Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Education

By the time Mohammad Reza turned 11, his father deferred to the recommendation of Abdolhossein Teymourtash, the Minister of Court, to dispatch his son to Institut Le Rosey, a Swiss boarding school, for further studies. Mohammad Reza left Iran for Switzerland on 7 September 1931. On his first day as a student at Le Rosey, the Crown Prince antagonised a group of his fellow students by demanding that they all stand to attention as he walked past, just as everybody did back in Iran. In response, one of the American students beat him up, and he swiftly learned to accept that people would not respect him in Switzerland in the way he was accustomed to at home. As a student, Mohammad Reza played competitive football, but school records indicate that his principal problem as a player was his "timidity", as the Crown Prince was afraid to take risks. He was educated in French at Le Rosey, and his time there left Mohammad Reza with a lifelong love of all things French. In articles he wrote in French for the student newspaper in 1935 and 1936, Mohammad Reza praised Le Rosey for broadening his mind and introducing him to European civilisation.

Mohammad Reza was the first Iranian prince in line for the throne to be sent abroad to attain a foreign education and remained there for the next four years before returning to obtain his high school diploma in Iran in 1936. After returning to the country, the Crown Prince was registered at the local military academy in Tehran where he remained enrolled until 1938, graduating as a Second Lieutenant. Upon graduating, Mohammad Reza was quickly promoted to the rank of Captain, a rank which he kept until he became Shah. During college, the young prince was appointed Inspector of the Army and spent three years travelling across the country, examining both civil and military installations.

Mohammad Reza spoke English, French, and German fluently, in addition to his native language of Persian.

During his time in Switzerland, Mohammad Reza befriended his teacher Ernest Perron, who introduced him to French poetry, and under his influence, Chateaubriand and Rabelais became his "favorite French authors". The Crown Prince liked Perron so much that when he returned to Iran in 1936, he brought Perron back with him, installing his best friend in the Marble Palace. Perron lived in Iran until his death in 1961, and as the best friend of Mohammad Reza, was a man of considerable behind-the-scenes power. After the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979, a best-selling book was published by the new regime, Ernest Perron, the Husband of the Shah of Iran, by Mohammad Pourkian, alleging a homosexual relationship between the Shah and Perron. Even today, this remains the official interpretation of their relationship by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Marvin Zonis described the book as long on assertions and short on evidence of a homosexual relationship between the two, noting that all of the Shah's courtiers rejected the claim that Perron was the Shah's lover. He argued that the strong-willed Reza Khan, who was very homophobic, would not have allowed Perron to move into the Marble Palace in 1936 if he believed Perron was his son's lover.
detectable_format:json_format, oulipo:avoid_letter[o]