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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

Five Options Under Consideration to Reopen the Strait of Hormuz

Tankers sail in the Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from northern Ras al-Khaimah, near the border with Oman’s Musandam governance, March 11, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
Tankers sail in the Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from northern Ras al-Khaimah, near the border with Oman’s Musandam governance, March 11, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
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Five Options Under Consideration to Reopen the Strait of Hormuz

Tankers sail in the Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from northern Ras al-Khaimah, near the border with Oman’s Musandam governance, March 11, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
Tankers sail in the Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from northern Ras al-Khaimah, near the border with Oman’s Musandam governance, March 11, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo

Luke Broadwater, Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt*

Washington: As the United States presses ahead with its military campaign against Iran, the Strait of Hormuz has emerged as the war’s most pivotal battlefield.

In response to US and Israeli airstrikes, Iran has largely blockaded the strait, snarling oil shipments and rapidly causing the price of gasoline to rise.

With the war approaching the three-week mark, President Donald Trump is facing a battery of military and diplomatic choices that are testing his abilities as a leader.

The United States has been flowing military resources into the region to deal with the problem, and carrying out waves of attacks against Iranian forces and installations in the hopes of reopening the strait — a goal vital to ending the war and addressing the economic and political pressures on the White House.

The president has also pushed for allies to send warships to protect oil tankers in the strait. But he has built up little good will with those countries, after repeatedly subjecting them to punishing tariffs, insults and threats.

On Friday, Trump said he would leave reopening the strait to the countries that use it, claiming the United States did not. “If asked, we will help these Countries in their Hormuz efforts, but it shouldn’t be necessary once Iran’s threat is eradicated,” he wrote on social media.

It was one in a string of mixed messages the Trump administration has sent about the war.
Here are the options under consideration to attempt to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, all of which are complex and carry substantial risks. None of them would guarantee a quick end to the conflict.

Eliminate threats to shipping from land-based attacks

Before the Navy escorts commercial vessels through the strait, US commanders want to destroy as many of Iran’s missiles and drones as possible.

What it would take: In recent days, American warplanes have ramped up strikes against missiles and their launchers along Iran’s southern flank that could target slow-moving oil tankers and giant cargo ships.

Earlier this week, the military’s Central Command said that Air Force F-15E fighter-bombers had dropped several 5,000-pound bombs to penetrate layers of rock and concrete to destroy underground bunkers storing cruise missiles and support equipment.

Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Iran’s ability to launch missiles had declined by 90% since the start of the war. But he acknowledged that Iranian forces still had some firepower left.

General Caine added that some regional allies, which he did not identify, were using Apache helicopter gunships to “handle one-way attack drones,” one of the most potent weapons Iran has used to threaten shipping, as well as neighboring Arab countries and their energy sites across the Arabian Gulf.

Sweep the strait for mines

US officials appear to disagree about whether Iran has already started mining the strait. Intelligence officials say yes, while Pentagon officials say they have not seen clear evidence.
What it would take: Clearing the narrow waterway of Iranian mines would be a weekslong operation, according to one former naval officer who was stationed on a minesweeper in the Arabian Gulf. And it could put US sailors directly in harm’s way.

Iran is believed to maintain a variety of naval mines. They include small limpet mines containing just a few pounds of explosives that divers place directly on a ship’s hull and typically detonate after a set amount of time. Iran also has larger moored mines that float just under the water’s surface, releasing 100 pounds or more of explosive force when they come in contact with an unsuspecting ship.

More advanced “bottom” mines sit on the seafloor. They use a combination of sensors — magnetic, acoustic, pressure and seismic — to determine when a ship is nearby, and explode with hundreds of pounds of force.

“All it takes is for one of those things to get through to shut down traffic,” said Rear Adm. John F. Kirby, a retired naval officer. “The fear alone can be paralyzing to the shipping industry, as we have already seen.”

The Navy had four minesweepers in the Gulf, each with 100 sailors aboard, based in Bahrain. But those ships are gone now, one official said, replaced with three littoral combat ships that can sweep for mines but are also used for other purposes. And two of the ships, the USS Tulsa and the USS Santa Barbara, were spotted far from the Middle East this week, between Malaysia and Singapore, according to the military website The War Zone.

