Iran

Iran began the nineteenth century under the Qajar Dynasty (1796–1925) and the political and economic influence of Russia and Great Britain. Wars with both nations resulted in the loss of Iranian territories. To resist the European expansionist schemes, the government, a monarchy, reformed the military. 

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Russia and Britain increased their economic and political domination over Iran. European companies were granted trade concessions (special, exclusive privileges) that often were disadvantageous to emerging Iranian industries and local merchants. Meanwhile, ideas of political freedom were introduced by intellectuals and others who had come in contact with the West. This led to public resistance to European control and the monarchy and a constitution was written in late 1906. In 1907 Great Britain and Russia divided Iran into two spheres of influence and a neutral zone and Britain established the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Iran declared its neutrality; nevertheless, Britain and Russia occupied the country, spying on each other and engaging in hostilities on Iran's territory.

In February 1921 bloodless coup d’etat installed Brigadier Reza Pahlavi, a military leader,  as Shah. After centralizing the government’s power, Reza Shah focused on westernizing and modernizing Iran’s education, judicial, military, police, industrial, and transportation systems in the 1930s. His rule, however, was marked by suppression of individual freedoms and political activities. 

Reza Shah also worked to expand trade. His fear of Soviet control over Iran’s overland routes to Europe and apprehension at renewed Soviet and continued British presence in Iran drove him to closer economic ties with Nazi Germany in the 1930s. When he refused to abandon obligations to numerous Germans in Iran, Britain and the USSR jointly invaded in 1941. Intent on ensuring the safe passage of U.S. war matériel to the Soviet Union through Iran, the Allies forced Reza Shah to abdicate, placing his young son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi on the throne. 

The Allies promised to withdraw from Iran at the conclusion of the war, assured Iran’s future sovereignty and territorial integrity, and promised to assist in its post-war reconstruction and development. Following the defeat of Japan in September 1945, both the US and Britain withdrew their forces. The Soviet Union, however, refused. 

The Soviets not only violated the withdrawal deadline; in that time they had expanded their military presence southward had encouraged two regions in northern Iran to declare independence as the Azerbaijan People's Republic and the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad. [Note: the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic was a separate country from this new Azerbaijan People’s Republic. The Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, which is now an independent country called the Republic of Azerbaijan, is to the north of Iran.] 

After a combination of international pressure and the Iranian Prime Minister’s offerings of oil concessions to the USSR, Soviet troops finally left in late 1946 . The Prime Minister immediately reneged on the oil concessions and, with the help of the US, re-took control of the pro-Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Mahabad.

By the 1950s, people in Iran grew tired of the wealthy classes’ control of government. At the beginning of the 1950s the National Front, a loose coalition of liberal nationalists under the leadership of Mohammad Mossadegh, demanded greater control over the British-dominated Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The oil industry was nationalized [taken over by the Iranian government], and Mossadegh became prime minister in April 1951. The Soviet-backed Tudeh Party, the US, and Britain strongly opposed the nationalization and the Mossadegh government.

In August 1953 a coup organized, executed, and funded by Britain, the US, and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company ousted Mossadegh and installed Fazlollah Zahedi as prime minister. The new regime cracked down on all forms of opposition to the government. Between 1953 and 1959 the shah's power gradually increased, including through the establishment of an CIA trained intelligence agency. The government signed an agreement with an association of major Western oil companies in August 1954.

In the early 1960s, under increasing pressure from the U.S. Kennedy administration, the government initiated a series of social and economic reforms. However, urban riots protesting a national referendum and the government's arrest of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini broke out in 1963 [an Ayatollah is a religious cleric]. After cracking down on rioters, the shah emerged as an autocratic ruler. 

The latter half of the 1960s was marked by relative political stability and economic development, and Iran emerged as the regional power in the Persian Gulf. By the mid-1970s Iran had established close ties not only with the United States and Western Europe but also with the Communist Bloc countries, South Africa, and Israel.

Meanwhile, there was growing discontent with the Shah’s autocratic control. Demonstrations against the Shah began in October 1977, developing into a campaign of civil resistance that included both secular and religious elements. Between August and December 1978, strikes and demonstrations paralyzed the country. The Shah abdicated and left Iran for exile on January 16, 1979. Ayatollah Khomeini was invited back to Iran by the government, and returned to huge supportive crowds. The Shah-appointed government collapsed in February, bringing Khomeini to official power. 

Iran voted by national referendum to become an Islamic Republic on 1 April 1979, and to approve a new theocratic-republican constitution whereby Khomeini became Supreme Leader of the country in December 1979.

The revolution was unusual and a surprise to much of the world as it lacked many of the customary causes of revolution (defeat at war, a financial crisis, peasant rebellion, or disgruntled military), was massively popular, and replaced a pro-Western authoritarian monarchy with an anti-Western authoritarian theocracy. 

Yet while the story on the US and UK sides has been extensively told, with historians marshalling extensive documentary evidence declassified since the 1970s, the Soviet role during nationalization and in the period up to Mosaddeq’s ouster has barely been explored. Historians of Soviet foreign policy have produced valuable studies of Soviet policy in Iran during the Second World War as well as in the immediate post-war period. Up to now, all that could be said of Soviet policy during Mosaddeq’s tenure was that it largely stayed out of the oil crisis. Farhad Diba, one of Mosaddeq’s biographers, is certainly justified in observing that, in general, “the Soviet attitude towards the Mossadegh Government vacillated between a ‘hands-off’ policy and the maintenance of correct but politely distant relations.” What is not clear is why. The question is particularly interesting because the crisis came after Moscow’s attempts at a forward policy in Iran had been thoroughly defeated in 1946, one of the first major set-backs for the Soviet Union in the early Cold War.

...While the Molotov papers provide only a glimpse of Soviet policymaking on Iran in the period, they nevertheless do allow us to reach some preliminary conclusions about how events in Iran were seen from Moscow. They suggest that Soviet policymakers viewed Iran as largely lost to Soviet influence in this period, with little native support for progressive politics, and a political class likely to end up in the Anglo-American camp. Their policies were thus aimed at containing American and British involvement, while keeping alive such Soviet economic interests as still existed. After the July 1952 crisis their views began to change—but the figure that impressed them was not Mosaddeq or any of the Tudeh leaders, but rather Ayatollah Seyed Abdul Qassem Kashani (1888–1961), a religious leader who originally supported Mosaddeq but had turned against him by the fall of 1952. Still, it appears that even after Stalin’s death in March 1953 his successors avoided interfering in Iranian affairs. In the mid1950s, however, as Soviet policy towards the Third World underwent significant changes, Mosaddeq’s politics and oil nationalization were reinterpreted as an effort at “national liberation.”