The shah then appointed him ambassador to Britain, where he served from 1962 to 1966. He opened up markets to British manufacturers and entertained lavishly at the Embassy in London. The British considered him “inexperienced, not a profound thinker and apt to be impetuous,” Dr. Milani wrote, but they also felt that he had single-handedly raised standing in the world. Mr. Zahedi and his wife divorced after seven years, but rather than falling out with the shah, Mr. Zahedi only became closer to him and was appointed foreign minister in 1967. During that period, he drove a metallic blue Rolls-Royce and, believing that architecture denotes power, he persuaded the shah to invest in upgrading embassies abroad.
