Princess Ashraf Pahlavi Passes Away Aged 96

Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, the twin sister of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza, passed away on January 7, it has been announced.

The Princess, who was born in October 1919 as the fourth child of Reza Shah Pahlavi and Queen Tadj ol-Molouk, died of “old age” in her sleep in her European home, close advisor Robert F. Armao told The New York Times.

Princess Ashraf in New York, October 1977

During the reign of her brother, Ashraf was one of the most influential of the Shah’s advisors (in her memoirs she wrote how she was the only one able to change the Shah’s mind). She was selected by her brother in 1946 to discuss with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin his hold over neighbouring Azerbaijan (Stalin reportedly told the Shah that “if he had 10 like her [Ashraf], he would have no worries at all”). Her influence and close relationship to Shah Mohammed Reza was used by the United States and the United Kingdom in 1953 to gain the Shah’s agreement to Operation Ajax, the coup d’etat that ousted Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and strengthened the authoritarian nature of the monarchy.

The Princess was particularly involved in women’s rights, even speaking at the United Nations in 1975 for International Women’s Year (Ashraf and her elder sister, Princess Shams, were two of the first Iranian women to cease wearing the veil in the 1930s). She had previously been the Iranian delegate to the United Nations during the late 1960s.

Princess Ashraf in the late 1940s speaking with young schoolchildren

She was married thrice, the first two ending in divorce and the third a mutual separation. Her three children – Shahram Pahlavi-Nia, Shahriar Shafiq (assassinated in 1979 in Paris) and Azadeh Shafiq (died in 2011 from leukaemia) – were born of the first two marriages.

Her eldest son and a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren survive the Princess, who was the eldest member of the Pahlavi family. A more detailed biography of the Princess can be found here, written on the occasion of her 90th birthday in 2009.

Filed under Iran
Tagged Ashraf Pahlavi of Iran, Death, House of Pahlavi.

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