occupation of Iraq by British and Indian troops
in May 1941. For the remainder of the war, and
indeed for some years after, Britain was able to
reassert its dominance, until it all collapsed in
another bloody Iraqi coup in 1958.
Persia, during the First World War, was a par-
titioned country divided between Russia and
Britain until the Russians departed after the
Bolshevik Revolution. The end of the war in
1918 left the British in a dominant position with
sole rights to the exploitation of Persian oil. As in
Iraq, Britain in 1921 moved away from direct
control to indirect influence. Among the leaders
who seized power in Persia was the self-appointed
commander of the Cossack Brigade, Reza Khan.
He soon extended his military power over the
whole country, crushing tribal revolts and polit-
ical opposition, and dignifying his authoritarian
rule with a constitutional façade. The Persian par-
liament, the Majlis, was dependent upon the
rulers, not the other way round.
In 1925 Reza Khan had himself chosen as the
new Shah and declared the foundation of the
Pahlavi dynasty, whose survival he sought to
ensure by despotic rule and the murder of oppo-
nents. Britain did not intervene and regarded it as
in its best interests to deal with a strong ruler,
allowing agreements to be made that would not
be jeopardised by changes of leadership. What
mattered was to maintain the Anglo-Persian oil
concessions and the bulk of the profits. As oil pro-
duction increased, the royalties paid to the Shah
also grew; these he used to strengthen his army.
Following the example of Kemal Atatürk, he
forced Westernisation through. The emancipation
of women and the spread of Western influences,
especially education, began to change Iran,
though more in the towns than in the countryside.
Communications were improved and there was
some industrial development. Centralised govern-
ment, a growing bureaucracy and a new army rep-
resented the modern face of Persia, renamed Iran
in 1935; but, for the masses of the poor, little was
done. The Shah favoured the rich, the merchants
and the landlords, over the majority, the poor
peasants, from whom taxes and military service
were exacted. To the poor’s resentment against
the rich was added a religious dimension: the peas-
ants remained faithful to traditional Muslim teach-
ing, while the middle and upper classes tended to
Western secularism. The Shah’s efforts to stimu-
late modernisation widened rather than narrowed
the differences between the poor 90 per cent and
the privileged few at the top of the social pyramid.
The seeds of reaction were sown.
The Shah wished to throw off British influence
and was attracted, when the Second World War
began, to National Socialist Germany, as were
other Middle Eastern leaders. In the midst of a
devastating war Britain could not afford to jeop-
ardise its oil supplies. The German invasion of the
Soviet Union in June 1941 gave Iran an added
importance as a vital Allied supply route to the
Russians. With Britain and the Soviet Union now
allies, joint action was agreed. In August 1941
British and Russian troops invaded Iran and
deposed the Shah. The 21-year-old Mohammed
Reza succeeded his father as Shah. Under Allied
supervision mass politics were encouraged, with
the Russians, the Americans and the British
seeking to broaden their support among the
people. Thus the Russians promoted a pro-Soviet
Tudeh Party with its base in the Soviet-occupied
north. The British supported tribal leaders in the
south. The disruption the war brought to Iran
compounded the problems from which the
country was already suffering, but the national
crises were postponed until the war’s conclusion.
France’s power and role in the Middle East was
once second only to Britain’s. Despite France’s
success in penetrating the eastern Mediterranean
culturally and commercially – French became the
language of the educated elite – French power
was eroded by two world wars. The British suc-
ceeded in limiting France’s share of Ottoman
spoils to the Lebanon and to a Syria much
reduced in size. France showed little interest in
guiding its mandate to independence.
In 1920 the French made short shrift of
Faisal’s Syrian kingdom. They then proceeded to
divide their mandate into five separate adminis-
trative nations and, when this proved unworkable,
into two states (in 1925), the Lebanon and Syria.
The mandatory governments were firmly con-
trolled by the French military on the model of
1
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