Iranian Shah's Widow Shares Insights on Revolution

March 6, 2004 -- Farah Pahlavi is a 65-year-old woman living a quiet life in Potomac, Md., but 25 years ago she was an empress living at the center of a cultural and political upheaval that continues to affect world politics to this day.

Watch Barbara Walters' full report tonight on 20/20 at 10 p.m.

Pahlavi is the widow of the late shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the emperor of Persia, whose pro-American government was overthrown by Islamic fundamentalists in January 1979.

In 1959, at age 20, she was a young commoner studying architecture in Paris when she was introduced to the shah. She recalls their first meeting, "I was so flattered and happy to see him from so close. And I remember I wrote a letter to my mother saying he has such beautiful eyes but very sad eyes."

The shah had just divorced his second wife, the Empress Soraya, because she had failed to give him a male heir to the throne. A year later, the shah began a fairytale romance with Farah, who would become his future queen, and the Princess Diana of her day. The couple was married in December 1959 in a glittering and lavish ceremony attended by a thousand guests.

Less than a year later Farah Pahlavi gave birth to a son, also named Reza, and the country went wild. "I remember the affection of the people in the streets when I came home from the hospital, offering candies and sweets and dancing all over Iran." The shah and shabanou had three more children: two girls, Farahnaz and Leila and another boy, Ali-Reza.

The Beginning of the End

In 1967, Shah Pahlavi was crowned king, and in an extraordinary move he crowned Farah his queen. "It was a very important thing for me and the women in our country because I always say when my husband crowned me I felt he had crowned all the women of Iran."

But the couple's good fortunes were short-lived. In 1963, the shah launched an ambitious program of reforms. He took land, much of it owned by Muslim clerics, and gave it to the peasants. He built schools and began giving more rights to women. The queen toured the country, visiting villages and reporting to her husband on the progress of his reforms.

The reforms were welcomed by many, but Islamic fundamentalists were infuriated. Their reaction set the stage for a tragic turn in the couple's fairy tale romance whose end would be written in newspaper headlines and blood.

The shah ignored the fundamentalists' fury. He was also blamed for using his secret police, the SAVAK, to brutally put down the fundamentalists' growing street demonstrations, and for denying his people the right to protest. The SAVAK were also blamed for torturing and executing the Shah's political opposition. The shah's main opponent, who encouraged the street protests, was the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Khomeini pledged to roll back the shah's reforms. "But," Farah Pahlavi said, "of course he was promising paradise, and he opened the door to hell."

The shah was accused of being a dictator, but Pahlavi defended her husband's actions. "He believed in democracy and he wanted the people to progress, develop and be literate — and then open up more politically."

Mass Psychological Brainwash

By November 1977, the fundamentalists' opposition to the shah hit the world stage. In her new book, An Enduring Love: My Life With the Shah, Farah Pahlavi says her family's world began to spiral out of control.

By early 1978, political turmoil had spilled into the streets of Tehran. There were massive demonstrations, violence and bloodshed. The revolution was closing in on the shah and his wife.

Although the shah was still in command, he was hiding a secret even more terrible from his queen. He had cancer.

As the political crisis in Iran deepened, the shah's health worsened. The ayatollah condemned the shah and his pro-Western reforms, urging his followers to overthrow the monarchy and create a fundamentalist Muslim state. Despite the growing intensity of the protests, the shah didn't use his army to fight back.

His illness may have contributed to his hesitance to use force, but Pahlavi said her husband always said he didn't want to keep his throne by spilling the blood of his people.

"They were very well-organized and we were not. It was like a mass psychological brainwash," she said.

By January 1979, the crisis hit the boiling point and the monarchy fell. Fearing for their lives, the shah and his family fled to Egypt, where President Anwar Sadat gave him refuge.

The Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile and took control of the country, accusing the shah of stealing tens of billions of dollars from the Iranian treasury.

Pahlavi said the accusations were untrue. She did take some of her jewels. "I'm glad because I sold them, and used it … And I needed help." She said needed the money as she began her new life.

The shah was condemned to death by the Revolution and the world turned its back, worried that Khomeini would cut off the flow of oil to any country that supported him.

The shah and his family then began a tragic 18-month odyssey — to Morocco, the Bahamas, Mexico — all the while, the shah's cancer was spreading.

In October 1979, President Carter allowed the shah to come to New York for an emergency surgery on his gall bladder. For Pahlavi, the time was torturous. "I couldn't understand the big powers could give in to the blackmail of an Islamic Republic."

Then, just 12 days after the shah arrived in New York, fundamentalists seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Sixty-six hostages were taken. Khomeini demanded that the shah be returned to Iran to be tried and presumably executed. Finally, in March of 1980, the desperate shah and his family were given permanent sanctuary in Egypt. Four months later, he was dead.

Back to America

The hostage crisis ended as President Ronald Reagan entered office in January 1981.

Reagan took pity on Pahlavi and her children and invited her and her four children to come to the United States.

They moved to Williamstown in western Massachusetts and began a new life in exile.

But more tragedy awaited the queen. The children had trouble adjusting to life in America. Just three years ago, Leila, Pahlavi's youngest child, died of a drug overdose at age 31.

Pahlavi said Leila never recovered from the upheaval of her youth — the death of her father, moving from one country to another, one school to another. "She went from one doctor to another, but somehow, we didn't succeed and one day she took too many sleeping pills." Pahlavi says she doesn't think Leila wanted to commit suicide. "Leila … is a victim of the Islamic Revolution like so many other Leilas."