Pahlavi Iran, the Iranian state under the Pahlavi dynasty, lasted from 1925 to 1979. During that time two monarchs—Reza Shah Pahlavi and his son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi—employed secret police, torture, and executions to stifle political dissent. The Pahlavi dynasty has been described as a "royal dictatorship",Google search, Pahlavi royal dictatorship or "one-man rule".Pahlavi Dynasty: An Entry from Encyclopedia of the World of Islam By (ed.) Gholamali Haddad Adel, Mohammad Jafar Elmi, Hassan Taromi-Rad, p.15 According to one history of the use of torture by the state in Iran, abuse of prisoners varied at times during the Pahlavi reign.Ervand Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran, (University of California), 1999

Reza Shah

The reign of Reza Shah was authoritarian and dictatorial at a time when authoritarian governments and dictatorships were common in the world and standard for the region.The Age of the Dictators: A Study of the European Dictatorships, 1918-53, D. G. Williamson

Free press, workers' rights, and political expression were restricted and limited under Reza Shah. Independent newspapers were often closed down and political parties were banned; as were all trade unions, with 150 labor organizers arrested between 1927 and 1932 but it is also mentioned that some of these press were moving against the national security of the country and therefore their activity had to be either restricted or banned.Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, (Princeton University Press), 1982, p.138

Physical force was used against some kinds of prisoners — common criminals, suspected spies, and those accused of plotting regicide. Burglars in particular were subjected to the bastinado (beating the soles of the feet), and the strappado (being suspended in the air by means of a rope tied around the victims arms) to "reveal their hidden loot". Suspected spies and assassins were "beaten, deprived of sleep, and subjected to the qapani" (the binding of arms tightly behind the back) which sometimes caused a joint to crack. But for political prisoners — who were primarily Communists — there was a "conspicuous absence of torture" under Reza Shah's rule.Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, 1999, p.39 The main form of pressure was solitary confinement and the withholding of "books, newspapers, visitors, food packages, and proper medical care". While often threatened with the qapani, political prisoners "were rarely subjected to it."Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, 1999, p.41

Reza Shah's reign was often accused of violating freedom of religion and suppressing pious Muslims. In one notable incident, he violated the sanctity of the Fatima Masumeh Shrine to beat a cleric who had accused his wife, Queen Tadj ol-Molouk, of immodesty when during her pilgrimage she wore a veil which did not cover her completely and showed her face.Mackey, Sandra The Iranians : Persia, Islam and the Soul of a Nation, New York : Dutton, c1996. p.181 Reza Shah passed a law requiring everyone (except Shia jurisconsults who had passed a special qualifying examination) to wear Western clothes,Mackey, The Iranians, (1996) p.184Abrahamian, History of Modern Iran, (2008), p.93-4 and forbid women teachers to come to school with head coverings. Public mourning observances were restricted to one day, and mosques required to use chairs for mourners to sit on during observances, instead of the mourner's traditional sitting on the floors of mosques.Abrahamian, History of Modern Iran, (2008), p.94

By the mid-1930s, these decrees, confiscation of clerical land holdings, and other problems had caused intense dissatisfaction among the Shi'a clergy throughout Iran.Rajaee, Farhang, Islamic Values and World View: Farhang Khomeini on Man, the State and International Politics, Volume XIII (PDF), University Press of America. In the 1935 Goharshad Mosque rebellion, a crowd gathered in support of a cleric at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad and denounced the Shah's innovations, corruption and heavy consumer taxes. Troops were called in and dozens of protestors were killed and hundreds injured.Abrahamian, History of Modern Iran, (2008), p.94Bakhash, Shaul, Reign of the Ayatollahs : Iran and the Islamic Revolution by Shaul, Bakhash, Basic Books, c1984, p.22

In 1936 and following this incident, the Shah went further and issued the Kashf-e hijab, banning the chador and ordering all citizens—rich and poor—to bring their wives to public functions without head coverings.Abrahamian, History of Modern Iran, (2008), p.95

Mohammad Reza Shah

Mohammad Reza Shah became monarch after his father was deposed by the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941. Political prisoners (mostly Communists) were released by the occupying powers, and the Shah (Crown Prince at the time) no longer had control of the parliament. Iran between two revolutions By Ervand Abrahamian, p.186 But after an attempted assassination of the Shah in 1949, he was able to declare martial law, imprison communists and other opponents, and restrict criticism of the Royal family in the press.The History of Iran By Elton L. Daniel, 2012

Following the pro-Shah coup d'état that overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, the Shah again cracked down on his opponents, and political freedom waned. He outlawed Mosaddegh's political group, the National Front, and arrested most of its leaders.Iran in Revolution: The Opposition Forces by E Abrahamian – MERIP Reports Over 4000 political activists of the Tudeh party were arrested,Abrahamian, Ervand, Tortured Confessions, (University of California), 1999, p.89-90 (including 477 in the armed forces), forty were executed, another 14 died under torture and over 200 were sentenced to life imprisonment and the most common crimes of this groups were being connected to anti-national groups and communist activities.

