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Queen Soraya’s Birthday and the Old Question of Pahlavi Succession

Iran’s wronged queen has found a new life in the age of social media.

Mohammadreza Shah Pahlavi and Soraya married in 1951. (Getty Images)
Mohammadreza Shah Pahlavi and Soraya married in 1951. (Getty Images)
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Queen Soraya’s Birthday and the Old Question of Pahlavi Succession

Mohammadreza Shah Pahlavi and Soraya married in 1951. (Getty Images)
Mohammadreza Shah Pahlavi and Soraya married in 1951. (Getty Images)

In recent years, Soraya Pahlavi has been a subject of intense attention among Iranian users on social media for a variety of reasons, the most common of which is her “beauty.”

From when she left Iran on February 13, 1958 to when the revolution broke out in 1979, there was a total news and image embargo on Queen Soraya. In the age of internet, however, the story of her life, quotes from her memoirs and her pictures have now become widely available and met with a rapturous welcome from a new generation.

On Monday, June 22, Queen Soraya’s birthday, her images seemed to fill my Instagram feed: Who was Soraya Esfandiari, second wife of late Mohammadreza Shah Pahlavi?

Soraya Esfandiari Bakhtiari was born on June 22, 1932 in Isfahan from an Iranian father and German mother.

The attention shown to a woman that has had seemingly little role in the contemporary history of our country gave me an excuse to, on the occasion of her birthday and spreading around of her beautiful and attractive pictures, revisit her life and pose a question: How did her marriage to the young Shah affect Iranian history? On social media, most users seemed to be more interested in her wealth and how she had little interest in Iran or Iranians; otherwise why did she not donate her wealth to the Iranian people and instead gave them to charities who help the disabled in France or dogs in Paris?

The Shah of Iran is said to have been madly in love with Queen Soraya. After seven years of marriage, under pressure from his family and the Senate, he divorced Soraya. The monarchy needed an heir and Soraya had failed to produce one.

There is no detailed account of why the Shah got a divorce from his first wife. Based on accounts by those close to the court, Queen Fawzia got the divorce on the insistence of her brother (King Farouk) and pressure from the Egyptian court.

The good Iranian-Egyptian relations had been tarred. Fawzia was called to Egypt and not allowed to go back to Tehran. From this first marriage of the Shah, a daughter, Shanaz, was born who stayed in Iran and, during Shah’s marriage to Soraya, was sent to dorm schools in Switzerland.

Shah’s marriage to Soraya started with love. The 17-year-old girl, from a Bakhtiari tribal background; granddaughter of Ali Qoli Khan, the legendary chieftain and revolutionary; stole the heart of the young Shah with her emerald eyes. She was Shah’s only wife who used the title Malake. i.e. Queen (Shah’s next wife, Farah Diba, gained the title “Shahbanoo” or empress).

According to the doctors, Soraya had no fertility problem. Why couldn’t she bear a child then? Perhaps typhoid fever, nervous reasons, stress of marrying a royal family or the chaos that ensued Iran following the coup d’etat of August 1953 and Shah’s sudden leaving of Iran for Italy during those heady days.

Whatever the reason, the young woman who had married a king at the age of 17 was not so lucky.

The Imperial State of Iran created an all-female order in her honor, named the Order of the Pleiades. The title referred to her name since Soraya is a Persian name for the famed star cluster of Taurus, Pleiades (in English, it’s sometimes called the Seven Sisters). The order is made of blue enamel, decorated with seven diamond stars that stand for the star cluster.

But the number seven didn’t augur well for Queen Soraya’s life. Her marriage also only lasted exactly seven years. On the very day after the seventh anniversary of her marriage to the Shah, on February 13, 1958, she left Iran forever.

Queen Soraya left Iran with a broken heart. Whenever I think of her life, I am filled with sadness for how much unkindness she saw. One day she was a Queen, revered everywhere; then suddenly turned into a divorcé whose infertility was known everywhere. All media could talk about was her divorce and her inability to bear a child. No woman can accept such humiliation; especially since she was not an ordinary woman and had become known around the world.

The title Queen was taken away from her and instead she was allowed to be called a “Shahzade Khanum” like the sisters of the Shah.

After the divorce, all her pictures were ordered to be taken down from streets and schoolbooks. The media were not allowed to report on the former queen.

