Iran, Pahlavi Empire. A Coronation of Reza Shah Pahlavi Coronation Medal 1926

Reza Shah Pahlavi March 15, 1878 - July 26, 1944) was the Shah of Iran (Persia) from December 15, 1925 until he was forced to abdicate by the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran on September 16, 1941. Four years after conducting the 1921 Persian coup d'état, in 1923 Reza Pahlavi was selected as Iran's prime minister by the National assembly of Iran. In 1925, Reza Pahlavi was appointed as the legal monarch of Iran by decision of Iran's constituent assembly. The assembly deposed Ahmad Shah Qajar, the last Shah of the Qajar dynasty, and selected him, by amending the Iran's 1906 constitution. He founded the Pahlavi dynasty that lasted until overthrown in 1979 during the Iranian Revolution. Reza Shah introduced many social, economic, and political reforms during his reign, ultimately laying the foundation of the modern Iranian state. His legacy remains controversial to this day. His defenders assert that he was an essential modernizing force for Iran (whose international prominence had sharply declined during Qajar rule), while his detractors assert that his reign was often despotic, with his failure to modernize Iran's large peasant population eventually sowing the seeds for the Iranian Revolution nearly four decades later which ended 2500 years of Persian monarchy. Moreover, his insistence on ethnic nationalism and cultural unitarism along with forced de-tribalization and sedentarization resulted in suppression of several ethnic and social groups. Similar to Atatürk's policy of Turkification, his government also carried out an extensive policy of Persianization, trying to create a single, united and largely homogeneous nation.