The Persians by Homa Katouzian

Author:Homa Katouzian
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-300-16932-4
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2015-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

THE AZERBAIJAN REVOLT AND CONFLICTS OVER OIL

When the war ended, Iran was facing all the difficulties mentioned above, to which the revolt in Azerbaijan was now added. There were many strands to the revolt in Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijanis had been oppressed and humiliated under Reza Shah. They aspired to a dignified status and, as everywhere in the northern provinces of Iran, were influenced by leftist ideas and demanded social and economic reform. The Soviet Union (more specifically the Communist Party chief of Soviet Azerbaijan) supported the reconstituted Azerbaijan Democrat Party, led by an old communist, Ja'far Pishevari, and hoped to fish in troubled waters. The Soviet army was still occupying the province and the access areas to it (contrary to their formal commitment to leave after the end of the war), making it impossible for the Iranian central army to move up to the province and unrealistic for the provincial army division to try to suppress the rebellion of the Democrats when they declared autonomy in December 1945.36

Pishevari's letter of credence had been turned down not only in the 14th Majlis in 1943 but by the first Tudeh Party conference as well. There was not much love lost between Pishevari and the Tudeh leaders, who had treated Pishevari with contempt while they had been in the same prison ward with him under Reza Shah.37 Nevertheless, under Soviet pressure, the Tudeh uncritically backed the Azerbaijan revolt and even allowed its own party organization in Tabriz to be merged with that of the Democrats under Pishevari's leadership. Through 1946, the initial sympathy of many in Tehran for the Azerbaijan Democrats began to melt away as fears grew of a plan to separate the province from Iran and join it to the Soviet Union. The rebellion in Kurdistan and the formation of the Kurdish ‘republic’ of Mahabad in January 1946, also with Soviet support, made those in Tehran fearful, even those who had sympathy for the Kurds' and Azerbaijanis' legitimate grievances.

Qavam formed his second ministry of the 1940s in January 1946 with Soviet support in the wake of the revolt in Azerbaijan. The shah reluctantly agreed to Qavam's premiership because he had the ability to deal with the situation and was acceptable to the Russians. Although Qavam was not very keen on the idea, Iran complained to the UN Security Council against the Soviet Union's refusal to withdraw its forces, contrary to its firm commitment through the Tri-Partite Agreement. This received strong support from the United States. In March 1946 America issued strong notes of protest to the Soviet Union (although historians have cast doubt on President Truman's later claim that he had actually issued a formal ultimatum to the Soviets on the issue). Qavam's negotiations in Moscow did not yield immediate fruit, but the continuation of the negotiations with Sadchikov, the Soviet ambassador to Tehran, eventually resulted in agreement: the Soviets would withdraw their troops; the Iranian government would settle the Azerbaijan crisis amicably through negotiations with Pishevari's autonomous government; and the

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