She wasn’t allowed to travel back to Iran either. Soraya had to be obliterated from history so that Shah’s new wife could appear unrivaled. It is said that Mohammadreza and Shah, as humans, loved each other to the last day. Queen Soraya never took off the diamond ring of marriage the Shah gave her. According to a credible source, she wanted to come see the Shah in Cairo in his last days but was never able to.

For a woman born and bred in Iran, and educated there, it must have been so difficult to be barred from the homeland. At the age of 15, when her father was made ambassador to Berlin, Esfandiaris left Iran. She was 16 when Shah’s sister saw Soraya in a party organized by the embassy in London and thought her a suitable match for her brother.

Shah married Soraya seven years after he had divorced Fawzia. His marriage with Soraya also lasted seven years. Two years after their divorce, he married Shahbanoo Farah Pahlavi.

The heir to the throne was born one year after Shah and Farah had married; the crown prince was born more than 20 years after his father had been on the throne. At the time of the revolution, the crown prince was too young to assume the throne for his father; an event that could have help change Iranian history.

Fate has many games in store. The Shah of Iran, following three marriages and five kids, was unable to see his son ascend to the Peacock Throne. From the two sons that came out of Shah’s marriage to Farah, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi is the only one alive. His younger brother, Prince Alireza, ended his life in Boston in January 2011.

The political future of Reza Pahlavi, the only remaining son of the late Shah, and his views on the monarchical system, is a question often asked by Iranians today.

When he turned 20, Reza Pahlavi could now assume the throne, based on Iran’s old constitution. In Cairo, he swore loyalty to the constitution.

From the very first days when the Shah ascended the throne, the succession issue became key to many political and social debates. Forty-three years after the 1979 revolution ended the monarchy, the debate continues and engages proponents and opponents of the monarchical system.

Recently, a voice file was published in which Reza Pahlavi could be heard saying: “I personally prefer a republic to a hereditary monarchy.” This led to many reactions. Was the crown prince resigning from the monarchy?

Reza Pahlavi also has no male heir or nephew. His brother’s only child was a daughter.

On the 89th birthday of Queen Soraya, a woman driven away because she couldn’t give birth and replaced by a woman who could give Iran a crown prince, we have revisited the debates on succession in the Pahlavi dynasty; a debate that has never left Iranians ever since Mohammadreza Shah married the Egyptian princess Fawzia in 1939. Almost a century later, the debate still goes on.

Queen Soraya died on October 26, 2001 in Paris. She was 69 years old.

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Features

Why Greenland Is Strategically Important to Arctic Security

Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on March 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)
Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on March 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)
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Why Greenland Is Strategically Important to Arctic Security

Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on March 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)
Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on March 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)

Location, location, location: Greenland’s position above the Arctic Circle makes the world’s largest island a key part of security strategy.

Increasing international tensions, global warming and the changing world economy have put Greenland at the heart of the debate over global trade and security, and US President Donald Trump wants to make sure his country controls the mineral-rich island that guards the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches to North America.

Greenland is a self-governing territory of Denmark, a longtime US ally that has rejected Trump’s overtures. Greenland’s own government also opposes US designs on the island, saying the people of Greenland will decide their own future.

The island, 80% of which lies above the Arctic Circle, is home to about 56,000 mostly Inuit people who until now have been largely ignored by the rest of the world.

Here’s why Greenland is strategically important to Arctic security:

Greenland’s location is key

Greenland sits off the northeastern coast of Canada, with more than two-thirds of its territory lying within the Arctic Circle. That has made it crucial to the defense of North America since World War II, when the US occupied Greenland to ensure it didn’t fall into the hands of Nazi Germany and to protect crucial North Atlantic shipping lanes.

Following the Cold War, the Arctic was largely an area of international cooperation. But climate change is thinning the Arctic ice, promising to create a northwest passage for international trade and reigniting competition with Russia, China and other countries over access to the region’s mineral resources.

Security threats

In 2018, China declared itself a “near-Arctic state” in an effort to gain more influence in the region. China has also announced plans to build a “Polar Silk Road” as part of its global Belt and Road Initiative, which has created economic links with countries around the world.

Then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rejected China’s move, saying: “Do we want the Arctic Ocean to transform into a new South China Sea, fraught with militarization and competing territorial claims?”

