Allied rivalry over oil concession during World War II occupation of Iran: the Soviet perspective based on Soviet documents

ABSTRACT

The Soviet view of Allied rivalry over Iranian oil concessions lies at the centre of the discussion in this article. This rivalry, framed as ‘rivalry within partnership’, had earlier precedents, and was resumed with vigour in 1943, with the added dimension of propaganda used against each other. It took place at a crucial time for Iran, namely during the Allied occupation during World War II, coinciding with the Tehran Conference and the preparation of Iranian political parties for the fourteenth Majlis elections (along with the role that Muhammad Riza Shah Pahlavi played in the success of the newly established Tudeh Party of Iran in those elections) all of which as viewed from a Soviet point of view based on Soviet documents.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Many books have been written on the ‘Great Game’ in general and with regards to Iran in particular, with the following being a sample: Edward Ingram, The beginning of the great game in Asia, 1828–1834 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979); Firuz Kazemzadeh, Russia and Britain in Persia, 1864–1914: A Study of Imperialism; Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia (New York: Kodansha International, 1992).

² Leonardo Davoudi, Persian Petroleum: Oil, Empire and Revolution in Late Qajar Iran (London and New-York: I. B. Tauris, 2021), 153–8; Farhad Kazemi, ‘Anglo-Persian Oil Company’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, online version, 1985, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/anglo-persian-oil-company (accessed May 12, 2022).

³ Nina Mamedova, ‘Russia ii. Iranian-Soviet Relations (1917–1991)’, Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, 2009, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/russia-ii-iranian-soviet-relations-1917-1991 (accessed June 1, 2022); Mostafa Fateh, Panjah Sal Naft-i Iran (Tehran: Payam, 1388/1979), 328–30.

⁴ Mohammad Malek, ‘Iran’s Oil Policy, 1921–41’ (PhD diss., University of Manchester, 1998), 28; Elena Andreeva, ‘RUSSIA i. Russo-Iranian Relations up to the Bolshevik Revolution’, Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, 2014, https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/russia-i-relations, https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/russia-i-relations (accessed May 29, 2022)

⁵ Riza Dehghani and Fariborz Mohammadkhani, ‘Third Power Policy and its Role in the Creation of US-Iran Relations in the Early Rule of Naser al-Din Shah (1850–1857 AD)’, Journal of Iranian Islamic Period History 11, no. 23, serial 2 (Autumn 2020): 21–44.

⁶ Arthur Millspaugh, The American Task in Persia (New-York: The Century Co., 1925), 289–90; Malek, ‘Iran’s Oil Policy’, 37–8.

⁷ Kazemi, ‘Anglo-Persian Oil Company’; Malek, ‘Iran’s Oil Policy’, 37.

⁸ Michael A. Rubin, ‘Stumbling through the “Open Door”: The U.S. in Persia and the Standard-Sinclair Oil Dispute, 1920–1925’, Iranian Studies 28, no. 3–4 (1995): 203–29; Barry Rubin, Paved with Good Intentions: The American Experience and Iran (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 13; Michael P. Zirinsky, ‘Blood, Power, and Hypocrisy: The Murder of Robert Imbrie and American Relations with Pahlavi Iran, 1924’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 18, no. 3 (1986): 275–92.

⁹ Malek, ‘Iran’s Oil Policy’, 55, 58.

¹⁰ In 1925 the Soviet government bought Khoshtaria’s shares (65%) in the Kavir-Khurian company; Mamedova, ‘Iranian-Soviet Relations’.

¹¹ Mahmoud Abdullahzadeh, ‘The Kavīr-i Khūrīān Oil Concession’, Iran 33 (1995): 161–4; Fateh, Panjah Sal, 345–7; Kazemi, ‘Anglo-Persian Oil Company’; Malek, ‘Iran’s Oil Policy’, 58, 66.

¹² Laurence P. Elwell-Sutton, Persian Oil: A Study in Power Politics (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1955), 67–82; Benjamin Shwadran, The Middle East Oil and the Great Powers (New York: Praeger, 1955), 38–47; George Lenczowski, Russia and the West in Iran, 1918–1948: A Study in Big-Power Rivalry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1949), 139–40.

