A moderniser, Reza Shah clashed with the Shia clergy and introduced social, economic, and political reforms during his reign, ultimately laying the foundations of the modern Iranian state.

[18][19] Reza Shah Pahlavi was born in the town of Alasht in Savadkuh County, Mazandaran province, in 1878, to son of Major Abbas-Ali Khan and wife Noush-Afarin.

[20][21] His mother, Nush Afarin Ayromlu, was an immigrant from Georgia[22] or Iravan[23] (then part of the Russian Empire), whose family had emigrated to Qajar Iran when it was forced to cede all of its territories in the Caucasus following the Russo-Persian Wars several decades prior to Reza Shah's birth.

[28] Maurits Wagenvoort, who met and spoke to Reza at a meeting of the "Babi-circle of Hadsji Achont" in Tehran in 1903, in a publication from 1926 speaks of him as the "gholam of His Presence the Dutch Consul" and noted his very keen interest in Western politics.

[33] About a month later, under British direction, Reza Khan led his 3,000-4,000 strong detachment of the Cossack Brigade, based in Niyarak, Qazvin, and Hamadan, to Tehran and seized the capital.

[44] It induced the Parliament to grant Reza Khan dictatorial powers, who in turn assumed the symbolic and honorific styles of Janab-i-Ashraf (His Serene Highness) and Hazrat-i-Ashraf on 28 October 1923.

[48] While the Shah left behind no major thesis, or speeches giving an overarching policy, his reforms indicated a striving for an Iran which—according to scholar Ervand Abrahamian—would be "free of clerical influence, nomadic uprisings, and ethnic differences", on the one hand, and on the other hand would contain "European-style educational institutions, Westernized women active outside the home, and modern economic structures with state factories, communication networks, investment banks, and department stores.

In the second half of his reign (1933–1941), which the Shah described as "one-man rule", strong personalities like Davar and Teymourtash were removed, and secularist and Western policies and plans initiated earlier were implemented.

In Mashhad, the revenues of the sanctuary of Imam Reza helped finance secular education, build a modern hospital, improve the water supply of the city, and underwrite industrial enterprises.

When Reza Khan ascended the throne in 1925, his court minister, Teymourtash, suggested ending the French monopoly on excavation granted by Qajar government and appointing a Frenchman as the director of a new archaeological institute.

When his favorite daughter, Princess Shams, wanted a garden, she chose a design by French architect André Godard; however, the shah's approval was required for construction within the royal compound.

The minister of finance, Prince Firouz Nosrat-ed-Dowleh III, who played an important role in the first three years of his reign, was convicted on similar charges in May 1930, and also died in prison, in January 1938.

In 1935, Reza Shah asked foreign delegates and League of Nations to use the term Iran ("Land of the Aryans"), the endonym of the country, used by its native people, in formal correspondence.

[68] Although the landed aristocracy lost most of their influence during Reza Shah's reign, his regime aroused opposition not from them or the gentry but from Iran's: "tribes, the clergy, and the young generation of the new intelligentsia.

[74] Doctors were permitted to dissect human bodies, in defiance of the Quranic ban on necropsy (the Shah even forced his cabinet members to "accompany him to the university's pathology lab to view two cadavers in a vat").

The standoff was ended when troops from Iranian Azerbaijan arrived and broke into the shrine,[79] killing dozens and injuring hundreds, and marking a final rupture between the clergy and the Shah.

[81] The Shah also intensified his controversial changes following the incident with the Kashf-e hijab decree, banning the chador and ordering all citizens, rich and poor, to bring their wives to public functions without head coverings.

[70] According to Makki Hossein, this north–south railway line was uneconomical, only serving the British, who had a military presence in the south of Iran and desired the ability to transfer their troops north to Russia, as part of their strategic defence plan.

They began to form a stronger alliance as Iran started helping the Axis forces and Adolf Hitler's cabinet declared Iranians to be immune to the Nuremberg Laws, as they were considered to be the only people besides Germans to be "pure Aryans".

Abdolhossein Teymourtash assisted by Farman Farma, Ali-Akbar Davar and a large number of modern educated Iranians, proved adept at masterminding the implementation of many reforms demanded since the failed constitutional revolution of 1905–1911.

[96] The parliament assented to his decrees,[97] the free press was suppressed, and the swift incarceration of political leaders like Mossadegh, the murder of others such as Teymourtash, Sardar Asad, Firouz, Modarres, Arbab Keikhosro and the suicide of Davar, ensured that any progress towards democratization was stillborn and organized opposition to the Shah, impossible.

Reza Shah treated the urban middle class, the managers, and technocrats with an iron fist; as a result his state-owned industries remained underproductive and inefficient.

[100] Eventually, the Shah became totally dependent on the military and secret police to retain power; in return, these state organs regularly received funding up to 50 percent of available public revenue to ensure their loyalty.

[99] In August 1941 the Allied powers (United Kingdom and the Soviet Union) invaded and occupied neutral Iran by a massive air, land, and naval assault without a declaration of war.

In Tehran itself, the casualties had been light, but the Soviet Air Force dropped leaflets over city, warning the population of an upcoming massive bombing raid and urging them to surrender before they suffered imminent destruction.

[104] Foroughi was disobliged towards Reza Shah, having been previously forced into retirement years earlier for political reasons with his daughter's father in-law being executed by firing squad.

[111] When he accepted the unpleasant responsibility of acting as defense attorney for a group of officers accused of torturing political prisoners, he stated: "Our young intellectuals cannot possibly understand and cannot judge the reign of Reza Shah.

After the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Iran on 25 August 1941, the British offered to keep his family in power if Reza Shah agreed to a life of exile.

[118] Subsequently, he was sent to Durban and then to a house at 41 Young Avenue in the Parktown neighborhood of Johannesburg, South Africa,[119] where he died at the age of sixty-six on 26 July 1944 of a heart ailment about which he had been complaining for many years.

After his death, his body was carried to Egypt, where it was embalmed and kept at the royal Al-Rifa'i Mosque in Cairo (also the future burial place of his son, the exiled Mohammad Reza Pahlavi).