The Iranian Crisis and the Birth of the Cold War by Benjamin F. Harper

Author:Benjamin F. Harper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books, a division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2012-03-06T16:00:00+00:00

The World’s Eyes Turn to Northern Persia

A situation capable of testing the new American aims was on the verge of presenting itself in the Middle East. Japan’s surrender on 2 September 1945 designated 2 March 1946 as the ultimate troop withdrawal date from Iran (due to the six-month timetable stipulated in the Tripartite Treaty). Both the Soviet Union and Great Britain agreed. As autumn wore on, tensions mounted when it became evident that rather than beginning the process of an orderly withdrawal, American military intelligence units reported that “the Soviets [were] instead reinforcing their military installations in northern Iran.”[26]

In actuality, records from government archives in Baku, Azerbaijan, indicate that the Soviet Union had already launched extensive commercial enterprises and separatist initiatives in northern Iran and southern Azerbaijan, including geological prospecting missions for oil, Politburo directives for creating and sustaining regional communist political parties, and clandestine intelligence ventures (referred to in the Kremlin rather unambiguously as “Secret Soviet Instructions on Measures to Carry out Special Assignments”).[27]

The level and intensification of Soviet involvement in Azerbaijan and northern Iran from mid-1945 to late-1946 is noteworthy. In meticulous detail, Stalin had decreed several oil prospecting and other industrial enterprise initiatives in June 1945.[28] After laying the groundwork by means of creating educational facilities and a foundation of economic exchange, Stalin and Molotov launched a remarkable political barrage on the area. Recently declassified documents reveal that Russian leaders created a sympathetic Azerbaijan Democratic Party, numerous local “organizing committees,” propaganda campaigns through press agencies, ensured the election of favorable candidates to the Azeri Majlis, supported strikes and other demonstrations, readied themselves to expel rival politicians, and actively “organize the separatist movement,” province by province.[29]

Moreover, the Russians had been equipping the Azeris and Kurds (who were launching their own Soviet-sponsored separatist movement in the western Iranian city of Mahabad) with military hardware, and encouraging political sympathizers (namely Mir Jafar Bagirov, the secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan) to rebel against the Iranian government in order to establish an autonomous regime within Azerbaijan.[30] In fact, the Soviets had underhandedly armed the Azeri separatists with 100,000 rifles, 3,000 light machine guns, and 1,000 heavy machine guns; an arsenal that two years prior to the crisis, Moscow had ordered Tehran to turn over for use by the Red Army in the Allied war effort.

Between October 1945 and January 1946, Soviet Major-General Yemel’yanov oversaw the transfer of a stockpile of weapons recently acquired by the Azerbaijan SSR to allied forces in northern Iran. A memo from the period reveals that the transfer included the following:

“Mauser” rifles, Iranian models—11,516

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.