Word: shahs
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Iranians turned out in record numbers last week for a parliamentary election that ended 28 months of government by royal decree. The result was a lopsided victory for Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, whose sweeping, courageous reforms have made him the darling of the downtrodden...
...anyone who enjoys social occasions, being President of the U.S. can be a pleasure. John Kennedy likes parties, and he has a real flair for pre siding over them. Last week he made big plans for starting the fall social season. Afghanistan's King Mohammed Zahir Shah and his Queen Homaira were in town. In their honor, there was to be a black-tie banquet in the Rose Garden - with fireworks, a Marine-drill-squad exhibition, music by some Air Force bagpipers and ice cream souffle for dessert. But it rained that day, and the President moved the affair...
...months ago, new Premier Assadollah Alam pledged to undertake "an anticorruption campaign with great diligence and all severity." Though the cynical snickered, Alam got free rein from the Shah, carefully began building airtight cases against suspected grafters among Iran's leading bureaucrats and government leaders. His first major target was General Mohammed Ali Khazai, the Iranian army's chief of ordnance, who had parlayed his $6,000 salary into three houses in the suburbs of Teheran, four apartment houses in France, five automobiles, $100,000 in European banks and $200,000 in cash. A military court convicted Khazai...
...Corruption is the lubricant of the Iranian economy," a diplomat in Teheran once observed. Depending on the size of the pishkash (bribe), justice was bought and sold, tax rights were purchased, government jobs auctioned off, contracts given, and conscription was waived. Sporadic efforts by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi to clean things up usually ended dismally in a disastrous series of acquittals, and cases dropped for lack of evidence...
Last week Alam's anticorruption drive was in full swing. In Teheran, a military tribunal sentenced General Abdullah Hedayat, Iran's first four-star general and once a close adviser of the Shah, to two years in prison for embezzling money on military housing contracts, brushed aside his plea for appeal with the brusque explanation that "more charges are pending." The former boss of the Teheran Electricity Board was in solitary confinement for five years; cases were in preparation against an ex-War Minister and twelve other generals for graft. Said one observer: "The Shah...