government allowed him to concentrate much of his energy on developing the Iran Novin Party. The networks he had slowly developed over the years came to trouble the monarch. Although Hoveyda would be coerced into relinquishing his position as prime minister, he accepted a temporary intermediary role as secretary general of Rastakhiz before a new Prime Minister can be appointed. Nevertheless, the Shah still saw Hovedya as a trusted (if not pliable) figure, and he was appointed to be minister of court. In her memoirs, Queen Farah wrote that asking Hoveyda to leave the post of prime minister was as painful as "giving birth to a baby". Hoveida would serve as minister of court within Jamshid Amouzegar's government in 1977. With this role, he would come to discover the pervasiveness of internal corruption, once concealed by Asadollah Alam and the team he had surrounded himself with. Nevertheless, he continued to tolerate the practice as well, while simultaneously remaining a trusted advisor to the Shah. Hoveyda was alleged to have been the author of an article which attacked the opposition figure the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as being a British agent and a liar, which was anyonymously published in Kayhan newspaper in January 1978 on the Shah's orders. Whether or not the allegations were true, the article generated a major backlash among Khomeini's supporters, which eventually spiralled into the Iranian Revolution. At this point, the growing tide of revolution was becoming discernible, giving Hoveyda ample opportunity to leave the country before revolutionary forces could have had a chance to overthrow the 2500-year-old monarchy. Aside from persistent efforts by family and friends to leave the country as quickly as possible, the Shah himself proposed Hoveida with an ambassadorial position to Belgium. His refusal to leave the country can be judged as being a result of naïveté or blind optimism, but Hoveida's decision can also be assessed from alternate angles. For one, he did not want to abandon his mother who was incapable of traveling at the time. On a more personal level, Hoveyda came to the conclusion that after years of self-exile, he would do all he could to remain in Iran. With all these points of rationale being considered, Hoveida actually came to believe that revolutionary fervour was capable of being contained and that everything would eventually straighten out, allowing the country to resume its present course. In an effort to slow