Home

Beyond Azerbaijan: Rethinking the Origins of the Cold War in Iran

The origins of the Cold War in Iran are usually equated to the Azerbaijan Crisis of 1945-46. These four papers challenge this consensus with regards to both chronology and content. Orthodox interpretations provide a triumphalist United States discourse emphasising President Truman’s role in confronting Soviet interference, whilst more recent revisionist interpretations downplay the significance of Western actions in favour of Iranian Premier Ahmad Qavam. This panel offers a post-revisionist interpretation, with each paper challenging these existing assumptions and focusing on the dynamic interactions between Iranian policy actors and the three Great Powers: the Soviet Union, United States and Britain. Firstly, Dmitry Asinovskiy provides insight into Soviet policy, evaluating the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad, where the interaction between Soviet ambitions and indigenous nationalism were more dynamic than in the puppet Azerbaijan regime. This paper will explore the limits and opportunities for Great Power interference in Iran: a crucial theme of the panel. Further exploring this issue, Gregory Brew’s paper questions the traditionalist account of strategic and ideological competition, instead focusing on the relations between Western oil companies and the Iranian government. This emphasises continuity between 1946 and earlier events, such as the 1942 and 1944 oil scrambles, implying that Soviet-American rivalry in Iran predated the global Cold War. Similarly focused on the oil question, Mattin Biglari offers a social history of 1946 in contrast to the top-down paradigm evident in both orthodox and revisionist interpretations. By analysing inter-communal relations in the Khuzestan general strike, his paper provides both an original interpretation of postwar Iranian nationalism, and emphasises the conflict between Tudeh aspirations and Soviet policy: further indicative of the limits of Great Power influence. Finally, Alexander Nicholas Shaw challenges the prevailing perception of conflictual Anglo-American relations in Iran, considering Anglo-American reactions to the growth of Tudeh influence as evident in the Khuzestan strike. In fact, British and United States representatives cooperated closely in the ideological-strategic arena whilst conducting triangular diplomacy with Qavam. This contrasts with United States desires to supplant British influence in the economic sphere, as assessed by Gregory Brew. Overall, this panel challenges the prevailing assumptions about the origins of the Cold War in Iran by moving beyond the Azerbaijan question, focusing on power relationships between local and international agencies, and reconsidering Iranian nationalism, through incorporating ideas from social, economic and diplomatic history.

Presentations

Perfidious Albion? Britain, the United States and Triangular Diplomacy with the Qavam Government in Iran, 1946-47
by /

Traditionally, Anglo-American relations in Iran during the 1940s are depicted as strained due to United States perceptions of British imperialism. This paper will re-evaluate this relationship using the official records of the British Foreign Office and personal correspondence of diplomats including British Ambassador to Tehran Sir Reader Bullard (1939-46), Minister in Moscow Frank Roberts (1945-47) and United States Ambassador George Allen (1946-47). Although it is apparent through the latter’s discussions with President Truman that the United States intended to supplant British influence, Anglo-American representatives in Tehran cooperated closely in pressuring Iran into a firmer anti-Communist policy. Evaluating this cooperation will involve comparison of the individual tactics of the two allies in pursuing their strategic goals. Following the seeming resolution of the Azerbaijan question by April 1946, Anglo-American concerns centred on the Soviet-Iranian oil agreement, inclusion of three Tudeh ministers in the Iranian Cabinet, and rapid growth of Tudeh influence amongst the British oilfields in southern Iran. Whilst Britain preferred heavy-handed brinkmanship symbolised by the dispatch of nearly ten thousand troops to the Iran-Iraq border in August 1946, the United States adopted a more subtle approach. Ambassador George Allen cultivated personal relations with the Shah, characterised by frequent tennis games, to intervene in the fragile domestic power balance between Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Prime Minister Ahmad Qavam. This tactical dichotomy was complimentary in achieving short-term goals, but ultimately self-destructive for longer-term British influence due to Iranian perceptions of ‘perfidious Albion’. In the short-term, it will be concluded that, contrary to traditionalist United States histories of the 1946 crisis, the heavy-handed British approach was equally significant in persuading Qavam to adopt a stronger policy in resisting Tudeh influence. This peaked with the dismissal of the Tudeh ‘camels’ (as termed by Bullard’s successor John Le Rougetel), due to the combination of overt brinkmanship with more veiled personal threats from the Ambassador. Le Rougetel has been interpreted as a weak choice to replace Bullard due to his lack of regional experience, but by balancing threats with a more sympathetic attitude towards Qavam, whom Bullard dismissed as a Soviet stooge, he achieved far more for British policy. However, leading up to the Majlis rejection of the Soviet-Iranian oil agreement in 1947, United States influence noticeably supplanted Britain, fulfilling Truman’s long-term objectives. This is evident through comparison with Qavam’s visit to Moscow in February-March 1946, during which British Minister Frank Roberts became a frequent confidant.

