I remember watching a Barbara Walters interview of the Shah...this is when he was still on the throne i believe, and he made some really sexist comments, something about women not having accomplished as much as men. And all this time, his wife was sitting next to him, tears streaming down her face. I saw the interview clip on a Barbara Walters special a couple of years ago so i dont remember if he was married to Empress Farah at the time.
Humera - I have seen that video many times, but I do not recall any tears streaming down the face of Farah... Maybe you have seen a video with added special effects lol. She was simply disagreeing with the shah.
The comments of the shah may have been sexist, but what many people don't realize is that this was a very prevailing view among most men in the early 70's. Men accepting feminism is something quite fresh. I don't know how old you are, but I'm old enough to remember that in those times chauvinism among men was the norm - And I'm talking about men in the West. It was quite unusual that a man would be in favour of feminism in those days, unless he was a leftist intellectual, radical or a hippie. In other words, the shah's comments were not at all that shocking back then.
The shah was not at all a ruthless man - on the contrary, he was a very soft and sensitive man, but quite weak and undecisive at times as well. The fact that he divorced Soraya was because he felt a strong committment to his country and his duties as the leader and emperor of that country. He had to go against the wishes of his heart to stay loyal to his commitment to his duties as king.
He might have said some silly things about women in that interview, but if we look at his deeds we will see something quite different: He created very progressive laws in favor of women's rights - and during his reign Iranian women held several positions in the parliament, government and senate. Iran had 4 female military generals and Iranian women served in the military while this was almost unheard of in most western countries in those times! Iran had female judges, female factory workers, female police men (Also very unusual in most western countries in those times) female truck and cab drivers. So I wouldn't pay too much attention to what he said in that one interview. Besides, I heard from someone who was very close to them that the Shah and the empress appeared to have had a heated personal argument right before the interview and that the shah was very irritable because of this during the interview with Barbara Walters.
The shah made quite a few mistakes, but he was far from being the ruthless tyrant that the western media made him out to be. He was loved by the majority of Iranians in the first 25 years of his reign. In the latter part of his reign he had lost touch with his people and with reality. He was then also increasingly suffering from megalomania. But the problem was not really the shah - it was the whole system - The people around him, lying to him, brownosing to him while at the same time being against him. What finally brought him and 2500 years of monarchy down was not one or two factors - It was a whole series of factors, events and elements that came together at the "right" time and led to his sudden and abrubt removal from the throne and created the world's only theocracy in existence today. And certainly certain American and British elements were involved in the Iranian revolution of 1979 in various ways.
