The son of Iran’s last shah bids to regain the throne
A spasm of royal enthusiasm hints at a lack of alternatives
His father called himself Shahenshah (King of Kings), Aryamehr (Light of the Aryans) and Sovereign of the Order of the Lion and Sun. When the shah died in 1980, a year after being toppled by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, his son, a student aged 20, proclaimed himself king with similar grandeur. “I’ll leave it up to you to call me whatever you want,” Reza Pahlavi says nowadays, modestly.
This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “Could his kingdom come?”
From the February 25th 2023 edition
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