Pahlavi Iran

Pahlavi Iran, officially the Imperial State of Persia until 1935 and the Imperial State of Iran thereafter, was the Iranian state between 1925 and 1979, under the rule of the Pahlavi dynasty. It was formed in 1925 and lasted until 1979, when the Pahlavis were overthrown as a result of the Islamic Revolution, which abolished Iran's continuous monarchy and established the present-day Islamic Republic of Iran. The Pahlavi dynasty was founded in 1925 by Reza Shah, a former brigadier-general of the Persian Cossack Brigade. His reign lasted until 1941, when he was forced to abdicate by the Allies of World War II following the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran. He was succeeded by his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was the last Shah of Iran. The Pahlavis came to power after Ahmad Shah Qajar, the last Iranian ruler under the Qajar dynasty, proved unable to stop encroachments on Iranian sovereignty by the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, had his position extremely weakened by a military coup, and was formally removed from power by parliament while he was in France. Iran's Majlis, convening as a constituent assembly on 12 December 1925, deposed the young Ahmad Shah Qajar and declared Reza Shah as the new shah of the Imperial State of Persia. In 1935, Reza Shah asked foreign delegates to use the endonym Iran instead of the exonym Persia when addressing the country in formal correspondence. Following the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, which was backed by the United Kingdom and the United States, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's rule became more autocratic and firmly aligned with the Western Bloc during the Cold War. In correspondence with this reorientation of Iran's foreign policy, the country became an ally of the United States in order to act as a bulwark against Soviet ideological expansionism, and this gave the Shah the political capital to enact a hitherto unprecedented socio-economic program that would transform all aspects of Iranian life through the White Revolution. Consequently, Iran experienced prodigious success in all indicators, including literacy, health, and standard of living. However, by 1978, the Shah faced growing public discontent that culminated into a full-fledged popular revolutionary movement led by religious cleric Ruhollah Khomeini. Mohammed Reza Pahlavi went into exile with his family in January 1979, sparking a series of events that quickly led to the end of monarchy, and the establishment of the Islamic Republic on 31 March 1979.