Mummified body found in Iran could be father of last shah

Reza Shah Pahlavi (1878- 1944)

A  mummified body discovered near the site of a former royal mausoleum in Iran may be the remains of the late Reza Shah Pahlavi, the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty and the father of the country’s last shah.

The recent find of the gauze-wrapped body — and the speculation it triggered — puts new hurdles in the way of the Islamic Republic’s efforts to fully erase the country’s dynastic past, which includes the jack-hammered destruction of the autocrat’s tomb immediately after the 1979 revolution.

Yet, as disaffection and economic problems grow ahead of the Islamic Revolution’s 40th anniversary, mystique around Iran’s age of monarchies persists even with its own history of abuses.

Reza Shah’s grandson, the U.S.-based exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, already tweeted about it as forensic experts in Iran try to determine whose body they found.

Construction workers discovered the mummified remains while working at the Shiite shrine of Abdul Azim, whose minarets once rose behind Reza Shah’s own mausoleum. A digger pulling away dirt and debris uncovered the body, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency.

Pictures of the body, as well as construction workers posing with it, quickly ricocheted across social media in Iran.

A spokesman for the shrine dismissed the idea of a mummy being found there. However, Hassan Khalilabadi, the head of Tehran City Council’s cultural heritage, was quoted by the state-run IRNA agency this week that it’s “possible” the mummy is the body of Reza Shah.

Authorities say they’ll need to conduct DNA tests to confirm whose body it is.