¹³ Elwell-Sutton, Persian Oil, 88–103; Kazemi, ‘Anglo-Persian Oil Company’.

¹⁴ Mohammad-Gholi Majd, August 1941: The Anglo-Russian Occupation of Iran and Change of Shahs (Lanham, MD: University Press of America Inc., 2012).

¹⁵ Jennifer Jenkins, ‘Iran in the Nazi New Order, 1933–1941’, Iranian Studies 49, no. 5 (2016), 738; Miron Rezun, The Iranian crisis of 1941: the actors, Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union (Köln: Böhlau, 1982), 51–77. Rezun claims that ‘in the early months of 1941, German influence in the [Iranian] army had become pervasive to the extent that an underground pro-Nazi grouping emerged among leading, German-educated [Iranian] officers’.

¹⁶ In 1941, and in order to serve their own interests in Iran, the British even briefly considered Prince Hamid Mirza Qajar—who at that time was a British citizen named David Drummond—as a replacement for Riza Shah; Denis Wright, The Persians Amongst the English: Episodes in Anglo-Persian History (London: I.B.Tauris, 1985), photo between pages 196 and 197.

¹⁷ Nikolay Kozhanov, ‘The Pretexts and Reasons for the Allied Invasion of Iran in 1941’, Iranian Studies 45, no. 4 (July 2012): 493, 495–7.

¹⁸ Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), 291; idem., ‘Social Bases of Iranian Politics: The Tudeh Party, 1941–53’ (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1969), 209.

¹⁹ Rasmus Christian Elling and Rowena Abdul Razak, ‘Oil, Labour and Empire: Abadan in WWII Occupied Iran’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 24, no. 1 (July 2021): 15.

²⁰ There was also the 1911 American financial delegation, headed by Morgan Shuster, but it was not involved in oil matters yet and was short-lived; Lenczowski, Russia and the West in Iran, 82.

²¹ Iraj Eskandari, Khatirat-i Siyasi, ed. A. Dehbashi (Tehran: ʻIlmi, 1989), 297–326; Sepehr Zabih, The Communist Movement in Iran (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966), 71–4.

²² Cosroe Chaqueri, ‘Did the Soviet Play a Role in Founding the Tudeh Party in Iran’, Cahiers du Monde russe 40, no. 3 (Jul.- Sep. 1999): 505–6, 510, 515–6, 523.

²³ Rowena Abdul Razak, ‘Convenient Comrades: Re-assessing the Relationship between the Soviet Union and the Tudeh Party during the British-Soviet Occupation of Iran, 1941–5’, in ed. R. Matthee and E. Andreeva, Russian in Iran: Diplomacy and Power in the Qajar Era and Beyond (London and New York: I.B.Tauris, 2018), 283.

²⁴ Russia, Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (Rossiyskiy Gosudarstvennyy Arkhiv Sotsio-Politicheskoy Istorii, hereafter: RGASPI), Dmitriy Manuil’sky (secretary of the Comintern’s operation committee) to Viacheslav Molotov (USSR’s foreign secretary), February 8, 1944 (top secret), RGASPI/82/2/1220, l. 8; Mamedova, ‘Iranian-Soviet Relations’.

²⁵ Abrahamian, ‘Social Bases of Iranian Politics’, 209.

²⁶ The Minister in Iran (Dreyfus) to the Secretary of State (Hull), April 14, 1943 (telegram 891.51a/581) and May 5, 1943 (telegram 891.51A/598), Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers (FRUS), 1943: The Near East and Africa, IV: 541 and 545 respectively.

²⁷ See under sub-title 2, ‘Negotiations on Oil Concessions in Iran during WWII’, located in the file titled Letters, Messages … Decision of the Second Confederation of the Tudeh Party in October 1942, on the Mood in the Iranian Army …, RGASPI/5/10/817. Unfortunately, the first article of the above-mentioned document (which probably related to a different subject), and its details are lacking in the file. In the USSR, the practice of taking out documents from their related files was widely known and Denis Volkov refers to it; see: Denis Volkov, ‘Fearing the Ghosts of State Officialdom Past? Russia’s Archives as a Tool for Constructing Historical Memories on its Persia Policy Practices’, Middle Eastern Studies 51, no. 6 (2015): 901–21. Please note that this is also the reason that the number of the file’s pages are not stated; it is done only in files that are complete, and nothing is missing from them.