Go after Iran’s navy and fast boat fleet

The Pentagon has targeted the Iranian navy since the opening hours of the war, destroying or damaging more than 120 vessels, including several submarines. The goal was to blunt Iran’s ability to shut down the strait and threaten neighboring countries.

But Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps also has hundreds of speed boats. A fighter armed with a rocket-propelled grenade aboard one of these boats could slip through US defenses and land a deadly blow to a tanker or warship.

What it would take: Low-flying Air Force A-10 Warthog planes are “hunting and killing fast-attack watercraft” in the contested sea lanes, General Caine said. The A-10 was developed to provide close air support for US ground troops, but has been repurposed to strike ships at sea, he said.

US warplanes are also striking speedboats hiding in coastal redoubts, but Iran has positioned some of them in civilian ports, increasing the risks to civilians from any American attacks.

The US military is also attacking storage areas for naval drones before the drones can be launched.

Invade Kharg Island

Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of the military’s Central Command, said the US attack against Iranian military sites on Kharg Island, the country’s oil export hub, had destroyed more than 90 targets, including bunkers for naval mines and missiles.

That has softened the island’s defenses if Trump follows through on his threat to seize the island and put a stranglehold on Iran’s oil economy, a possibility the Pentagon has gamed out in war-planning scenarios for years.

But Iranian troops are still on the island, and US commanders say that such a mission would be risky.

What it would take: Some 2,200 Marines on three warships — armed with drones, attack helicopters and warplanes — have cut short a patrol in the Indo-Pacific region, and are expected to arrive in the Arabian Gulf region later next week. The Marines are trained to conduct amphibious landings.

The US military is dispatching 2,500 additional Marines to the Middle East next month, officials said Friday. They are expected to replace or augment those en route to the region now.

Another option involves Special Operations forces and paratroopers from elite units, like the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, taking the island. Once in control, the Americans would likely be subject to attack from any remaining land- or sea-based Iranian forces.

On Thursday, the president said he had no plans to commit ground forces to the war, before qualifying: “If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you.” He added that he would “do whatever’s necessary to keep the price” of oil down.

Use naval escorts to escort oil tankers

Trump said on Friday that escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz was “a simple military maneuver.” Naval experts say it is anything but.

In fact, of all of Trump’s options for opening up the strait, naval escorts are perhaps the trickiest.

What it would take: Naval escorts are cumbersome operations that require not just Navy destroyers and littoral combat ships, but also attack aircraft.

The Navy has deployed around 12 destroyers and littoral combat ships to the region and could certainly send more, although that could take weeks, Navy officials said. A Navy destroyer, which is equipped with the Aegis Combat System that uses computers and radar to track and target, can protect oil tankers by firing cruise and ballistic missiles at land targets in Iran, while Standard antimissile systems can intercept incoming threats.

But one Navy official said that would require a high ratio of Navy destroyers to commercial ships, and would likely be a huge strain on naval assets. The Pentagon has already requested an additional $200 billion in funding for the war.

Mark Montgomery, a retired rear admiral, estimated that about a dozen Navy destroyers, with armed helicopters and other aircraft overhead, would be needed to escort five or six tankers or cargo ships at a time through the strait — a transit he said could take roughly 10 to 12 hours.

During the so-called tanker war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, the United States escorted reflagged Kuwaiti tankers through the Arabian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, part of Operation Earnest Will.

The USS Samuel B Roberts was nearly destroyed by a mine, and the USS Stark was heavily damaged by Iraqi missiles. In the end, 37 American sailors were killed.

*The New York Times

Features

What to Know About Diego Garcia After Iran Targets the Remote Island’s Key US Military Base

An aerial view of Diego Garcia Island where the joint military base between Britain and the United States is located. (AP)
An aerial view of Diego Garcia Island where the joint military base between Britain and the United States is located. (AP)
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What to Know About Diego Garcia After Iran Targets the Remote Island’s Key US Military Base

An aerial view of Diego Garcia Island where the joint military base between Britain and the United States is located. (AP)
An aerial view of Diego Garcia Island where the joint military base between Britain and the United States is located. (AP)

Iran has launched missiles at Diego Garcia, an Indian Ocean island that is home to a strategic UK-US military base.

Britain condemned “Iran’s reckless attacks” after the unsuccessful attempt to hit the base. It’s unclear how close the missiles came to the island, which is about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) from Iran.

