In London

Her Imperial Majesty Shahbanou Farah Pahlavi, Empress of Iran, was in Monaco on April 25, 2013, to attend the opening of the 4th Edition of the Salon Art Monaco held at the Grimaldi Forum.
The purpose of Empress Farah’s attendance to this great four-day event was to oversee “…an exhibit and sale of artwork for the benefit of the Prince Alireza Pahlavi Fund for Ancient Iran Scholarship at Harvard University…”
According to the official website for the Prince Alireza Foundation several of the  artworks that were auctioned were done “…by Her Imperial Majesty Shahbanou Farah in memory of her late son, His Imperial Highness Prince Alireza Pahlavi…” who passed away on January 4, 2011.
The last Empress of Persia is now 70 years old and has spent the last 30 in exile. In this interview, by e-mail, she tells of her anguish at Lajes Air Base one night in March 1980. Four months later, Reza Pahlavi died in Cairo. Today she hopes that Tehran’s Islamic regime has its days numbered.
Farah Diba Pahlavi has spent almost thirty years in exile but she cannot forget the night of 23rd March 1980 when an Evergreen Airlines DC9 in which she was travelling stopped over in the Azores. Officially it was a refuelling stop but the aircraft was held up for several hours on the tarmac without permission to take off. ‘It was an anxious moment,’ the last Empress of Persia tells Pública during a rare interview by e-mail.
We have to go back in time to understand what actually happened at Lajes Air Force Base, and which could have changed the course of history. Farah Diba and her husband, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, had been forced to leave Panama and they should have gone on to Cairo where President Anwar Sadat had renewed his offer of refuge. They had been fleeing for over a year. Several doors had been closed to them after Ayatollah Khomeini had overthrown the monarchy.