Pulling the “Open Door” With Two Hands: American Oil Companies, the Iranian Oil Concession and the 1946 Azerbaijani Crisis
by /

Traditional accounts of the American role in the 1946 Azerbaijani crisis tend to skew toward two diametrically opposed interpretations. Older accounts emphasize the hard stance taken by the Truman Administration against the Soviet occupation of northern Iran and the importance of Truman’s “ultimatum” to Stalin. These interpretations argue that American resistance to Soviet designs was critical in forcing the Soviet withdrawal from Azerbaijan. More recently, new interpretations have arisen which emphasize the minor importance of American policy-making and the secondary role played by American officials in forcing a conclusion to the crisis. Consistently, however, the role played by U.S. oil companies in first forcing the crisis and then later confusing the American response has been under-emphasized. Interest in obtaining an Iranian concession had a long history within the U.S. oil industry stretching back to the early 1920s, when U.S. companies vied for access to Middle Eastern oil with British firms, leading to considerable disruption in Anglo-American relations. Despite the strategic, political and economic ties associating the British Empire with the United States, competition within the oil industry threatened to pull apart the Anglo-American alliance. A similar situation arose in the early 1940s, as American companies eyed Iranian oil deposits that lay beyond the reach of the British and made a concerted effort to build an American oil presence in Iran similar to the position created by ARAMCO in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This paper will examine the origins of American interest in Iranian oil and the effect such ambitions had on Anglo-American relations within Iran during the 1940s. It will then connect the attempts of Standard-Vacuum and Sinclair Oil to gain oil concessions in 1942 with the Soviet decision to maintain its occupation of northern Iran in 1945-1946. The role of the U.S. companies in disrupting, confusing and otherwise obfuscating the American response to the crisis will be emphasized, as will the divisions that formed between American oil companies and the Truman Administration during the crisis. While a stronger American reaction to the Soviet occupation of Iran could have been possible, it was stymied by the competition between U.S. firms for an oil concession, the consternation this created between Great Britain and the U.S. and the agency of Iranian premier Ahmad Qavam, who resolved the crisis himself through skilful diplomacy with both the Americans and the Soviets.

The Mahabad Republic: Soviet Puppet or the Result of a Genuine National Movement?
by /

The Iranian Kurdistan and its position during and few years after the Second World War often is on the periphery of the scholarly interest staying in the shadow of a more researched and famous crisis around Iranian Azerbaijan in 1945-46. Yet the history of the Mahabad republic is an absolutely unique example in the modern Kurdish history. For the first time since Kurdish tribal proto-states were destroyed by the Ottomans and the Persians, the Kurds obtained the autonomous (or in many ways almost independent) territory under their total control. Although this period was fairly short, it had a significant influence on the Kurdish national feelings: up to this date the Mahabad republic stays the national symbol for the Kurds not only in Iran but in all countries where they live: Iraq, Syria, Turkey, etc. At the same time the independence of the Mahabad republic in its policies and activities is a debatable issue. The emergence of the republic was directly connected with the actions of the external powers: primarily the Anglo-Soviet occupation of Iran in August 1941. The presence of the foreign troops in Iran definitely was the important factor in the raise of the Kurdish movement to autonomy/independence. Yet the open question and the problem that this research is dedicated to are the level of the Soviet involvement in the creation of the Mahabad republic and the level of the Soviet influence on its policies. With the information obtained after the recent partial opening of the Soviet archives we know today that the Soviet role in the events in Azerbaijan was very significant – up to the level that the Azerbaijan Democratic Party was created by the directive from Moscow. Same can be said about the announcement of the autonomous government in Iranian Azerbaijan. But it’s still an open question if we can extrapolate the case of Azerbaijan to Kurdistan.

Cosmopolitan Nationalism and the Tudeh Party during the 1946 Khuzestan General Strike
by /

This paper attempts to move away from traditional topics of focus within Cold War studies on Iran – such as the Mossadegh premiership or the Azerbaijan crisis – by examining the 1946 Khuzestan general strike. Many important works on Operation Ajax fail to contextualise the oil nationalisation movement with reference to its origins outside the politics of Tehran in the 1940s. In fact, the movement can be traced to Khuzestan immediately after the Second World War, where both communism and popular anti-imperialism had emerged as aligned, powerful political forces. This paper also seeks to complement diplomatic approaches to the subject by providing a social history of Khuzestan at this time – especially Abadan – in order to bring the agency of workers and activists to the fore. I argue that the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s (AIOC) policies previously implemented to divide the workforce, such as segregated urban planning, had by now given way to shared living and labour conditions for the majority. Thus, by the time of the 1946 strike large sections of the AIOC’s Iranian, Arab and Indian workers had become united under a common banner of class solidarity, across ethnic lines. Arabs and Indians joined with the Iranian workforce in the strike and in its violence directed against senior AIOC officials and any who co-operated with them, regardless of ethnicity: for instance, Arab workers were involved in storming the Arab Club, which had accommodated Arab tribal leaders hired by AIOC as contractors to circumvent the Iranian Labour Law. This was in stark contrast to previous episodes of nationalist chauvinism, such as the 1929 Abadan strike and the 1942 Bahmanshir incident, when Iranians condemned and attacked Indian workers. Furthermore, I argue that, against the grain of policies emanating from Moscow, the Tudeh Party played an important role in agitating against the British with a nationalist, anti-imperialist, but, at the same time, cosmopolitan discourse that included Arabs and Indians in its struggle. The Tudeh’s cosmopolitan nationalism called for an end to British exploitation of all those living on Iranian soil, promoting the unity of class-consciousness and nationalism – something I show was influencing the national imagination, as expressed in the Tehran press. The Tudeh was able to have almost complete control in bringing AIOC’s operations to a halt, highlighting Britain’s vulnerability to the alliance of communism and Third World nationalism long before Mossadegh’s National Front.