Meanwhile, Russia has sought to assert its influence over wide areas of the Arctic in competition with the US, Canada, Denmark and Norway. Moscow has also sought to boost its military presence in the polar region, home to its Northern Fleet and a site where the Soviet Union tested nuclear weapons. Russian military officials have said that the site is ready for resuming the tests, if necessary.

Russia's military has been restoring old Soviet infrastructure in the Arctic and building new facilities. Since 2014, the Russian military has opened several military bases in the Arctic and worked on reconstructing airfields.

European leaders’ concerns have been heightened since Russia launched a war in Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin noted that Moscow is worried about NATO’s activities in the Arctic and will respond by strengthening the capability of its armed forces there. But he said that Moscow was holding the door open to broader international cooperation in the region.

US military presence

The US Department of Defense operates the remote Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, which was built after the US and Denmark signed the Defense of Greenland Treaty in 1951. It supports missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance operations for the US and NATO.

Greenland also guards part of what is known as the GIUK (Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom) Gap, where NATO monitors Russian naval movements in the North Atlantic.

Thomas Crosbie, an associate professor of military operations at the Royal Danish Defense College, said that an American takeover wouldn't improve upon Washington’s current security strategy.

“The United States will gain no advantage if its flag is flying in Nuuk (Greenland's capital) versus the Greenlandic flag,” he told The Associated Press. “There’s no benefits to them because they already enjoy all of the advantages they want.

"If there’s any specific security access that they want to improve American security, they’ll be given it as a matter of course, as a trusted ally. So this has nothing to do with improving national security for the United States.”

Denmark’s parliament approved a bill last June to allow US military bases on Danish soil. It widened a previous military agreement, made in 2023 with the Biden administration, where US troops had broad access to Danish air bases in the Scandinavian country.

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, in a response to lawmakers’ questions, wrote over the summer that Denmark would be able to terminate the agreement if the US tries to annex all or part of Greenland.

Danish armed forces in Greenland

Denmark is moving to strengthen its military presence around Greenland and in the wider North Atlantic. Last year, the government announced a roughly 14.6 billion-kroner ($2.3 billion) agreement with parties including the governments of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, another self-governing territory of Denmark, to “improve capabilities for surveillance and maintaining sovereignty in the region.”

The plan includes three new Arctic naval vessels, two additional long-range surveillance drones and satellite capacity.

Denmark’s Joint Arctic Command is headquartered in Nuuk, and tasked with the “surveillance, assertion of sovereignty and military defense of Greenland and the Faroe Islands,” according to its website. It has smaller satellite stations across the island.

The Sirius Dog Sled Patrol, an elite Danish naval unit that conducts long-range reconnaissance and enforces Danish sovereignty in the Arctic wilderness, is also stationed in Greenland.

Mineral wealth

Greenland is also a rich source of the so-called rare earth minerals that are a key component of cellphones, computers, batteries and other high-tech gadgets that are expected to power the world’s economy in the coming decades.

That has attracted the interest of the US and other Western powers as they try to ease China’s dominance of the market for these critical minerals.

Development of Greenland’s mineral resources is challenging because of the island’s harsh climate, while strict environmental controls have proved an additional hurdle for potential investors.

Features

Protest-Hit Iran Warily Watches the US After its Raid on Venezuela

Iranians protest a 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini's death after she was detained by the morality police, in Tehran, Sept. 20, 2022, in this photo taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran. (AP Photo/ File)
Iranians protest a 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini's death after she was detained by the morality police, in Tehran, Sept. 20, 2022, in this photo taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran. (AP Photo/ File)
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Protest-Hit Iran Warily Watches the US After its Raid on Venezuela

Iranians protest a 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini's death after she was detained by the morality police, in Tehran, Sept. 20, 2022, in this photo taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran. (AP Photo/ File)
Iranians protest a 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini's death after she was detained by the morality police, in Tehran, Sept. 20, 2022, in this photo taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran. (AP Photo/ File)

Iran faces a new round of protests challenging the country's theocracy, but it seems like the only thing people there want to talk about is half a world away: Venezuela.

Since the US military seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran, over the weekend, Iranian state media headlines and officials have condemned the operation. In the streets and even in some official conversations, however, there's a growing question over whether a similar mission could target the country's top officials including the supreme leader, 86-year-old Ali Khamenei.

The paranoia feeds into wider worries among Iranians. Many fear that close US ally Israel will target Iran again as it did during the 12-day war it launched against Tehran in June. Israel killed a slew of top military officials and nuclear scientists, and the US bombed Iranian nuclear enrichment sites. Khamenei is believed to have gone into hiding for his protection.

