page_title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
section_title: Religious beliefs
hierarchical_section_title: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi / Religious beliefs
caption_attribution_description: English: Shah and Shahbanu in Imam Reza shrine - 1 June 1978
context_page_description: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, also known as Mohammad Reza Shah, was the last Shah of Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow in the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979. Due to his status as the last Shah of Iran, he is often known as simply the Shah.
  Mohammad Reza Shah took the title Shahanshah on 26 October 1967. He was the second and last monarch of the House of Pahlavi. Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi held several other titles, including that of Aryamehr and Bozorg Arteshtaran. His dream of what he referred to as a "Great Civilisation" in Iran led to a rapid industrial and military modernisation, as well as economic and social reforms.
  Mohammad Reza came to power during World War II after an Anglo-Soviet invasion forced the abdication of his father, Reza Shah Pahlavi. During Mohammad Reza's reign, the British owned oil industry was briefly nationalized by Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh until a UK- and US-backed coup d'état deposed Mosaddegh and brought back foreign oil firms under the Consortium Agreement of 1954.
context_section_description: From his mother, Mohammad Reza inherited an almost messianic belief in his own greatness and that God was working in his favour, which explained the often passive and fatalistic attitudes that he displayed as an adult. In 1973, Mohammad Reza told the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci:
  A king who does not need to account to anyone for what he says and does is unavoidably doomed to loneliness. However, I am not entirely alone, because a force others can't perceive accompanies me. My mystical force. Moreover, I receive messages. I have lived with God besides me since I was 5 years old. Since, that is, God sent me those visions.
  
  Mohamed Reza often spoke in public and in private from childhood onward of his belief that God had chosen him for a "divine mission" to transform Iran, as he believed that dreams he had as a child of the Twelve Imams of Shia Islam were all messages from God. In his 1961 book Mission for My Country, Mohammad Reza wrote: 
  From the time I was six or seven, I have felt that perhaps there is a supreme being, who is guiding me. I don't know. Sometimes the thought disturbs me because then, I ask myself, what is my own personality, and am I possessed of free will? Still, I often reflect, if I am driven-or perhaps I should say supported-by another force, there must be a reason.
   In his biography of the Shah, Marvin Zonis has argued that Mohammad Reza really believed in these claims of divine support. Shia Islam has no tradition of describing Shahs being favoured with messages from God, very few Shahs had ever claimed that their dreams were divine messages, and most people in the West laughed and snickered at Mohammad Reza's claim that his dreams were messages from God. Reza Khan who was an atheist dismissed these visions as nonsense, and told his son to have more common sense.
  Fereydoon Hoveyda, a veteran diplomat who served as the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations (1971–1979), and the brother of Amir-Abbas Hoveyda, the Prime Minister under the Shah (1965–1977) executed after the Islamic revolution, and himself a critic of the régime who died in exile, says that "when it comes to religion and spirituality, many passages of the monarch's and Khomeini's publications are interchangeable", which he perceives as the continuity of the Iranian civilization, where the religion changes but the spirit remains.
caption: The Shah and Shahbanu Farah Pahlavi visiting the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, the eighth Imam of Twelver Shiites, on 1 June 1978. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was recognized as the last Shia Muslim king in Islamic history.