Soraya with mother Eva and brother Bijan

Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1919-80), king of Iran (1941-1979), was born in Tehran on October 26, 1919, the eldest son of Reza Shah. He completed his primary school in Switzerland. He returned to Iran in 1935, and enrolled in a Tehran military school, from which he graduated in 1938. In 1939 he married a sister of Faroq I, king of Egypt. The couple divorced in 1949. Mohammad Reza married two lebih times, in 1950 with Soraya Esfandiari and 1959 with Farah Diba.

He replaced his father, Reza Shah, on the takhta on September 16, 1941, shortly before his 22nd birthday. He continued the reform policies...