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.