign; an average of 1,500 people are arrested each month. Amnesty International reported in 1975 that "the Shah of Iran retains his benevolent image despite the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief." But the figures alone do not convey the horror; Baraheni puts them in human terms, in the context of Iran...
...Government" may be too kind a description for the Shah's regime. The present Shah is the son of an upstart colonel, who founded the present dynasty in the first decades of this century and who abdicated in 1941 because he was found to have collaborated with the Nazis. Following his abdication, a constitutionally-elected, reform-minded government came into power--until 1953, when the CIA sponsored the coup that put the present Shah in power. Baraheni does not go into the reasons for the CIA's support for the monarchy, but one sentence gives it away: the democratically-elected...
Since 1953, the Shah's rule has become increasingly repressive. During the regime's first decade, opposition parties were allowed to exist, although the Shah controlled the country firmly. In 1963, the Shah's so-called "White Revolution"--including a token land reform program that has failed to change the grossly inequitable distribution of wealth, and the massacre of thousands of members of the opposition--made Iran a one-party state, removing all traces of democratic government. Like every shah before him, the current Shah claims to experience visions granting him absolute authority over his people...
...writer and an intellectual, Baraheni focuses primarily on the effect of these efforts on the educated men and women of Iran, leaving the reader to imagine for himself the effect on the rest of the people. The Shah's agents--many of them trained by the United States and equipped with techniques and weapons developed in the U.S.--are everywhere in Iran; many of them operate overseas, giving SAVAK a global reach...
...number of American universities have been no less eager than their government to help the Shah polish his regime's veneer of respectability--which is ironic, given the Shah's persecution of Iranian intellectuals. Harvard, one of the worst offenders, has signed contracts worth more than $1.5 million with the Iranian government since 1974, promising to help the Shah with urban development, health and educational projects. Edward L. Keenan '57, the new dean of the graduate school, is also a member of the governing board of the university named after the present Shah's father, who was arguably even more...