Princess (Shahdokht) Ashraf ul-Mulk (Persian: اشرف پهلوی Ashraf Pahlavī) (born 26 October 1919), is the twin sister of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the late Shah of Iran and the Pahlavi Dynasty. She currently resides Paris, France.

Politics

Princess Ashraf was a strong supporter of women's rights in Iran and the world during her brother's reign. In 1975, she was heavily involved with the International Women's Year, addressing the United Nations.
Though an instrumental force in legitimating gender reforms and the WOI, her gender philosophy was not particularly introspective: "I confess that even though since childhood I had paid a price for being a woman, in terms of education and personal freedom, I had not given much thought to specific ways in which women in general were more oppressed than men."

Involvement in 1953 coup against Mossadegh

In 1953, Ashraf Pahlavi played an important role in Operation Ajax as she was the one who changed Mohammad Reza Shah's mind in giving the consent to CIA and SIS to start the operation. The Shah had originally opposed the operation and for a while resisted accepting it. In early 1953, she met with CIA agents who asked her to talk to her brother since she was the only one who was able to change his mind. As historian Stephen Kinzer's book "All the Shah's Men" recounts, "Ashraf was enjoying life in French casinos and nightclubs when one of Roosevelt's best Iranian agents, Asadollah Rashidian, paid her a call. He found her reluctant, so the next day a delegation of American and British agents came to pose the invitation in stronger terms. The leader of the delegation, a senior British operative named Norman Darbyshire, had the foresight to bring a mink coat and a packet of cash. When Ashraf saw these emoluments, Darbyshire later recalled, "her eyes lit up" and her resistance crumbled."(8)

Character and finance

Princess Ashraf by her own account was “attacked for financial misconduct” because she was engaged “in the administration of various organizations”. By her own account she was of limited financial means when Mossadegh sent her into exile in Paris . However, in later years she was said to have accumulated a large fortune. She attributed her wealth to increases in the value of lands that she had inherited from her father Reza Shah. Nevertheless, it has been purported that part of the story behind the build up of her fortune may have been that during the Iranian industrial boom, which was driven by a surge in oil prices, Ashraf and her son Shahram took 10 percent or more of a new company's stock gratis in return for insuring the delivery of a license to operate, to import, to export, or to deal with the government. Government licenses were said to be given only to a few well-connected companies in each field. As a result, the need to get and keep a license for companies became a cost that had to be met.

Psychologically, Ashraf had low self esteem when she was younger. She did not like “what she saw in the mirror”. She “wished for someone else’s face,…, fairer skin, and more height”. She always imagined that “there were so few people in this world shorter than I”. Perhaps this motivated her to be bold. In her memoirs she wrote:

Two decades ago French journalists named me “La Panthère Noire’ (The Black Panther), I must admit that I rather like this name, and that in some respect it suits me. Like the panther, my nature is turbulent, rebellious, self-confident. Often, it is only through strenuous effort that I maintain my reserve and my composure in public. But in truth , I sometimes wish I were armed with the panther’s claws so that I might attack the enemies of my country

Notable positions held

• Honorary President of Red Lion and Sun Organization, 1944

• United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, 1970

• Member of the Consultative Committee of International Women's Year Conference, 1975

• President of the Women's Organization Of Iran, 1967-1979

• Chairwoman of the Imperial Foundation for Social Services

• Honorary Fellow of the Wadham College of Oxford

Awards and honors

• The Order of the Red Flag of Labour of USSR, July 1946

• The Pleiades 2nd Class, 1957

• The order of Aryamehr 2nd Class, 26 September 1967

• Honorable Doctorate from Brandeis University, 1970.

Marriages

To: Ali QavamChildren

• Shahram Pahlavi-Nia

To: Ahmad ShafiqChildren

• Prince Shahriar Shafiq - He was assassinated in Paris, France on 7 December 1979.

• Azadeh Shafiq

To: Mehdi Bushehri

Books

Ashraf Pahlavi has written two books:

• Faces in a Mirror: Memoirs from Exile, Published 1980

• Time for Truth, Published 1995