America in Iran

AMERICA IN IRAN Richard T. Sale KJn August 25, 1941, at 4:45 A.M., without an ultimatum and without a declaration of war, British and Russian forces invaded Iran simultaneously from the north, west, and southwest. In the north the Russians poured into the Azerbaijan, the rich northwest province that bordered the Soviet Union along the Aras River and provided almost all of Iran's food. In the south the British headed for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company concession at Khuzistan, the most important of British imperial enterprises, the highest earner of foreign exchange , and the most important supplier of oil for its navy. In a world ablaze with war, Iran had taken pains to stay neutral. In September 1939 and again in June 1941 when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Iran declared her neutrality. At 8:00 A.M., when the British and Russian ministers appeared at his palace to present separate notes, Iran's sixtythree -year-old ruler, Reza Shah Pahlavi said to them: "What is this? ... I find this morning that you have attacked my country and seized eight Axis ships in the [Persian] Gulf. It seems the Germans want to take all of Europe, and the British and Russians want to take Iran."1 Later that day the shah sent President Roosevelt a telegram. The Department of State received it at 10:51 P.M. In it Reza detailed the British and Russian bombing of cities "open and without defense." He concluded angrily: "I no longer can see for what reason they have proceeded to those acts of aggres1 . Relevant accounts of the invasion and Reza Shah's quote appear in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941). Richard T. Sale is a former correspondent for Life magazine. He went to Iran in 1976 for The Washington Post and is writing a book entitled U.S. Policy in Iran, which will be published by William Morrow, Inc. Part of the research for this article was funded by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. 27 28 SAIS REVIEW sion and to bombarding without reason our cities." It was addressed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The United States' involvement in Iran since World War II has had both strategic and economic overtones. The emphasis given these interests was not balanced and one or the other tended to predominate in response to American domestic policies or foreign policies in the rest of the world. These two sets of priorities, taken together, have served to outweigh U.S. commitments to fostering democracy, independence, or political development in Iran. The debut of America in modern Iranian affairs emphasized strategic interests and is a perfect instance of democratic rhetoric being forced to bow to military necessity · In 1941 America was seen as the defender of the rights of small countries, whereas British and Russian actions habitually had expressed disdain for them. For example, in 1907, without Iran's consent, they divided the country in two, the Russians taking the north and the British seizing the oil fields and the rest of the country to the south. Under the secret terms of the Constantinople Agreement of March 1915, the British and Russians planned to divide Iran after the First World War, though the plan collapsed with the abdication of the tsar. In 1941, with the Germans in control of most of Europe, the predominant British concern was to consolidate their hold over their imperial possessions in the Middle East, the most important being their trade with India and their oil fields in Iran. Many Arab governments, resentful of British domination, looked to a German victory to secure their own liberty. The British began toppling these governments, promptly setting up puppets in their place. Thus, in May 1941 the neutral government of Iraq fell to British troops, and inJune, in a move that deeply rankled the French, the British took Lebanon and Syria. OnJuIy 22 Prime Minister Churchill cabled General Guiñan, the British commander in Iraq, and told him to prepare to invade Iran on the pretext that Iran harbored a dangerous German "fifth column...