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→1941 - 1948
====1941 - 1948====
====1941 - 1948====
[[Image:Lendleasemap.jpg|thumb|400px|right|Lend-lease aid was shipped to the Persian Gulf and through Iran to Russia to help defeat the Nazis. ]]
[[Image:Lendleasemap.jpg|thumb|400px|right|Lend-lease aid was shipped to the Persian Gulf and through Iran to Russia to help defeat the Nazis. ]]
At the start of [[World War II]] Iran was openly partial to the Axis cause. A joint Anglo-Soviet military action began on 25 August 1941 when 40,000 Soviet troops entered Iran from the north and headed for Tehran. On the same day about 19,000 British Commonwealth troops, mostly in Indian brigades, entered from various directions. There was slight resistance on the part of Iranian troops but no force Iran could not have withstood the power of the occupying armies of British Empire and the Soviet Union, and German assistance by air was now as far away as Crete. On 30 August 1941 identical notes were submitted by the invading powers to the Iranian Government which accepted their terms on 9 September. On 16 September the Shah abdicated in favor of his son, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, and left the country. The next day Tehran was jointly occupied by the British and Soviet troops without show of military force.
At the start of [[World War II]] Iran was openly partial to the Axis cause. When Hitler reneged on [[Molotov-Ribbentrop pact]] and attacked his former ally, [[Winston Churchill]] flew to [[Moscow]], assured the Soviet Union of assistance, and the fate of Reza Shah was sealed. A joint Anglo-Soviet military action began on 25 August 1941 when 40,000 Soviet troops entered Iran from the north and headed for Tehran. On the same day about 19,000 British Commonwealth troops, mostly in Indian brigades, entered from various directions. There was slight resistance on the part of Iranian troops but no force Iran could not have withstood the power of the occupying armies of British Empire and the Soviet Union, and German assistance by air was now as far away as Crete. On 30 August 1941 identical notes were submitted by the invading powers to the Iranian Government which accepted their terms on 9 September. On 16 September the Shah abdicated in favor of his son, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, and left the country. The next day Tehran was jointly occupied by the British and Soviet troops without show of military force.
The terms imposed by Tri-Partite Treaty of alliance signed on 29 January 1942 disavowed any designs against the territorial integrity of Iran or independence. Iran agreed to refrain from any act contrary to British or Soviet interests.<ref>[http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/persian/chapter01.htm#b2 United States Army in World War II], The Middle East Theater The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia, T. H. Vail Motter, Center of Military History United States Army Washington, D.C., 2000. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 52-60791. First Printed 1952-CMH Pub 8-1.</ref>
The Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran deposed the Iranian monarch in favor of his son, [[Mohammad Reza Pahlavi]], who proved to be a loyal ally in the war against Hitler and continued his father's pro-Western reform movement throughout his nearly forty year reign. The British controlled Iraqi zone remained unstable and dangerous.<ref>See Iraqforce and Tenth Army (United Kingdom) for more on British and Indian forces deployed to Iraq from 1941-43.</ref> Greater safety, but most of all Iran's geographical benefit of a direct route for supplies into the USSR across their common border, made the Persian Corridor an important conduit for [[Lend-Lease]] aid to the USSR.
The terms imposed by Tri-Partite Treaty of alliance signed on 29 January 1942 disavowed any designs against the territorial integrity of Iran or independence. Iran agreed to refrain from any act contrary to British or Soviet interests.<ref>[http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/persian/chapter01.htm#b2 United States Army in World War II], The Middle East Theater The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia, T. H. Vail Motter, Center of Military History United States Army Washington, D.C., 2000. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 52-60791. First Printed 1952-CMH Pub 8-1.</ref> The wartime [[Casablanca Conference]], [[Tehran Conference]], and [[Cairo Conference]]} were symbolic of failed German designs upon [[North Africa]] and the [[Middle East]].
Soviet political "agitprops," graduates from the Lenin Institute in Moscow, were dispatched to exploit whatever resentment and hostility toward the "imperialist warmongers" of the West they might encounter or stir up. The [[Tudeh party]], founded early in 1942, at once began to lay the ground work for the Communist uprisings which followed World War II. The Tudeh party, guided by the Soviet officials who at the same time were supervising the movement of American [[lend-lease]] aid to the Soviet Union through Iran, began openly agitating against the Anglo-Saxon "exploiters." By 1944 Iran's mushrooming, Soviet-financed Tudeh press openly called the British and Americans "[[fascists]]," "[[reactionary|reactionaries]]," and "[[imperialism|imperialist]]." <ref>[http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/yaltabet.html ''The Yalta Betrayal''], Felix Wittmer, Claxton Printers, 1953, pg. 20, 54.</ref>
Soviet political "agitprops," graduates from the Lenin Institute in Moscow, were dispatched to exploit whatever resentment and hostility toward the "imperialist warmongers" of the West they might encounter or stir up. The [[Tudeh party]], founded early in 1942, at once began to lay the ground work for the Communist uprisings which followed World War II. The Tudeh party, guided by the Soviet officials who at the same time were supervising the movement of American [[lend-lease]] aid to the Soviet Union through Iran, began openly agitating against the Anglo-Saxon "exploiters." By 1944 Iran's mushrooming, Soviet-financed Tudeh press openly called the British and Americans "[[fascists]]," "[[reactionary|reactionaries]]," and "[[imperialism|imperialist]]." <ref>[http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/yaltabet.html ''The Yalta Betrayal''], Felix Wittmer, Claxton Printers, 1953, pg. 20, 54.</ref>