Ashraf ol-Molouk Pahlavi (Persian: اشرفالملوک پهلوی, Ašraf Pahlavi, 26 October 1919 – 7 January 2016) was the twin sister of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the late Shah of Iran (Persia), and a member of the Pahlavi dynasty. She was considered the "power behind her brother" and was instrumental in the 1953 countercoup that overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in favour of strengthening the monarchical rule of the Shah. She served her brother as a palace adviser and was a strong advocate for women's rights. Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, she lived in exile in France, New York, Paris and Monte Carlo and remained outspoken against the Iranian Islamic Republic.
Ashraf Pahlavi was born in Tehran, Iran, on 26 October 1919, five hours after her brother Mohammad Reza. Her parents were Reza Pahlavi, a military commander, who would become the Shah of Iran, and Tadj ol-Molouk, the second of his four wives. She had 10 siblings and half-siblings.
In the early 1930s, Ashraf Pahlavi, her older sister Shams, and their mother, were among the first significant Iranian women to cease wearing the traditional veil. On 8 January 1936, she and her mother and sister played a major symbolic role in the Kashf-e hijab (the abolition of the veil), which was a part of the shah's effort to include women in public society, by participating in the graduation ceremony of Tehran Teacher's College unveiled.
In 1932, she hosted the Second Eastern Women's Congress, which was arranged by the Jam'iyat-e Nesvan-e Vatankhah.
Ashraf Pahlavi was not permitted to attend university, and instead was married in 1937, at the age of 18, to Mirza Khan Ghavam, whose family was politically allied with her father.
In 1953, Ashraf Pahlavi played an important role in Operation Ajax as the one who changed Mohammad Reza Shah's mind in giving consent to the CIA and SIS to start the operation. The Shah had originally opposed the operation and for a while resisted accepting it. In early 1953, she met with CIA agents who asked her to talk to her brother since she was the only one who was able to influence him. As historian Stephen Kinzer's book All the Shah's Men recounts, "Ashraf was enjoying life in French casinos and nightclubs when one of Kermit Roosevelt's best Iranian agents, Assadollah Rashidian, paid her a call. He found her reluctant, so the next day a delegation of American and British agents came to pose the invitation in stronger terms. The leader of the delegation, a senior British operative named Norman Darbyshire, had the foresight to bring a mink coat and a packet of cash. When Ashraf saw these emoluments, Darbyshire later recalled, "her eyes lit up and her resistance crumbled". By her own account, Pahlavi was offered a blank check if she agreed to return to Iran from her enforced exile in France, but refused the money and returned it of her own accord.
Some historians argue that the coup would have occurred with or without Ashraf Pahlavi's persuasion of her brother. In an International Journal of Middle East Studies article, writer Mark Gasiorowski states that the Shah "was not consulted about the decision to undertake the coup, about its manner of execution, or about the candidate chosen to replace Mosaddegh" and that the coup was instead largely executed by the United States and others looking to undermine Mosaddegh's leadership.
Ashraf Pahlavi was a strong supporter of women's rights in Iran and the world during her brother's reign. In 1967, Pahlavi worked with the United Nations as the Iranian delegate to the Commission on Human Rights as well as the Economic and Social Council. In 1975, she was heavily involved with the International Women's Year, and addressed the United Nations.
Though an instrumental force in legitimising gender reforms, her philosophy on gender was not particularly introspective: "I confess that even though since childhood I had paid a price for being a woman, in terms of education and personal freedom, I had not given much thought to specific ways in which women in general were more oppressed than men". By her own account, she was a strong supporter of the rights of women to basic life necessities such as "food, education, and health" and was not a radical reformist. She cited "chronic apathy" from many governments as the underlying issue that prevented women's rights reforms from being implemented around the world.
Ashraf Pahlavi's women's rights stance was called into question after the publication of her 1976 New York Times op-ed piece, "And Thus Passeth International Women's Year." In a March 1976 article in The Nation, writer Kay Boyle criticized Ashraf for her touting of International Women's Year as succeeding in widening the global vision of sisterhood, while approximately 4,000 of the Princess's own "sisters" were political prisoners in Iran with virtually no hope of a military trial.
In her 1980 memoirs, Pahlavi acknowledges the poor conditions of women in Iran and expresses concern, as she writes, "the news of what was happening to Iran's women was extremely painful... [they] were segregated and relegated to second-class status... many were imprisoned or exiled".
Additionally, Pahlavi worked as an activist for human rights and equality. She was an advocate for the international spread of literacy, especially in Iran, where her brother Mohammad Reza Shah was a major proponent of the anti-illiteracy movement. She served as a member on the International Consultative Liaison Committee for Literacy.
Ashraf Pahlavi was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt in the summer of 1977 at her summer home on the French Riviera. The attack took place early in the morning as the princess was returning from the Palm Beach Casino in Cannes to her villa in Juan-les-Pins (35 Bd Edouard Baudoin). Fourteen bullets were fired into the side of her Rolls-Royce. Her lady-in-waiting was killed, and her chauffeur injured, but the princess left the scene unharmed.
After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ashraf Pahlavi asked David Rockefeller to support her brother Mohammad Reza's attempts to find asylum.
She also attacked U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim for not giving their support to her late brother, the Shah, during the beginnings of the revolution. In 1994, she attended the funeral of former president Richard Nixon.
Ashraf Pahlavi argued that she was "attacked for financial misconduct" because she was engaged "in the administration of various organizations". By her own account, she was of limited financial means when Mosaddegh sent her into exile in Paris. However, in later years she was said to have accumulated a large fortune. She attributed her wealth to increases in the value of lands that she had inherited from her father Reza Shah, and income from inherited businesses. Nevertheless, it has been purported that part of the story behind the build up of her fortune may have been that during the Iranian industrial boom, which was driven by a surge in oil prices, Pahlavi and her son Shahram took 10% or more of a new company's stock gratis in return for ensuring the delivery of a license to operate, to import, to export, or to deal with the government. Government licenses were said to be given only to a few well-connected companies in each field. As a result, the need to get and keep a license became a cost that had to be met.
In 1979, The New York Times reported that a document dated 17 September 1978 from Ashraf's office requested a transfer of $708,000 from her Bank Melli account to her account at the Union Bank of Switzerland in Geneva under the code name 'SAIPA', which, in French, her preferred foreign language, stands for: S-on, A-ltesse, I-mperiale, P-rincesse, A-shraf.
In 1980, Pahlavi wrote an article for The New York Times, in which she came out in defense of herself and her family's financial situation. In the article, she argued that her wealth was not accumulated through "ill-gotten gains" and attributed her fortune to inherited land, which "drastically increased in value with the development of Iran and the new prosperity that was there for all". She asserted that many other Iranians profited from the sale of their own real estate, but were not accused of financial misconduct because of close ties to the clergy and Ayatollah Khomeini. She also defended her brother, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, stating that, contrary to the claims made by some Khomeini supporters, the Shah did not profit from the Pahlavi Foundation. The Princess wrote that she planned to "fight these slanders with all my means and through whatever judicial means are available".