Proud as a Peacock

After miraculously surviving an attempted assassination by machine gun two years ago, Iran's Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlevi said gratefully: "Allah saved my country again." It was not an idle boast. Among modern monarchs, the Shah, 47, is a pace-setting social reformer without whom Iran would long ago have turned to chaos. The trouble is that the Shah tempts Allah quite a bit. He zooms through the streets of Teheran at high speeds in his Ferrari--while police see to it that the traffic lights go green along his route. He loves to fly jets, such as Lockheed's F-104 Starfighter, and once crash-landed his one-engine Tiger Moth on a mountain. Although he is in good health, his doctors have warned him to slow down.

Garlic & Gold Coins. At the Shah's request, the Iranian Parliament has unanimously approved a bill that will eventually amend Iran's 50-year-old constitution and enable the Shah to appoint a regent-designate to rule if he should die before his son, Crown Prince Reza, now six, becomes 20 years old. His choice for the regency: his wife, Empress Farah, 28, who has presented him with two male heirs (plus a girl) after two previous wives failed to give him a son. The Shah, who has held Iran's Peacock Throne for 26 years without being crowned, has also decided to hold a coronation ceremony for himself next October. "I have always thought, and often said, that it is not a source of pride and gratification to become king of a poor people. In the past I felt that a coronation ceremony was not justified. But today I am proud of the progress we have made."

Last week, as the land of the ancient Persians celebrated the Now Ruz, or New Year--it is the year 1346 by Iranian reckoning--few of the Shah's people would dispute his right to the crown. More prosperous than ever, millions of Iranians went traveling for the holiday, flocking to Caspian Sea beaches and gathering in homes for the traditional meal, which includes apples, sumac (a bread baked on hot stones), garlic and wheat halva. At a palace reception, the Shah rewarded his ministers with handfuls of newly minted gold coins. In a family tableau showing the continuity of the Pahlevi line, the Shah, the Empress and the Crown Prince inaugurated a new TV station in Teheran. In his first speech to the country, the tiny Reza said: "My dear countrymen and sisters, I wish you a happy new year."

White Revolution. Through the Shah's "White Revolution" (so called because it is bloodless), Iran's 25 million people now enjoy a robust economy, with an industrial sector that grew by 17% in the past year. Foreign investment, once almost nonexistent, has advanced to $186 million a year, and exports in the past decade have quadrupled to $1.3 billion. In the past 18 months, Iran has signed long-term trade and military deals with both East and West involving nearly $3 billion; the latest provides for the exchange of Iranian oil for $40 million worth of Rumanian grain silos and railroad cars. The gross national product has doubled in a decade to $6.5 billion a year.

But the biggest gains have been in social progress. In a country where landlords once owned whole villages, impressive reforms have made landowners of three-fourths of all Iranian farmers. Under new laws, 20% of every Iranian factory's profits must be divided among its workers. Women have achieved the vote, and a 32,000-man uniformed literacy corps is at work teaching illiterate villagers how to read and write. Iran is not yet a democracy. "His Majesty is the boss. Period," says the Shah's Prime Minister, Amir Abbas Hoveida. But the boss has allowed considerable freedom; his once dreaded SAVAK (secret police) is now little more than an intelligence-gathering agency.

Preparing to Reign. The Shah's Empress has done her share too. One reform that she helped put through prohibits a man from taking another wife unless he has the permission of both a local court and his existing wives (though most Iranians are practicing Moslems, they are racially Aryans, not Arabs). The former Farah Diba went to schools in Teheran, where she was captain of her high school basketball team, first met the Shah eight years ago on a reception line while she was studying architecture in Paris. After a constituent assembly convenes this May to approve the Shah's plan for a regent-designate, more official duties will be added to Empress Farah's already busy life, including instruction in the affairs of government. When going abroad, she will travel apart from her husband so that, should Allah's protection falter, a mishap would claim only one of them.

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