Extravagance Amidst Poverty and Oppression
Extravagance Amidst Poverty & Oppression
In October 1971, while millions of Iranians struggled under poverty, repression, and a widening gap between rich and poor, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi Iran's self-proclaimed "King of Kings," staged a grotesquely lavish spectacle in the ruins of Persepolis: the so-called “2,500-Year Celebration of the Persian Empire.” Marketed as a tribute to Cyrus the Great, the event was, in reality, a carefully orchestrated vanity project meant to glorify the Shah’s rule and whitewash the brutality of his regime. The global media soon saw it for what it was: the delusional theater of a dictator disconnected from his people.
Held in a specially constructed “tent city” designed by the Parisian firm Maison Jansen, complete with imported trees, flowers, and 50,000 songbirds from Europe and decorated with silk and gold, the celebration was attended by royalty and dignitaries from across the world — all while Iranian citizens were barred from entering the site. The imported food for the gala came from Maxim’s of Paris. Estimates of the cost ranged from $22 million to over $300 million — public money spent not on schools, hospitals, or housing, but on caviar, champagne, and military parades to please foreign dignitaries and inflate the Shah’s ego.
The backlash was swift. Even Western observers condemned the extravagance. The Village Voice published a scathing piece describing the event as a "clownish spectacle of self-idolatry" that only served to “amuse the West and humiliate the Iranian people.” The BBC later released a documentary — Decadence and Downfall: The Shah of Iran’s Ultimate Party — exposing the obscene costs and the logistical absurdities involved, highlighting how the celebration epitomized the regime’s complete disconnect from the daily misery endured by ordinary Iranians.
Behind the glittering surface was a nation where torture chambers run by SAVAK — the Shah’s secret police — were full, where ethnic minorities were suppressed, and where basic freedoms were brutally denied. While foreign guests were chauffeured in limousines to dine in air-conditioned tents in the desert, countless Iranian villages lacked clean water, electricity, or basic infrastructure. Workers, teachers, and students were silenced or imprisoned for demanding a better future. The entire affair was a grotesque insult to their suffering.
Rather than uniting the country, the event fueled public outrage. It became a glaring symbol of the regime’s arrogance and its utter contempt for the Iranian people. Far from cementing the Shah’s legacy, it revealed the moral rot at the heart of his dictatorship — and marked the beginning of the end. Less than eight years later, the Iranian people would rise and bring his reign crashing down.
“The Shah of Iran,” said Martin Ennals in the introduction to Amnesty International’s Annual Report for 1974-5, “retains his benevolent image despite the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief.” The total number of political prisoners for 1975, stated the report, “has been reported at times throughout the year to be anything from 25,000 to 100,000.”
Thousands of people have been executed over the last 23 years. According to Bahareni, more than 300,000 people have been in and out of jail in the last 20 years. Ninety-five percent of the press is controlled by two families taking their orders from the Shah and the police.
There is only one political party — the Resurgence Party — whose membership is compulsory for the entire adult population. The vast bulk of the population is desperately poor, undernourished, and uneducated. In Quri-Chai, the northern slums of Tabriz, there is only one school for 100,000 children.
There are 34 million people in Iran. Only half are Persian; the rest are Azarbaijanis, Kurds, Arabs and Baluchis, along with Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians. The Shah considers all Iranians to be Aryan, who must learn one language, Persian. He is attempting to purge the Persian language of all Arab and Turkish elements, thus proscribing 40 percent of the vocabulary. The Shah himself speaks Persian badly, faring better in French and English.
In October 1971, while millions of Iranians struggled under poverty, repression, and a widening gap between rich and poor, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi Iran's self-proclaimed "King of Kings," staged a grotesquely lavish spectacle in the ruins of Persepolis: the so-called “2,500-Year Celebration of the Persian Empire.” Marketed as a tribute to Cyrus the Great, the event was, in reality, a carefully orchestrated vanity project meant to glorify the Shah’s rule and whitewash the brutality of his regime. The global media soon saw it for what it was: the delusional theater of a dictator disconnected from his people.
Held in a specially constructed “tent city” designed by the Parisian firm Maison Jansen, complete with imported trees, flowers, and 50,000 songbirds from Europe and decorated with silk and gold, the celebration was attended by royalty and dignitaries from across the world — all while Iranian citizens were barred from entering the site. The imported food for the gala came from Maxim’s of Paris. Estimates of the cost ranged from $22 million to over $300 million — public money spent not on schools, hospitals, or housing, but on caviar, champagne, and military parades to please foreign dignitaries and inflate the Shah’s ego.
The backlash was swift. Even Western observers condemned the extravagance. The Village Voice published a scathing piece describing the event as a "clownish spectacle of self-idolatry" that only served to “amuse the West and humiliate the Iranian people.” The BBC later released a documentary — Decadence and Downfall: The Shah of Iran’s Ultimate Party — exposing the obscene costs and the logistical absurdities involved, highlighting how the celebration epitomized the regime’s complete disconnect from the daily misery endured by ordinary Iranians.
