The Fall of the Shah

New York: Wyndham Books [Simon & Schuster], 1980. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Good. 221, [3] pages. DJ has some wear, tears and soiling. Includes Prologue, The Beginning of the End; The Mounting Danger; The Changing Shah; The Final Downfall; Epilogue, and Postscript. The former ambassador to the United Nations for Iran analyzes the political and personal forces that combined to destroy the Iranian monarchy, discussing the corruption of the royal family and the surge of the Islamic renascence. Fereydoun Hoveyda's brother was Iranian Prime Minister until 1978, when he was murdered by the new government, after having heroically refused to flee the country. Fereydoun Hoveyda (21 September 1924 - 3 November 2006) was an Iranian diplomat, writer and thinker. He was the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations from 1971 until 1979. Hoveyda joined the foreign ministry in the early 1940s. A participant in the final drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he worked in UNESCO from 1951 to 1966. In the late 1960s, he returned to Iran and worked in the Iranian Foreign Ministry as the undersecretary for international and economic affairs. He was also deputy foreign minister. From 1971 to 1979 he represented Iran at the United Nations. Having been forced out of the Iranian Foreign Ministry following the 1979 revolution, Hoveyda became a senior fellow and member of the Executive Committee of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP). Apart from politics, he was active in the field of cinema and was a founding member of the editorial board of the celebrated film magazine Cahiers du cinéma. The author gives ungrudging credit to the Shah's early successes at modernization and liberalization but watches in horror as the Shah becomes increasingly dictatorial, reclusive, and unpredictable. The ruthless suppression by SAVAK (the secret policy)' the shameless corruption of the royal family who held United States Senators in their hip pockets; the Shah's megalomaniacal defense spending, which bankrupted the economy; the irresistible surge of Islamic renascence--all are fully described from firsthand experience and observation. Ambassador Hoveyda gives us insights into America's mishandling of the Shah's downfall and the causes of the revolution, which led to the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini. With the last days of Richard Nixon clear in our eyes, Fereydoun Hoveyda's speculations on the corrupting influence of power hits home with particular force.