NOTABLES REEMERGE

The 1941 Anglo-Soviet invasion destroyed Reza Shah – but not the Pahlavi state. The two Allies – joined by the United States in December 1941 – realized that the Iranian state could be useful in achieving the two goals for which they had invaded the country: physical control over oil – the British nightmare in World War II, even more so than in World War I, was loss of these vital supplies; and a land “corridor” to the Soviet Union since the alternate route through Archangel was frozen much of the year. Ironically, the Trans-Iranian Railway as well as the new roads made Iran a more tempting “corridor.” To facilitate the flow of both oil to Britain and supplies to the Soviet Union, the Allies found it expedient to remove Reza Shah but to preserve his state. As Sir Reader Bullard – the British minister who was soon elevated to the rank of ambassador – made clear in his typically blunt and frank reports, the Allies kept his state but engineered his removal in part to curry much-needed favor among Iranians. “The Persians,” he wrote, “expect that we should at least save them from the Shah's tyranny as compensation for invading their country.”

On September 15, three weeks after the initial onslaught, Reza Shah abdicated in favor of his twenty-one-year-old son, Crown Prince Muhammad Reza, and went into exile, first to British Mauritius and then to South Africa, where he died in 1944.