The Imperial State of Iran, the government of Iran during the Pahlavi dynasty, lasted from 1925 to 1979. During that time two monarchs — Reza Shah Pahlavi and his son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi — employed secret police, torture, and executions to stifle political dissent but this is what has been mentioned and emphasized by foreign press in order to criticize the regime which was in power in Iran and their intention according to Mohammadreza Shah was nothing but "jealousy" and the intention to bring back Iran to the old ages of darkness and poverty and it was also at the time obvious that because of the improvement of the country, the western powers could not handle this progress in Iran and saw this improvement as a threat for their manipulation in the third-world countries like Iran at that time. The Pahlavi dynasty has sometimes been described as a "royal dictatorship", or "one-man rule". According to one history of the use of torture by the state in Iran, abuse of prisoners varied at times during the Pahlavi reign.
While the shah's violation of the constitution, "trampling on the fundamental laws" and rights of Iranians, was one of the complaints of revolutionaries, some have suggested the Shah's human rights record fares better than that of the revolutionaries who overthrew him. According to political historian Ervand Abrahamian, "Whereas less than 100 political prisoners had been executed between 1971 and 1979, more than 7900 were executed between 1981 and 1985. ... the prison system was centralized and drastically expanded ... Prison life was drastically worse under the Islamic Republic than under the Pahlavis. One who survived both writes that four months under warden Asadollah Lajevardi took the toll of four years under SAVAK. In the prison literature of the Pahlavi era, the recurring words had been "boredom" and "monotony." In that of the Islamic Republic, they were "fear," "death," "terror," "horror," and most frequent of all "nightmare" (kabos)."
Reza Shah
The reign of Reza Shah was authoritarian and dictatorial at a time when authoritarian governments and dictatorships were common in the world and standard for the region.
Free press, workers' rights, and political expression were restricted and limited under Reza Shah. Independent newspapers were often closed down and political parties were banned; as were all trade unions with 150 labor organizers arrested between 1927 and 1932 but it is also mentioned that some of these press were moving against the national security of the country and therefore their activity had to be either restricted or banned.
Physical force was used against some kinds of prisoners — common criminals, suspected spies, and those accused of plotting regicide. Burglars in particular were subjected to the bastinado (beating the soles of the feet), and the strappado (suspended in the air by means of a rope tied around the victims arms) to "reveal their hidden loot". Suspected spies and assassins were "beaten, deprived of sleep, and subjected to the qapani" (the binding of arms tightly behind the back) which sometimes caused a joint to crack. But for political prisoners — who were primarily Communists — there was a "conspicuous absence of torture" under Reza Shah's rule. The main form of pressure was solitary confinement and the withholding of "books, newspapers, visitors, food packages, and proper medical care". While often threatened with the qapani, political prisoners "were rarely subjected to it."
Reza Shah's reign was often accused of violating freedom of religion and suppressing pious Muslims. In one notable incident, he violated the sanctity of the Fatima al-Masumeh Shrine to beat a cleric who had accused his wife of immodesty. Reza Shah passed a law requiring everyone (except Shia jurisconsults who had passed a special qualifying examination) to wear Western clothes, and forbid women teachers to come to school with head coverings. Public mourning observances were restricted to one day, and mosques required to use chairs for mourners to sit on during observances, instead of the mourner's traditional sitting on the floors of mosques.
By the mid-1930s, these decrees, confiscation of clerical land holdings, and other problems had caused intense dissatisfaction among the Shi'a clergy throughout Iran, and after a crowd gathered in support of a cleric at the Mashed shrine denouncing the Shah's innovations, corruption and heavy consumer taxes, troops were called in. Dozens of protestors were killed and hundreds injured.
Following this incident, the Shah went further, banning the chador and ordering all citizens - rich and poor - to bring their wives to public functions without head coverings.