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The Diaries of Assadollah Alam

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This book is probably the greatest source of information about the life and deeds of the last king of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi AKA the Shah. Mr Alam, the Shah's best friend has written about every detail of his life for the last ten years of his reign. Alam admired the Shah greatly and his writing is therefore not impartial, but at least he expreses the Shah's perception of the national and international politics accurately. This results in the closest possible look at the way the Shah thought and how he made his decisions. After reading this book one almost thinks to have understood how the Shah's decisions led to the 1979 revolution.

The major disadvantage of the book is the editor's ad hoc approach in excluding materials included by the author. Judging by the few diary pages the images of which have been reproduced in the book, the editor seems to have cut out numerous sentences anywhere he had pleased with no apparent reason. In some cases he explains the reasons as privacy concern for the Alam family or the safty of some people who may still be living in Iran. However, such explanantions are very rare and the book is filled throughout by '...' signs that rarely seem to be by Alam.

The book has another deficiency: Alam had originally inclosed drafts of the letters by the Shah to foreign heads of state and letters to the Shah from international dignitaries with his diary notes. Very few of these have been published in the diaries and the reader is therefore denied access to this great source of information. Let us hope that in a few years time a new edition of the notes comes out without any omissions.

The Diaries of Mr. Asadollah Alam, former Minister of Court to the late Shah of Iran is one of the most interesting, captivating and revealing compilation of notes ever written by a former high ranking official. It demonstrates the dedication to public service and duty by a man who was in no need of any kind in getting himself involved in the complicated politics of his country, but as scion of a three hundred year ruling family with vast land holdings in eastern Iran he was brought up by his very powerful father, inculcated with a strong sense of public duty and patriotism. Dr. Alikhani, former Economics Minister under Alam's prime ministership continuing under Prime Ministers Mansour and Hoveyda, and who later became Chancellor of Tehran University, has done an excellent job of compiling Mr. Alam's voluminous notes which have become a very interesting set of volumes of readable material that one cannot put aside before finishing it. Alam had no qualms in saying what he believed about various subjets and important men of his time including the late Shah of Iran. One could accuse Alam only, as like most prominent politicians and statesmen in the History of Iran, that they were jealous of each other. Unkind and often incorrect remarks were made by Mr. Alam in his Diaries about most other Iranian prime ministers including Razmara, Eghbal, Amini and Hoveyda. As Minister of Court, however, he held more power than any prime minister in Iran since Mosaddegh. His dedication and devotion to the late Shah of Iran and the fact that both worked relentlessly for the service of their country was a fact known and acknowledged by most older Iranians of all classes and strata, except perhaps the always traiterous communists and the plundering Ayatollahs. But it's good and refreshing that younger generations could become aware of it as well.

Barzin Samimi, Tehran.

Although the book is presented as a diary it soon becomes clear that it is heavily edited, and partly re-written or re-arranged by the editor to make some former aides of the Shah look better than they should and some others worse than they deserve.
The book reveals the illusions of Assadallah Alam,the semi-educated son of a tribal chieftain who rose to become Court Minister under the late Shah of Iran.
The diaries reveal that Alam's principal function was to act as confidant and confessor ( for private matters only) to His Imperial Majesty ,and for making sure that the imperial cot was redamselled at suitable intervals. Nearly a quarter of the diaries deal with the Shah's alleged sexual indiscretions most of which were organised by Alam. Amateurs of juicy scandals concerning royals would find quite a bit to chew upon in these diaries.
The court minister tries to inflate his importance as a policymaker in a system which had marginalised him for years. In fact the court minister did not have a seat in the Cabinet and was never briefed by Cabinet members on any issue. This was a source of resentment that fanned the flames of Alam's hatred for the Shah's long-serving Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda. To keep Alam happy, the Shah assigned occasional semi secret missions to him, especially in dealings with the Americans, the British and the Israelis. But the diaries make it clear that none of these missions were of much consequence. Nor did they affect governmental policy in any sigificant manner. They were designed to foster Alam's illusion that he was still a key player in Iranian politics long after he had been confined to the limited world political tepidarium of the royal palace. Alam,
of course, used his position and contacts to further the business interests of his vast network of friends and partners.
By the end of his life he had amassed a vast fortune, a far cry from his modest beginnings in the dusty mud village of Birjand close to the Afghan frontier.
One interesting feature of the diaries is the crude reporting of some of the remarks tyhat the Shah made about prominent Iranian politicians and, in some cases, even foreign heads of state and other dignitaries. These remarks show that the Shah had gone almst mad with his own ego-tripover the top with his megalomania part of which rubbed onto his court minister.
One big problem with the way these diaries are presented is that the original is not available for examination by other scholars. Nor does the editor provide a copy of the original, through a public library or institution for example, so that the slected translated bits can be checked against the original entries.
A READER IN LONDON