Flights of fancy

Parviz Radji

MAJESTIC FAILURE: THE FALL OF THE SHAH by Marvin Zonis University of Chicago Press, 129.95, pp.350 Ot the mass of books that have appeared since the Iranian revolution on the fall of the Shah, Marvin Zonis's Majes- tic Failure is generically different in that it is a psycho-biography, delving into Freud- iana to explain the Shah's failure to sup- press the opposition which resulted in his overthrow. For instance, the Shah's early love of flying is siezed upon to explain, partly, his psychic make-up. Referring to events in 1946 when the Shah led his troops to topple the puppet Soviet-backed republic of Azerbaijan, the author tells us that

of significance here is that he did so two months after receiving his 'wings', his autho- risation to fly,

and that

the exercise of that leadership was eased by the strength and courage which his mastery of flying had given him.

Such terms as 'cynosural narcissism', `ascensionism' and `prospection of falling' are enlisted to diagnose an 'Icarus com- plex' and to illuminate the Shah's fascina- tion with height, his love of the majestic Mount Damavand (Iran's highest), his fondness for tall women, and even his desire, in 1974, when Iran's oil revenues exploded, to buy Pan American Airways.

The consequence for the individual of these character traits can be used to understand the behaviour of the Shah during his entire adult life and especially during the revolu- tion.

The author's main contention centres on the somewhat debatable proposition that the Shah's rule rested on four pillars of psychological support, and that it was the withdrawal of that support that robbed him of the capacity to act during the fateful days of the revolution. These supports were three specific friendships; the belief that he enjoyed the love and admiration of his peo- ple; the knowledge of divine protection; and the support of American presidents. Only the last of these can be said to have unqualified validity.

The three individuals were Ernest Per- ron, son of the gardener at Le Rosey, in Switzerland, where the Shah had been to school; his twin sister Princess Ashraf; and Assadolah Alam, a childhood friend and later prime minister. Whatever the nature of the Shah's relations with Perron, who was regarded as a shadowy figure of intrigue in Persian politics, or with his formidable twin sister, the Shah's 'depen- dence' on them ceased, as Zonis rightly notes, shortly after 1953. It is questionable whether the loss of such psychological sup- port would have taken a quarter of a centu- ry to manifest its devastating effects on the Shah's psyche. Alam also, whose steadfast- ness and courage in the face of religious opposition rescued the Shah from his own indecisiveness in 1963, had been marginalised by the late 1960s.

The truth is that as the Shah grew in wealth, power and stature, so did the con- viction of his own infallibility and his imperviousness to the counsel of others. By the early 1970s, the high watermark of his rule, he would have deemed no one, cer- tainly no one in Iran, worthy of his friend- ship or confidence. Dependence was not withdrawn; it was discarded.

I am surprised at Zonis's second asser- tion, that the Shah ever truly believed he enjoyed the love and support of his own people. Through no fault of their own, the Shah and his father had come to the throne in circumstances which could only be described as inglorious. The blemish of for- eign association was never removed. In a country riven with xenophobia born of cen- turies of foreign exploitation, the Pahlavis were too closely identified in the minds of the vast majority of the Iranian people with Western interests. The Shah was feared, and at times respected, but he never came close to enjoying anything like the sponta- neous love and affection his people had for either Mossadeq or Khomeini.

Nor am I at all certain of the earnestness of the divine protection in which Zonis claims the Shah believed. True, the Shah's references to the protective hand of the prophet Ali and to his own mystical experi- ences were a common feature of his earlier writings and interviews. It may well be that in his heart of hearts he did believe in the existence of the Almighty. But he was hard- ly a godly man, and in no sense religious or devout. His, and his father's, loathing for the religion of Islam, which they held responsible for the ignorance and back- wardness of Iran, was well known, as was their contempt for the superstitious fanaticism of the mullahs. I am more inclined to believe that the Shah's protesta- tions of faith in divine protection were made with an eye to capturing a measure of religious legitimacy.

In 1974 the Shah was diagnosed as suf- fering from lymphatic leukaemia. As his condition deteriorated and more powerful drugs were administered, there can be little doubt that his ability to think clearly and act decisively, particularly at a time of intense political turmoil, was seriously impaired. But not content with merely say- ing that, Zonis adds the psychic dimension:

His cancer must have been an unmistakable sign that his divine protection had been lost; and that is what the Shah must have found impossible to accept.

The section dealing with the Shah's psy- chological dependence on the Americans is the book's most perceptive and valuable. The Carter presidency, with its attachment to human rights and its desire to curb the sale of American arms, made the Shah an obvious target. Believing — with ample justification in the light of his personal history — that the destiny of Iran was determined elsewhere, the Shah sought to placate the American president. He embarked on a shambolic liberalisation that was to bring tragedy to himself and catastrophe to his aspirations for his nation. Lacking the ruthlessness and force of character universally attributed to him, and doubting America's commitment to his continued rule, the Shah lapsed into a paralysis of the will from which he was never to recover.

I must confess to a certain unease at such uninhibited reliance on psychoanalytic methodology in a work of history. It may be that I am unfamiliar with the genre. I do not question the possible validity or appli- cability of its conclusions, but such infer- ences by their nature can neither be refuted nor substantiated. They remain arbitrary, intangible, interpretable, at times far-fetched, but always unverifiable.

In analysing the Shah's early childhood, every lapse of memory, every non sequitur, every inaccuracy about dates, even the erroneous labelling of a family photo is sin- gled out to demonstrate the Shah's 'inade- quate psychic supplies' or 'severe narcis- sistic imbalances'. The contribution of such terms to a book that purports to be 'the definitive work on one of the major turning points of the 20th century' can at best be marginal. Even so, Majestic Failure is a re- markably well-informed and well- researched addition to the growing litera- ture of the Iranian revolution.

Parviz Radji was the Iranian Ambassador td London, 1976-79.