Between Soviet Scylla and British Charybdis: The Untold Story of the Abdication of Reza Shah

This paper will reveal some previously unknown facts about the role of the USSR and Great Britain in the resignation of Reza Shah (1925-1941) in September 1941 in favour of his son Mohammad Reza (19411979).
The importance of the events of August September 1941 when the armies of the Soviet Union and Great Britain invaded neutral Iran on a relatively hollow pretext is difficult to overestimate. These developments not only opened a new page in the history of Iran and its quest for freedom and democracy which ended up with the emergence of the National Front and the nationalization of Iranian oil. Yet, our knowledge about this period is still limited and full of blank spots. The lack of information about those events is largely determined by the fact that till the end of the Cold War they remained hostage to the ideological confrontation between the USSR and its allies, on one hand, and the West, on the other. None of these adversaries wanted to acknowledge that the occupation of Iran was the result of Soviet and British ambitions that had little to do with the neutralization of the Nazi threat in Iran. Doing so would have damaged their image on the post-World War II international arena.
However, with the fall of the USSR and the gradual declassification of the Soviet archival documents related to the period 1939 1945, new primary sources became available to the public. Now, they allow shedding more light on the Russian and British role in the events of August September 1941, the resignation of the first monarch in the Pahlavi dynasty and the ascendance of his son to the Iranian throne in September 1941. The recent studies of Russian archival documents show that the abdication of the Shah was purely the result of secret British-Soviet intrigues and the rivalry of the two powers for the influence in Iran. Both the British and Soviets mistrusted Reza Shah and strived to replace him with a more reliable and controllable figure. The British government intended to restore the Qajar dynasty whereas the Soviet authorities offered to establish a democratic republic in Iran. Both sides were insisting on their model of the future Iranian government. Under these circumstances, Mohammad Reza Shah suddenly became a compromise figure, and the Pahlavi dynasty was accidently saved.