“God bless our leader, we should be careful too," said Saeed Seyyedi, a 57-year-old teacher in Tehran, worried the US could act as it did in Venezuela.

"The US has always been after plots against Iran, especially when issues like oil, Israel are part of the case. In addition, it can be complicated when it is mixed with the Russia-Ukraine war, the Lebanese (group) Hezbollah and drug accusations.”

The US long has accused the Iranian-backed Hezbollah of running drug-smuggling operations to fund its operations, including in Latin America, which the group denies.

‘Please pray’

Immediately after Maduro’s seizure, an analyst on Iranian state television claimed, without offering evidence, that the US and Israel had plans during the war last year to kidnap Iranian officials with a team of dual-national Iranians. Even for conspiracy-minded Iranian television, airing such a claim is unusual.

Then on Sunday night, the prominent cleric Mohammad Ali Javedan warned an audience at prayers in Tehran University that Khamenei's life was in danger.

“Someone said he had a bad dream that the leader’s life is in danger," Javedan said, without elaborating. "Please pray.”

However, Iran is roughly twice the size of Venezuela and has what analysts consider to be a much stronger military and robust security forces. The memory of Operation Eagle Claw, a failed US special forces mission to rescue hostages held after the 1979 US Embassy takeover in Tehran, also haunts Washington.

Then there's the political situation in Iran, with its theocracy protected by hard-liners within the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, who answer only to Khamenei.

They could launch assassinations, cyberattacks and assaults on shipping in the Middle East, warned Farzin Nadimi, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who studies Iran’s military.

And crucially, Iran also still has fissile nuclear material.

“In the grand-strategy scheme of things, they need to think about the day after,” Nadimi said of anyone considering a Venezuela-style raid. “Iran is a much more complex political situation. They have to calculate the costs and benefits.”

Not just the Iranians

Others wonder what part of the world the US might take interest in next, while critics have warned about setting a dangerous precedent.

“The regime in Iran should pay close attention to what is happening in Venezuela,” Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid posted on social media on Saturday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not directly link Maduro's detention to Iran but acknowledged the protests sweeping Tehran and other cities, saying: “It is very possible that we are standing at the moment when the Iranian people are taking their fate into their own hands.”

Hours before the US action in Venezuela, US President Donald Trump warned Iran that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters” the US “will come to their rescue.”

On Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei denounced the comments by Trump and Netanyahu as an “incitement to violence, terrorism and killing.”

US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican who had been close to Trump but resigned Monday after a falling-out with the president, directly linked the Venezuela operation to Iran.

“The next obvious observation is that by removing Maduro this is a clear move for control over Venezuelan oil supplies that will ensure stability for the next obvious regime change war in Iran," Greene wrote on social media.

‘Make Iran Great Again’

US Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican, put on a “Make Iran Great Again” hat during a Sunday segment on Fox News. He later posted an image showing him and Trump smiling after the president autographed a similar-looking hat.

“I pray and hope that 2026 will be the year that we make Iran great again," Graham said.

Features

Iran at a Critical Crossroads Testing the Survival of its Regime

Burning debris lies in the middle of a street during protests in Hamedan, western Iran, Jan. 1, 2026. (AFP/Getty Images)
Burning debris lies in the middle of a street during protests in Hamedan, western Iran, Jan. 1, 2026. (AFP/Getty Images)
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Iran at a Critical Crossroads Testing the Survival of its Regime

Burning debris lies in the middle of a street during protests in Hamedan, western Iran, Jan. 1, 2026. (AFP/Getty Images)
Burning debris lies in the middle of a street during protests in Hamedan, western Iran, Jan. 1, 2026. (AFP/Getty Images)

Iran is confronting one of the most consequential junctures since the founding of the republic in 1979. The pressures bearing down on the system are no longer confined to economic sanctions or familiar forms of external coercion, but now cut to the heart of the governing formula itself: how to ensure the regime’s survival without accelerating the very forces that threaten to undermine it.

At the center of this moment lies a stark existential dilemma. A permissive response to internal unrest risks allowing protests to spread and harden into a protracted campaign of political attrition, while a sweeping security crackdown would heighten external dangers, at a time of mounting international hostility and unprecedented US warnings.