²⁸ ‘Negotiations on Oil Concessions’.

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ Suhayli served as Iranian prime minister twice: 9 March-9 August 1942, and again 15 February 1943–6 April 1944.

³¹ Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 184.

³² Rubin, Paved with Good Intentions, 19–20; Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 184.

³³ The Chargé in Iran (Ford) to Minister of Commerce and Industry, 27 February 1944, FRUS 390–392, as quoted by James A. Thorpe, ‘The Mission of Arthur C. Millspaugh to Iran, 1943–1945’ (PhD diss., the University of Wisconsin, 1973), 246.

³⁴ ‘Negotiations on Oil Concessions’.

³⁵ Ibid. These allegations against the British were general in character, without providing any specifics.

³⁶ Ibid. The specific locations were not mentioned.

³⁷ Salekh Aliyev, Istoriya Irana XX vek. (Moskva: Kraft, 2004), 206.

³⁸ The Chargé in Iran (Ford) to the Secretary of State (Hull), 23 December 1943 (telegram 891.6363/814), FRUS, IV: 672.

³⁹ UK National Archives, Foreign Office Files (hereafter: FO), Reader Bullard (British minister, Tehran) to Foreign Office (London), October 22 and November 10, 13 and 15, 1943, FO 371/35,128.

⁴⁰ ‘Negotiations on Oil Concessions’.

⁴¹ Rowena Abdul-Razak, ‘“But what would they think of us?” Propaganda and the Manipulation of the Anglo-Soviet Occupation of Iran, 1941‒46’, Iranian Studies 49, no. 5 (2016): 825–6.

⁴² ‘Negotiations on Oil Concessions’.

⁴³ Y. Lomakin (deputy-chairman of the foreign policy committee of the central committee of the VKP(b)) to V. G. Grigorian (chairman of the committee), May 27, 1950, RGASPI/17/128/1190, l. 19.

⁴⁴ The Minister in Iran (Dreyfus) to the Secretary of State (Hull), April 7, 1943 (telegram 891.51A/564), FRUS, IV: 538.

⁴⁵ Antony Eden (British Foreign Minister) to Bullard, May 24, 1943, FO 248/1427, G544/59/43, as quoted by Abdul-Razak, ‘ ‘’But what … ’‘ ‘, 828.

⁴⁶ Lomakin to Grigorian, May 27, 1950, l. 19.

⁴⁷ Ismaʻil Rain, Faramush-khanah va Framasunri dar Iran, 3 vols. (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 5^th edition, 1357/1978), 3: 528.

⁴⁸ Lomakin to Grigorian, May 27, 1950, l. 19.

⁴⁹ A more active and lasting attempt with regards to IAS was made by Cyler Young, the first press attaché in the US embassy in Tehran, who began his work in January 1945. See: Muhammad-Kazim Radmanesh and Hossein Ibrahimi, ‘Anjuman-i Iran va Amrika dar Mashhad’, Fasl-namah-yiʻIlmi-Pazhuhishi-yi Tarikh 7, no. 24 (1391/2012): 97–8, http://www.jhiaumahallat.ir/article_540225.html; Asghar Haydari, ‘Sharik-i Amrikai-yi Furughi—nigahi beh faʻaliyat-ha-yi Artur Pop dar Iran’, Mahnamah-yi Zamanah 5, no. 43 (1385/2006): 18; and ʻAli-Akbar Khadri-zadah, ‘Hossein ʻAla va Ravabit-i Iran va Amrika (1300–1303)’, Tarikh-i Muʻasir-i Iran 2, no. 3 (Autumn 1377/1999): 7–34 for more details on IAS.

Lomakin to Grigorian, May 27, 1950, l. 19–20.

