Notable for its centerfolds of nude and semi-nude models ( Playmates), Playboy played an important role in the sexual revolution and remains one of the world's best-known brands, having grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. Playboy is an American men's lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. For other uses, see Playboy (disambiguation). For the lifestyle that inspired the magazine's name, see Playboy lifestyle. The Iranian Embassy from which he charmed so many sits empty to this day, becoming a prop in one 2019 online video by former US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook.This article is about the magazine. “That previous US-sponsored regime change in the region has ushered in failed states or worse autocracies seems to be an afterthought.”
“It is bereft of a viable vision and based on the naive assumption that overthrowing the Islamic Republic will miraculously lead to a pluralistic and pro-American order,” Zahedi wrote in 2019. He dismissed President Donald Trump’s maximalist campaign targeting Tehran as “a pressure tactic wrapped in bellicosity folded inside a chimera.” Yet despite facing a death sentence back home and later settling in Switzerland, Zahedi acknowledged the woes that led to the revolution and pushed for a reconciliation between Iran and the US even amid recent tensions over Tehran’s collapsed nuclear deal with world powers. His departure and the revolution the following month brought an end to 2,500 years of monarchial rule across Persia.
Along with ambassadors from Egypt and Pakistan, he helped resolve a 1977 hostage crisis in Washington that saw two people killed and over 140 captives freed.īut the shah, who had both limited all dissent and waffled as his country increasingly found itself in turmoil, felt increasingly isolated and ended up fleeing. While partying, however, Zahedi maintained close relationships with both the Nixon and Carter administrations. Guests munched on caviar and swilled champagne. The Iranian Embassy became known as the “the number one embassy when it came to extravagance,” Barbara Walters would write in her memoirs. Zahedi, single again and back in Washington, threw himself into the capital’s social scene. The US considered him as a bulwark against the neighboring Soviet Union in the Persian Gulf and operated secret listening posts in Iran to monitor its Cold War enemy. Zahedi would serve as ambassador to the US and the United Kingdom, as well as Iran’s foreign minister, before returning to Washington as the shah’s top diplomat there.Īt the time, the shah had rapidly modernized his country with its oil wealth, and expanded its military with American-manufactured weapons. Though that marriage only lasted seven year, the shah considered Zahedi as another son and a trusted adviser. Zahedi would marry Shahnaz, the shah’s first daughter with Egyptian Princess Fawzia Fuad. For those who would later overthrow the shah and storm the US Embassy in Tehran, that coup represents the original sin by America, leading to the four decades of enmity that followed. Fazlollah Zahedi, the man who a 1953 CIA-backed coup against the country’s elected prime minister installed in power, cementing the rule of the young shah.