Aryamehr

[1][2] Aryamehr was granted as a secondary title by a session of the joint Houses of Parliament (Majles) on 15 September 1965 to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran (reigning since he took the oath at the Majles on 17 September 1941), before his coronation at Tehran, 26 October 1967.

[3][4][5][6] The Pahlavis used it as an idealization of pre-Islamic Iran and foundation for anti-clerical monarchism, while the clerics used it to exalt "Iranian values" vis-à-vis Westernization.

[7][8] Demonstrating affinity with Orientalist views of the alleged "supremacy" of the Aryan peoples and the "mediocrity" of the Semitic peoples, Iranian nationalist discourse idealized pre-Islamic Achaemenid and Sassanid empires,[a] whilst negating the Islamization of Persia during Islamic Caliphate era.

[12] In 1965, the Shah ordered Mohammad Ali Mojtahedi to establish Aryamehr University of Technology.

It was the third and last Imperial order of knighthood founded by the Shah on 26 September 1967 [b] in honour of his consort, Empress Farah Diba, and restricted to ladies only.