Here is what to know about the remote but strategic base.

Hub for US operations

The US has described the Diego Garcia base as “an all but indispensable platform” for security operations in the Middle East, South Asia and East Africa.

Home to about 2,500 mostly American personnel, it has supported US military operations from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2008, the US acknowledged that it also had been used for clandestine rendition flights of terror suspects.

The US deployed several nuclear-capable B-2 Spirit bombers to Diego Garcia last year amid an intense airstrike campaign targeting Yemen’s Houthi militants.

Britain initially refused to let the base be used for US Israeli attacks on Iran, but after Iran lashed out at its neighbors, the UK said that American bombers could use Diego Garcia and another British base to attack Iran’s missile sites. On Friday, the UK government said that includes sites being used to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

The United Kingdom says that British bases can only be used for “specific and limited defensive operations.”

But Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on X that UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer “is putting British lives in danger by allowing UK bases to be used for aggression against Iran.”

Iran previously has put a self-imposed limit on its ballistic missile program, limiting their range to 1,240 miles (2,000 kilometers). Diego Garcia is well outside that range. However, US officials long have alleged Iran’s space program could allow it to build intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at defense think tank the Royal United Services Institute, said that the attempt to his Diego Garcia may have involved improvised use of Iran's Simorgh space launch rocket, "which could offer greater range as a ballistic missile," though at the cost of reduced accuracy.

A contested island chain

Diego Garcia is part of the Chagos Archipelago, a chain of more than 60 islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean off the tip of India. The islands have been under British control since 1814, when they were ceded by France.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Britain evicted as many as 2,000 people from Diego Garcia, so the US military could build the base there.

In recent years, criticism has mounted over Britain’s control of the archipelago and the way it forcibly displaced the local population. The United Nations and the International Court of Justice have urged the United Kingdom to end its “colonial administration” of the islands and transfer sovereignty to Mauritius.

Trump criticism

After long negotiations, the UK government struck a deal last year with Mauritius to hand over sovereignty of the islands. Britain would then lease back the Diego Garcia base for at least 99 years.

The UK government says that will safeguard the future of the base, which is vulnerable to legal challenges. But the agreement has been criticized by many British opposition politicians, who say giving up the islands puts them at risk of interference by China and Russia.

Some of the displaced Chagos islanders and their descendants also have challenged the deal, saying they weren't consulted and it leaves them unclear on whether they will ever be allowed to return to their homeland.

The US administration initially welcomed the deal, but US President Donald Trump changed his mind in January, calling it “an act of GREAT STUPIDITY" on his social media platform Truth Social.

Starmer’s initial refusal to let the US attack Iran from Diego Garcia further angered Trump, who said earlier this month that “the UK has been very, very uncooperative with that stupid island that they have.”

Passage of the UK-Mauritius deal through Parliament has been put on hold until US support can be regained.

Features

How Iran’s IRGC Rebooted Lebanon’s Hezbollah to Be Ready for War

A picture shows damaged buildings and destroyed vehicles following an Israeli airstrike that targeted the Haret Hreik neighborhood in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut on March 21, 2026. (AFP)
A picture shows damaged buildings and destroyed vehicles following an Israeli airstrike that targeted the Haret Hreik neighborhood in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut on March 21, 2026. (AFP)
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How Iran’s IRGC Rebooted Lebanon’s Hezbollah to Be Ready for War

A picture shows damaged buildings and destroyed vehicles following an Israeli airstrike that targeted the Haret Hreik neighborhood in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut on March 21, 2026. (AFP)
A picture shows damaged buildings and destroyed vehicles following an Israeli airstrike that targeted the Haret Hreik neighborhood in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut on March 21, 2026. (AFP)

Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) rebuilt Hezbollah's military command after it was mauled by Israel in 2024, plugging gaps with Iranian officers before restructuring the Lebanese group and laying plans for the war it is now waging in support of Tehran, two people familiar with these IRGC activities told Reuters.

The overhaul was the first of its kind for Hezbollah, a Shiite group founded by the IRGC in 1982, pointing to a hands-on approach after the blows of the 2024 war, including the killing of its leader Hassan Nasrallah and other top commanders.

