The Shahs of the Military Formidable weapons
Mohamed Reza Pahlavi, the second and last Shah of Iran from the Pahlavi dynasty, was the son of an Iranian gunnery sergeant who managed to seize control of that country in 1925 and crown himself King.
Like Rajput kings who gave themselves extravagant genealogies of being descended from the sun or moon, Mohammed Reza gave himself a 2500-year-old lineage descending from Cyrus the Great. To him the surest and simplest way to greatness was to use Iran’s new petro-dollar millions to buy the latest weapons money can buy. Just a few years after the blockade induced boom in oil prices, in 1974 Iran became the first country to operate the then state of the art F-14 Tomcat fighter armed with the even now formidable Phoenix air to air missile.