Following this crackdown, conditions for political prisoners and opponents of the authoritarian government were relatively good for many years. "The bulk of Tudeh prisoners were released," and the remaining prisoners who refused to sign letters of regret were allowed to play ping pong, use a gymnasium, and watch television.Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, p.99-101 In the 1960s, the Shah also introduced electoral reforms expanding suffrage to women and the ability to hold office to non-Muslims, as part of a broader series of reforms dubbed the White Revolution.I Knew the Shah-Part 2 Al Jazeera English. January 17, 2009.

One exception to this relative calm was three days of rioting starting 5 June 1963 after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini—a leading opponent of the White Revolution on religious grounds—was arrested. Troops fired on demonstrators in Jaleh Square killing 64 to 94 people, not including those who did not go to hospital "for fear of arrest", or who were taken to the morgue or buried by security forces.Islam and Revolution I, Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini, translated and annotated by Hamid Algar, 1981, p.17Moin, Baqer (2000). Khomeini, Life of an Ayatollah. New York City: St. Martin's Press. pp. 111–113. .

1971–1976 However, in 1971 a guerrilla attack on a gendarmerie post (where three police were killed and two guerrillas freed, known as the "Siahkal incident") sparked "an intense guerrilla struggle" against the government, who responded with harsh countermeasures.Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, p.101 Inspired by international Third World revolutionaries (such as Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara, among many others), left-wing guerrillas embraced "armed struggle" to overthrow the Shah, and were quite active in the first half of the 1970s.Kurzman, Charles, The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran, Harvard University Press, 2004, p.145-6In the two and half years from mid 1973 through 1975, three United States colonels, an Iranian general, sergeant, and a Persian translator of the United States Embassy were all assassinated by guerilla groups (source: Fischer, Michael M.J., Iran, From Religious Dispute to Revolution, Harvard University Press, 1980 p.128 Hundreds of them died in clashes with government forces and dozens of Iranians were executed.Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions (1999), p.135-6, 167, 169 According to Amnesty International, the Shah carried out at least 300 political executions.Washington Post, March 23, 1980.

According to a senior SAVAK officer, after the Siahkal attack interrogators were sent abroad for scientific training to prevent unwanted deaths from "brute force".`Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, 1999 p.106 Methods of torture included sleep deprivation; extensive solitary confinement; glaring searchlights; standing in one place for hours on end; nail extractions; snakes (favored for use with women); electrical shocks with cattle prods, often into the rectum; cigarette burns; sitting on hot grills; acid dripped into nostrils; near-drownings; mock executions; and an electric chair with a large metal mask to muffle screams. Prisoners were also humiliated by being raped, urinated on, and forced to stand naked.Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, 1999), p. 106. However, the torture method of choice remained the traditional bastinado used to beat the soles of the feet.

Torture was used to locate arms caches, safe houses and accomplices of the guerrillas, but another incident in 1971 led to the use of torture of political prisoners for another purpose. In 1971, a prisoner, Parviz Nikkhah, serving a ten-year prison sentence for communist subversion "experienced a genuine change of heart." He "astounded" the public by coming out in full support of the regime, starting a career working for the government Radio-Television Network" explaining how the Shah was a "true revolutionary".Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, 1999 p.114 So impressed was the regime with this conversion and its impact, it "did not take it long to go one step further and `induce` other `conversions.`" By the end of 1975, twenty-two prominent poets, novelist, professors, theater directors, and film makers were in jail for criticizing the regime. And many others had been physically attacked for refusing to cooperate with the authorities.Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 1982, pp. 442-3.

The nature of this torture was "infinitely worse" than torture for information, which being time sensitive, lost its function and was discontinued after a short period of time.Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, 1999 p.114-5

In 1975, the human rights group Amnesty International — whose membership and international influence grew greatly during the 1970sAmnesty International's membership increased from 15,000 in 1969 to 200,000 by 1979. — issued a report on treatment of political prisoners in Iran that was "extensively covered in the European and American Press".The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 7, edited by W. William Bayne Fisher, P. Avery, G. R. G. Hambly, C. Melville], p.286

1976–1977 By 1976, this repression was softened considerably thanks to publicity and scrutiny by "numerous international organizations and foreign newspapers." In 1976, Jimmy Carter was elected President of the United States and he "raised the issue of human rights in Iran as well as in the Soviet Union. Overnight prison conditions changed",Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions, p. 119. and the Shah ordered an end to torture.Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movements of Iran ... By Houchang E Chehabi, p.225

Islamic Revolution