Iran's investment paid off, getting Hezbollah back on its feet in time to enter the war in the Middle East on Tehran's side after it was attacked by the United States and Israel.

Reuters reported earlier in March that Hezbollah had seen another war as inevitable and spent months readying itself. This article sheds light on the IRGC's role in these preparations, based on accounts from six sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, as well as an expert on Hezbollah.

The IRGC, deeply involved in Hezbollah since it was established, sent officers to retrain its fighters and oversee rearmament, the two sources familiar with ‌IRGC activities said.

They ‌said IRGC officers also reshaped Hezbollah command structures that had been breached by Israeli intelligence - a factor that had ‌helped Israel ⁠kill many Hezbollah ⁠leaders.

An Israeli military spokesperson said on March 12 that Hezbollah remains a relevant and dangerous force despite the damage Israel has inflicted on it over the last three years.

Hezbollah has fired hundreds of missiles at Israel since it entered the regional war on March 2, prompting an Israeli offensive that has killed more than 1,000 people in Lebanon. Hezbollah fighters are battling Israeli soldiers who have seized ground in the south.

It has yet to be seen how Hezbollah, its power still below the peak levels seen a few years ago, would fare in the event of a full-scale Israeli invasion.

Hezbollah's media office, Iran's Foreign Ministry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Netanyahu said in January that Hezbollah was making efforts to rearm and rebuild its infrastructure with Iranian support.

SCRAPPING HIERARCHY

The two sources said IRGC officers tasked ⁠with helping Hezbollah recover arrived shortly after a ceasefire in November 2024, and set to work even as Israel ‌continued to strike.

One of them said the deployment involved about 100 officers.

Changes implemented at their behest ‌included replacing a hierarchical command structure with a decentralized one, comprising small units with limited knowledge of each other's operations, helping to preserve operational secrecy.

They said IRGC officers also drew ‌up plans for missile attacks against Israel that would be launched simultaneously from Iran and Lebanon - a scenario executed for the first time on March 11.

A ‌senior Lebanese security source said Iranian commanders had helped Hezbollah rehabilitate and reorganize their military cadres. The source said he believed the Iranians were helping Hezbollah pace the current conflict rather than being involved in the detail of picking targets.

Another source briefed on the matter said the IRGC sent officers to Lebanon in 2024 to conduct a post-war audit of Hezbollah, and took direct supervision of its military wing.

An additional two sources said the IRGC had embedded special advisers with Hezbollah last year to help it direct military affairs.

Andreas Krieg, a lecturer ‌at the security studies department of King's College London, said the IRGC "has basically reorganized Hezbollah as a far more flat system", contrasting this with the political hierarchy that had emerged around Nasrallah before his death.

"That decentralized model that ⁠they've now implemented is also a bit ⁠more like what Hezbollah looked like in the 1980s - very small cells," said Krieg, who has researched the group for 15 years. He described this as a "mosaic defense" that is also being used by the IRGC in Iran.

LEBANON ASKED IRGC TO LEAVE COUNTRY

The IRGC's efforts were going on at the same time as Lebanon's government and its US-backed military were seeking to advance a process to disarm the group, underscoring a huge complication facing that objective.

Lebanon estimates that around 100 to 150 Iranian nationals in the country have ties to the Iranian government that go beyond normal diplomatic functions, including links to the IRGC, a Lebanese official told Reuters.

The official said the government asked those people to leave Lebanon in early March.

The two sources familiar with IRGC activities said Guards officers were among more than 150 Iranians who left Beirut on a flight to Russia on March 7.

IRGC members were among the roughly 500 people killed by Israeli attacks in Lebanon in the 15 months between the 2024 ceasefire and the eruption of the new war.

Around a dozen more have been killed in Israeli attacks since the war erupted, including in a strike on a Beirut hotel on March 8, they said.

The IRGC has been closely involved in Hezbollah since its men established the group in the eastern Bekaa Valley to export Iran's 1979 revolution and fight Israeli forces that had invaded Lebanon in 1982.

Qassem Soleimani, the top IRGC general who was killed in 2020 by a US drone strike, had worked alongside Nasrallah during Hezbollah's 2006 war with Israel. When Israeli airstrikes killed Nasrallah in a bunker in Beirut's southern suburbs, an Iranian general was among those who died alongside him.