Behind the glittering surface was a nation where torture chambers run by SAVAK — the Shah’s secret police — were full, where ethnic minorities were suppressed, and where basic freedoms were brutally denied. While foreign guests were chauffeured in limousines to dine in air-conditioned tents in the desert, countless Iranian villages lacked clean water, electricity, or basic infrastructure. Workers, teachers, and students were silenced or imprisoned for demanding a better future. The entire affair was a grotesque insult to their suffering.
Rather than uniting the country, the event fueled public outrage. It became a glaring symbol of the regime’s arrogance and its utter contempt for the Iranian people. Far from cementing the Shah’s legacy, it revealed the moral rot at the heart of his dictatorship — and marked the beginning of the end. Less than eight years later, the Iranian people would rise and bring his reign crashing down.
“The Shah of Iran,” said Martin Ennals in the introduction to Amnesty International’s Annual Report for 1974-5, “retains his benevolent image despite the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief.” The total number of political prisoners for 1975, stated the report, “has been reported at times throughout the year to be anything from 25,000 to 100,000.”
Thousands of people have been executed over the last 23 years. According to Bahareni, more than 300,000 people have been in and out of jail in the last 20 years. Ninety-five percent of the press is controlled by two families taking their orders from the Shah and the police.
There is only one political party — the Resurgence Party — whose membership is compulsory for the entire adult population. The vast bulk of the population is desperately poor, undernourished, and uneducated. In Quri-Chai, the northern slums of Tabriz, there is only one school for 100,000 children.
There are 34 million people in Iran. Only half are Persian; the rest are Azarbaijanis, Kurds, Arabs and Baluchis, along with Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians. The Shah considers all Iranians to be Aryan, who must learn one language, Persian. He is attempting to purge the Persian language of all Arab and Turkish elements, thus proscribing 40 percent of the vocabulary. The Shah himself speaks Persian badly, faring better in French and English.
In October 1971, while millions of Iranians struggled under poverty, repression, and a widening gap between rich and poor, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi Iran's self-proclaimed "King of Kings," staged a grotesquely lavish spectacle in the ruins of Persepolis: the so-called “2,500-Year Celebration of the Persian Empire.” Marketed as a tribute to Cyrus the Great, the event was, in reality, a carefully orchestrated vanity project meant to glorify the Shah’s rule and whitewash the brutality of his regime. The global media soon saw it for what it was: the delusional theater of a dictator disconnected from his people.
Held in a specially constructed “tent city” designed by the Parisian firm Maison Jansen, complete with imported trees, flowers, and 50,000 songbirds from Europe and decorated with silk and gold, the celebration was attended by royalty and dignitaries from across the world — all while Iranian citizens were barred from entering the site. The imported food for the gala came from Maxim’s of Paris. Estimates of the cost ranged from $22 million to over $300 million — public money spent not on schools, hospitals, or housing, but on caviar, champagne, and military parades to please foreign dignitaries and inflate the Shah’s ego.
The backlash was swift. Even Western observers condemned the extravagance. The Village Voice published a scathing piece describing the event as a "clownish spectacle of self-idolatry" that only served to “amuse the West and humiliate the Iranian people.” The BBC later released a documentary — Decadence and Downfall: The Shah of Iran’s Ultimate Party — exposing the obscene costs and the logistical absurdities involved, highlighting how the celebration epitomized the regime’s complete disconnect from the daily misery endured by ordinary Iranians.
Behind the glittering surface was a nation where torture chambers run by SAVAK — the Shah’s secret police — were full, where ethnic minorities were suppressed, and where basic freedoms were brutally denied. While foreign guests were chauffeured in limousines to dine in air-conditioned tents in the desert, countless Iranian villages lacked clean water, electricity, or basic infrastructure. Workers, teachers, and students were silenced or imprisoned for demanding a better future. The entire affair was a grotesque insult to their suffering.
Rather than uniting the country, the event fueled public outrage. It became a glaring symbol of the regime’s arrogance and its utter contempt for the Iranian people. Far from cementing the Shah’s legacy, it revealed the moral rot at the heart of his dictatorship — and marked the beginning of the end. Less than eight years later, the Iranian people would rise and bring his reign crashing down.
“The Shah of Iran,” said Martin Ennals in the introduction to Amnesty International’s Annual Report for 1974-5, “retains his benevolent image despite the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief.” The total number of political prisoners for 1975, stated the report, “has been reported at times throughout the year to be anything from 25,000 to 100,000.”
Thousands of people have been executed over the last 23 years. According to Bahareni, more than 300,000 people have been in and out of jail in the last 20 years. Ninety-five percent of the press is controlled by two families taking their orders from the Shah and the police.
There is only one political party — the Resurgence Party — whose membership is compulsory for the entire adult population. The vast bulk of the population is desperately poor, undernourished, and uneducated. In Quri-Chai, the northern slums of Tabriz, there is only one school for 100,000 children.
There are 34 million people in Iran. Only half are Persian; the rest are Azarbaijanis, Kurds, Arabs and Baluchis, along with Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians. The Shah considers all Iranians to be Aryan, who must learn one language, Persian. He is attempting to purge the Persian language of all Arab and Turkish elements, thus proscribing 40 percent of the vocabulary. The Shah himself speaks Persian badly, faring better in French and English.