Caught between these two paths, Tehran finds its room for maneuver shrinking to levels it has rarely faced before.

Passing protests or structural shift?

The evolution of the current protests raises a central question about their nature: are they a containable social wave, or a deeper expression of a shift in public mood? The spread of demonstrations to small and medium-sized cities, and the widening of their social base, reflect an advanced level of discontent, even if it has not yet reached the threshold of a comprehensive explosion.

Farzin Nadimi, a senior Iran analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argues that this wave differs from previous ones.

He told Asharq Al-Awsat that the latest protests, unlike earlier waves led by university students or low-income workers in major cities, are now driven by young people in smaller towns and supported by university students nationwide.

He described them as “more entrenched and widespread,” though not yet as large as some previous protests, noting the absence of government employees and oil workers, alongside a strong female presence once again.

This assessment aligns with the reading of Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who pointed to three key differences defining this wave: the nature of the participating forces, the symbolism of its launch from Tehran’s bazaar, and the impact of Israeli strikes that have punctured the aura surrounding Iran.

By contrast, Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, cautions against overestimating the street’s ability to bring about rapid change, noting that the Iranian system is highly organized and does not hesitate to use violence to control society.

‘Political fuel’

Iran’s economic crisis is no longer a technical issue that can be separated from politics. The collapse of the currency, the erosion of purchasing power, and declining trust in institutions have turned the economy into a direct driver of protest.

With each new round of pressure or sanctions, the sense deepens that the system is incapable of delivering real solutions without making political concessions.

Alex Vatanka, a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, argues that what is unfolding goes beyond anger over prices or living conditions.

He told Asharq Al-Awsat that the protests reflect a deeper shift in public opinion, in which opposition is no longer directed at specific policies but at the model of governance itself. This shift, he said, confronts the system with a difficult question: can the economy be saved without rethinking the structure of power?

The security establishment: cohesion or fatigue?

Security institutions, from the Revolutionary Guards and their Basij mobilization arm to the intelligence services, form the backbone of the system’s ability to endure. Historically, these institutions have been the primary guarantor of internal stability, but mounting pressures now raise questions about their moral and ideological cohesion.

Rubin said that cracks are widening, pointing to rumors that Tehran has turned to deploying forces from Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces and Afghanistan’s Fatemiyoun Brigade due to declining confidence in some Revolutionary Guard units’ willingness to carry out orders.

Vatanka, for his part, acknowledged that these institutions remain cohesive for now, but warned that this cohesion is under growing strain from economic and social exhaustion, which over time could erode morale and produce partial fractures, even if open defections remain unlikely in the foreseeable future.

From deterrence to breaking taboos

If internal challenges are pressing on the structure of power, the external environment multiplies the risks. US-Israeli escalation, coupled with the waning weight of regional allies, places Iran before a radically different strategic landscape.

Threats by US President Donald Trump to support Iranian protesters signal a qualitative shift in US rhetoric, in which the focus is no longer confined to the nuclear program, but now includes Iran’s internal dynamics as part of the pressure equation.

Nadimi said that the developments in Venezuela and the arrest of Nicolas Maduro as carrying troubling implications for Tehran, while stressing the differences between the two cases, arguing that Iran is larger and more complex, and that Washington does not believe its system can be easily overthrown without a clear internal alternative.

Vatanka, however, sees a significant psychological impact from that precedent, saying it has weakened the assumption that leaders are immune from personal targeting.

The regional network: asset or burden?

Israeli strikes in June that targeted military leaders and sovereign symbols inside Iran reflect a shift in Israel’s security doctrine, from containment to direct confrontation.

O’Hanlon said that this pattern, following events in Venezuela and attacks on figures linked to Iran’s nuclear program, has become more likely under Trump, reflecting a willingness to break taboos that once held.

At the same time, questions are resurfacing over the effectiveness of Iran’s regional network. According to Vatanka, these arms are no longer a real deterrent, but have become, given their rising costs, a strategic burden.

Rubin agreed, adding that they have drained the state treasury, although he does not rule out the system turning to them if the crisis intensifies on the domestic front.

Amid this complex entanglement between internal and external pressures, the Iranian system’s options are narrowing as never before.

Between those who see this weakness as an opportunity to rebalance the region and those who fear widespread chaos, the core question remains: Is Tehran facing a manageable crisis of governance or an existential crisis that could shape Iran and the region for decades to come?