PO BAG 1: Persia

Showing posts with label Persia. Show all posts

9 January 2016

Iranian Princess Ashraf, shah's twin sister, dies at age 96

In this June 20, 1975 file photo, Princess Ashraf Pahlavi of Iran talks with Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim of the United Nations during International Women’s Year Conference in Mexico City. Pahlavi, the twin sister of the country’s deposed shah whose glamorous life epitomized the excesses of her brother’s rule, has died after decades in exile. She was 96. Reza Pahlavi, a son of the shah, announced his aunt’s death in a Facebook post on Thursday, Jan. 7, 2016.

Iranian Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, the twin sister of the country's deposed shah whose glamorous life epitomized the excesses of her brother's rule, has died after decades in exile. She was 96.

Many in Iran before the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution believed Princess Ashraf served as the true power behind her brother, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and pushed him into taking power in a 1953 coup engineered by the U.S.