Chocolate Bars from Paris
ABRAHAMIAN, ERVAND
Chocolate Bars from Paris Blood and Oil: Memoirs of a Persian Prince By Manucher Farmanfarmaian and Roxane Farmanfarmaian Random. 520 pp. $35.00. Reviewed by Ervand Abrahamian Professor of...
...Farman Farma may not have sent his laundry to Odessa, as the Tsars are said to have done, but he did get his chocolate bars directly from Paris...
...Back in 1946, the Russians are said to have set up an "independent republic" in Iranian Azerbaijan...
...He further contends that by the late 1970s London was systematically using the BBC to bring about the Pahlevi regime's downfall...
...One of his sergeants went on to overthrow the Qajar and found the Pahlevi dynasty in 1925...
...Reviewed by Ervand Abrahamian Professor of history, City University of New York...
...Reza Shah Pahlevi reigned until 1941, when he was forced to abdicate by the Allies and was succeeded by his son, Mohammad Reza...
...A cousin, Mohammed Mossadegh, nationalized the oil industry shortly after assuming the Prime Minister's office in 1951, and two years later came close to deposing Mohammad Reza Shah...
...The conventional aristocratic fears are here, too...
...First he appears to think thatthe "masses," because of their "deepseated fear of Communism," were relieved to have been saved...
...He frequently presents as hard facts rumors that had little basis in reality but were accepted as self-evident truths...
...that they murdered American Vice-Consul Robert Imbry in 1922 to eliminate competition from Standard Oil...
...it was never an independent republic...
...By intervening to overthrow Mossadegh, the United States sacrificed the real love it had enjoyed among the people...
...For example, he claims that the British ousted the Qajars and installed the Pahlevis in 1925 because they preferred a military dictator to a constitutional monarch...
...contractors on several lucrative projects...
...author, "Khomeinism Memoirs, it might be said, are to history what military bands are to classical music...
...They included Sir Denis Wright, the British Ambassador to Iran...
...In the Introduction we are told Iran is one of the most xenophobic countries in the world...
...It is not surprising that Iran, run by a handful of aristocratic families, has been described as a feudal society...
...Democracy apparently was just apolitical label and, when not expedient, dispensable...
...And that Western embassies financed anti-Shah student demonstrations because Iran was becoming too powerful...
...Farmanfarmaian suspects that the Ministers of Agriculture and Justice who spearheaded Iran's 1962 land reform and dispossessed his class were "staunch Communists," and that on the eve of the Islamic Revolution half the Shah's Cabinet and many generals secretly belonged to a heretical offshoot of Shi'ite Islam called the Baha'is...
...Actually, forashort time the province had an autonomous administration that the Tudeh Party participated in...
...Between 1972 and 1979 he was Iran's Ambassador to Venezuela...
...and a Venezuelan president and oil minister...
...Ernest Perron, the Shah's mysterious companion from his Swiss school days...
...This paranoia is not limited to the perfidious British...
...Nevertheless, Farmanfarmaian's historical perceptions are thickly colored by the conspiratorial notions of his social stratum, especially regarding Iranian politics...
...Much of what follows tends to substantiate the generalization, albeit unintentionally...
...Upon completing his studies in England, he briefly worked for the state oil company, became an expert on petroleum concessions and gained entrée into court circles through relatives...
...Even his attitude toward the 1953 CIA-supported coup against Mossadegh is filled with glaring contradictions...
...Still, Blood and Oil is worth reading as a well-written, vignettefilled narrative that reflects the views of the old elite—with all of its contradictions, foibles and fears, as well as its national, class and gender biases...
...Such contacts have given him intimate knowledge of Iranian affairs and of international oil matters...
...He advi sed Mossadegh not to nationalize the oil industry, and sided with the Shah during his cousin's 1953 coup...
...Manucher himself studied petroleum engineering in England...
...That the Americans and the Saudis helped Khomeini because the Shah was championing higher oil prices...
...A scion of the Qajar dynasty that ruled Persia from 1797 to 1925, he was raised in the household of his father, Prince Abdol Hossein Farman Farma, who besides being the Monarch's cousin held the successive posts of Provincial Governor, War Minister and Prime Minister...
...His main advice on how to forestall the Islamic Revolution was to have Iranian radio broadcast denunciations of the British Royal Family...
...One sister became a prominent figure in the Communist Tudeh Party...
...Overnight our trust in it evaporated...
...and that they encouraged the emergence of Mossadegh as part of their "deeper political agenda...
...So many eventually held high positions under the Pahlevis that other aristocratic families felt they had "sold out" to the new rulers...
...The Prince owned vast estates and maintained a household of nine wives and 36 children, with over 700 servants and slaves— among them African eunuchs and deaf waiters—and a private army...
...Born in 1917, Farmanfarmaian is ideally positioned to describe the experience of Iran's elite in the 20th century—particularly during the Pahlevi era...
...Now many looked upon the United States with suspicion and dismay, unnerved by its covert role in overthrowing the only democratically elected government the country had ever had...
...He took care to educate his children, too, including his daughters, and nine of his sons obtained their university degrees in the West...
...Manucher Farmanfarmaian has spent much of his adult life in high government positions...
...But they also provide valuable first-hand accounts of their author's culture, social milieu, perceptions, and mentality...
...In rather too vivid terms they tend to portray significant moments of the memoirist's life, while rewarding friends and settling old scores along the way...
...Other brothers and half brothers headed the national Chamber of Commerce, the Central Bank, and the like...
...Manucher Farmanfarmaian's Blood and Oil, written with the help of his daughter Roxane, is no exception...
...Throughout his career, the author appears to have made many influential "friends...
...Although Iran was never formally colonized, anti-British sentiment was pervasive—perhaps a reaction to suffering all the disadvantages of colonization without enjoying its few advantages...
...If this is the way a Western-educated member of Iran's aristocracy—la crème de la crème—sees politics, one shudders to think how Qom-trained theologians from modest provincial backgrounds perceive the modern world...
...History is certainly not Farmanfarmaian's long suit...
...Nosrat-Doleh, an older brother groomed to become the family patriarch, studied law in France, served as a Cabinet minister and modernized the judicial system before Reza Shah, suspecting him of subversion, ordered his murder...
...But four pages later he writes: "For many Persians the coup was a crucial turning point...
...Subsequently, the Shah appointed him to the committee that resolved the conflict over nationalization with Britain (former owner of Iran's oil industry), and then to the board of the National Iranian Oil Company, where he helped establish OPEC...
...Farmanfarmaian claims that the French helped the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini come to power because they wanted to replace U.S...
Vol. 80 • August 1997 • No. 13
