Shahriar Shafiq

Shahriar Shafiq (Persian: والاگهر شهریار شفیق ‎‎; 15 March 1945, Rabat, Morocco – 7 December 1979, Paris, France) was the son of Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, twin sister of the Shah of Iran, and Ahmad Shafiq.

Early life and education

Shafiq was born in Rabat on 15 March 1945. He was the son of Ashraf Pahlavi and Ahmad Shafiq, and brother of Azadeh Shafiq.

Shafiq was educated at the Royal Navy College in Dartmouth, the United Kingdom.

Career and activities

Shafiq was an Imperial Iranian Navy Captain. He and his cousin Prince Kamyar Pahlavi, son of Abdul Reza Pahlavi, were the only members of the Pahlavi Dynasty who chose military careers. In addition, Shafiq was the only highest ranking military officer in the Pahlavi family. He worked in the navy of Iran from 1963 to 1979. He served as the commander of the Persian Gulf fleet of Hovercraft before the 1979 revolution.

Shafiq served also as the head of judo and karate federation during the reign of Muhammad Reza.

After the revolution of February 1979, he was the only member of the Pahlavi dynasty to stay in Iran and keep fighting against the revolutionaries, up to the point when he had to flee in a small boat from the Persian Gulf to Kuwait, under heavy fire. He fled Iran in March 1979.

Personal life

In 1967, Shafiq married Maryam Eghbal, the Christian daughter of Manouchehr Eghbal, who had married at age 18 to Mahmoud Reza Pahlavi in October 1964, one of his uncles and a half-brother of the Shah. Shafiq and Eghbal had two sons:

• H.H. Prince Nader Shafiq (born 15 March 1968)
• H.H. Prince Dara Shafiq (born 1970)

Later years and assassination

After leaving Iran, Shafiq firstly went to the United States. Then he joined his family in Paris, France, on 14 November 1979, and began organizing a resistance movement against the Islamic Republic. He founded the group, Iran Azad (Free Iran), which was later led by his sister Azadeh with whom he was living in Paris. They both acted as the Pahlavi family’s principal spokesmen. In Iran, Islamic judge Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali tried and sentenced him and other members of the Pahlavi family in absentia to death in a secret trial in spring of 1979.

He was assassinated in Paris on 7 December 1979, being shot twice in the head by the agents of the Islamic Republic on the Rue Pergolese, outside his mother's home. He was at the age of 34. The attack was carried out by a masked gunman. Ayatollah Khalkhali claimed that the assassination was carried out by one of his death squads and therefore, Shafiq was the first victim of the Iran's death squads. The Muslim Liberation Group announced that it was responsible for the assassination.

Shahriar's body was not buried, but embalmed and moved to New York where it has been kept by his mother.