⁵⁰ Lomakin to Grigorian, May 27, 1950, l.19.

⁵¹ Ibid.

⁵² Thorpe, ‘The Mission … ’, vi–vii, 25, 30.

⁵³ ‘Shah’s interview with Reuters Agency in Tehran’, November 30, 1950 (secret), RGASPI/82/2/1220, l. 125.

⁵⁴ Lomakin to Grigorian, May 27, 1950, l. 19–20. Bayat (1944) and Hikmat (1947) both served as Prime Ministers of Iran.

⁵⁵ Abdul-Razak, ‘ ‘‘But what … ’‘ ‘, 828.

⁵⁶ The Chargé in Iran (Ford) to Minister of Commerce and Industry, February 27, 1944, FRUS, V: 392–393 as quoted by Thorpe, ‘The Mission … ’, 246.

⁵⁷ Lomakin to Grigorian, May 27, 1950, l. 25.

⁵⁸ Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 281.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 186–224.

⁶⁰ Fakhreddin Azimi, ‘Elections i. Under the Qajar and Pahlavi Monarchies, 1906–79’, Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, 2009, https://iranicaonline.org/articles/elections#i (accessed January 16, 2022).

⁶¹ Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 187–8, 193–4, 291–2.

⁶² Tudeh Party headship to Central Committee of Communist Party of USSR/party of Bol’sheviks, n.d., RGASPI /5/10/817; Tudeh Party headship to V. Molotov, A. Micoyan, L. Beriya, G. Malenkov, A. Sherbakov, October 14, 1944 (top secret), RGASPI /5/10/818.

⁶³ Manuil’skiy to Molotov, February 8, 1944, l. 8.

⁶⁴ Vladimir Lota, ’Sekretnyy voyazh’ [Secret Trip], in Russian Ministry of Defence Portal https://mil.ru/winner_may/history/more.htm?id=11855957@cmsArticle (accessed January 6, 2022).

⁶⁵ Mohammad Riza Pahlavi, Answer to History (New York: Stein and Day, 1980), 72–3; idem., Mission for My Country (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1961), 80.

⁶⁶ Manuil’skiy to Molotov, February 8, 1944, l. 8–9.

⁶⁷ I. Bakulin (head of Near and Middle East section in USSR ministry of foreign affairs) to L. Baranov (deputy head of international information section of the Central Committee of VKP(b)), July 12, 1948 (secret), no. 766, RGASPI/5/10/609.

⁶⁸ Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 291–2.

⁶⁹ Abrahamian, ‘Social Bases of Iranian Politics’, 209.

⁷⁰ Tudeh party headship to Molotov, Micoyan, Beriya, Malenkov, Sherbakov, October 14, 1944.

⁷¹ Aliyev, Istoriya Irana, 206.

⁷² Comrade Fitin (position not available) to Comrade Panyushkin (deputy-chairman of the foreign policy office of the party’s central committee), September 14, 1945 (top secret), no. 618, RGASPI/17/128/609.

⁷³ Tudeh party headship to Molotov, Micoyan, Beriya, Malenkov, Sherbakov, October 14, 1944.

⁷⁴ Ibid.

⁷⁵ Ibid.

⁷⁶ Tudeh party headship to Central Committee of Communist Party of USSR, n.d.

⁷⁷ J. H. Bamberg, The History of the British Petroleum Company, vol 2: The Anglo-Iranian Years, 1928–1954 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 252.

⁷⁸ Bullard to FO, October 2 and 3, 1944, FO 371/40,241.

⁷⁹ ‘Negotiations on Oil Concessions’; Bullard to FO, October 9, 1944, FO 371/40,241; Clarmont Skirne, World War in Iran (London: Constable & Company Ltd., 1962), 227.

⁸⁰ Pahlavi, Answer to History, 73.

⁸¹ ‘Negotiations on Oil Concessions’; Jacob C. Hurewitz, The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary Record, 2 vols., 2nd. ed. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975–92), 2: 738–42; Parviz Mina, ‘Oil Agreements in Iran’, Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, 2004, https://iranicaonline.org/articles/oil-agreements-in-iran (accessed January 20, 2022).