ABSTRACT
When Muhammad Reza Shah and Queen Suraya fled Iran on 16 August 1953, many experts predicted that the secret and hasty departure marked the end of the Pahlavi dynasty and perhaps of the monarchy. In less than a week the shah returned to Tehran in triumph, his political opponents vanquished. The shah’s reinstatement brought to an end Iran’s second experiment in limited monarchy in the twentieth century, giving way once more to royal absolutism. Reza Shah’s determined efforts to escape entanglements with the U.S.S.R. and Britain led him by the end of the 1930s to establish close relations with Nazi Germany, which outlasted the start of World War II. At the outset, the reinstated shah leaned heavily on the United States for funds to replenish an empty exchequer and for an oil settlement that would satisfy Iranian nationalists and the operating oil companies.
