Royal Pain

By R.Z. Sheppard

THE SHAH'S LAST RIDE

by William Shawcross

Simon & Schuster; 463 pages; $19.95

Despite his commiserative subtitle, The Fate of an Ally, William Shawcross does not allow the reader to forget that Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the late Shah of Iran, was a pathetic symbol of a corrupt and repressive regime. His fate was to be thrust, ill-suited by temperament or training, into the leadership of a nation whose strategic geography and petroleum resources dictated a major role in the 20th century. Publicly he professed a grand vision, a White Revolution that would modernize his nation. Privately he played the Oriental potentate, surrounded by toadies, pimps and the kitschy trappings of new wealth.

In 1971 the Shah celebrated his reign with a $300 million extravaganza. The Pahlavi "dynasty" had just started its sixth decade, the outcome of a coup mounted by the Shah's father, Reza Khan, an army officer whom some regarded as the Bismarck of Persia. Flying high on his magic carpet, the Shah seemed out of touch with the forces gathering against him. Resentment of his Western ways was fanned by the Muslim clergy. Intellectuals, students and professionals thought the figure posing in Ruritanian uniform and a Disneyland crown was not Western enough. These dissenters frequently attracted the attention of the security police (SAVAK), whose interview techniques shocked the world and hastened the coming of Ayatullah Khomeini's vengeful theocracy.

Shawcross briskly recounts the Shah's decline and fall, from the first wobbles of the Peacock Throne to the restrained dash to the airport with Queen Farah Diba, their entourage and pets. But unlike luckier deposed billionaires, the Shah did not have a soft landing. He had cancer and was coming down with an acute case of political leprosy. Switzerland, France and Britain, concerned about oil and terrorism, rolled up the welcome mat. Despite entreaties by the Rockefellers, who handled the fallen Shah's finances and provided him with a live-in public relations man, and Henry Kissinger, President Jimmy Carter kept the door shut. This position hardened after the U.S. embassy in Tehran was overrun and the hostages taken in November 1979.

Egypt, Morocco and Mexico provided temporary havens, but as the Pahlavis were forced to move on, they increasingly found themselves in a dog-eat-Shah world. Ten cramped weeks in the Bahamas cost them an extortionate $1.2 million. Panama's late Omar Torrijos extended his hospitality and then made passes at the Queen.

Shawcross ferrets out a wealth of political, diplomatic and intelligence detail, as well as a fragrant cache of jet-set gossip. In his prime, the Shah had a special yen for Lufthansa hostesses but also entertained a variety of lovelies flown in from Mme. Claude's in Paris. His other tastes were rich, but, oddly, Iran's leading personage did not eat caviar.

In October 1979, in desperate need of treatment, the Shah was allowed to enter the U.S. temporarily. By the time he checked into New York Hospital, he had an international collection of physicians. Shawcross's last chapters reverberate with the clash of medical opinions and large egos. When things sorted out, the Shah was back in Egypt, where his spleen was removed by the renowned Texas heart surgeon Michael DeBakey. The procedure also revealed fatal malignancies of the liver.

On July 27, 1980, Radio Tehran announced the death of "the bloodsucker of the century." The judgment was self-serving and exaggerated the Shah's stature. Shawcross's story of a pawn in King's clothing comes to a sorrier conclusion. The Shah's reign, this book suggests, was less a study in the banality of evil than the banality of pride.