it. No Republican president (and probably no Democratic president, for that matter) would have been willing to lead the party that “lost Iran.”5
As for Iran itself, the official record shows beyond doubt that the Soviet Union planned to bring Iran into its camp by dint of programs intended to “establish dominance through subversion and outright military occupation. . . . During the 1940s and 1950s, Soviet operations were freewheeling, blatant—and unsuccessful.”6 In the spring of 1945, even before the end of the war, the central government in Tehran suddenly found itself the recipient of Soviet hostility and threats when Stalin accused the Iranians of planning to assault and occupy the Soviet oil capital of Baku in the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, a preposterous imputation in light of the abysmal state of the Iranian military.7 Next, a pro-Soviet puppet supported by the growing Tudeh party proclaimed the northwestern Iranian province of Azerbaijan to be the “autonomous Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan” and employed Soviet military forces to maintain order. Stalin imperiously informed the Iranian prime minister on 11 March 1946 that Soviet troops would remain in Azerbaijan until Iran agreed to grant the province autonomy (which the Soviets would then easily subvert). Concurrently he proposed a joint Iranian-Soviet company—with the Soviets holding 51 percent—to develop oil resources in all of the northern provinces.8 If that was not sufficiently ominous to Truman and the West, many in the U.S. and British governments unhappily discerned that the Soviets were additionally obsessed with the possibility that the Western allies might use Azerbaijan as a staging area for incursions into Soviet territory.9
Stalin did not withdraw Soviet military units from Azerbaijan by 2 March 1946 as he had agreed to do in the 1942 Tripartite Treaty and had affirmed during the Tehran Conference of 1943. Instead, Soviet agents continued working to undermine the central Iranian authority in Azerbaijan and turn the province into an autonomous entity that could be brought into the Soviet bloc.10 During most of that year the U.S. government engaged in intensive diplomatic activities to bring about the Soviets’ withdrawal.11 Had the USSR not eventually complied with the treaty and evacuated from Iran, it might have succeeded in annexing most or all of the northern third of Iran, giving the Soviets a decided geostrategic advantage against the West. The situation was so serious that President Truman remarked to Averell Harriman, “We may be at war with the Soviet Union over Iran.”12 To the relief of the Western allies, and the Iranians, the Soviets finally withdrew from Iran in May 1946.
The successful resolution of this crisis convinced Truman that the U.S. support had thwarted the USSR’s efforts at imperialism.13 This conviction was strengthened by a top secret intelligence summary dated 14 June 1946. The summary indicated that the Soviets still maintained a presence in Iran, however, and that their agents would hinder the prime minister’s efforts to develop a “unified and genuinely independent Iran.” Nevertheless, the UN’s diplomatic intervention to resolve the Azerbaijan crisis “apparently helped convince the Soviets that gradual penetration . . . would succeed better” than outright invasion. The summary concluded by noting that the Soviets were confident of their eventual success in that backward nation and believed that the unpopular policies of the British-dominated Anglo-Iranian Oil Company would “forward their cause.”14
This view was further bolstered by an intelligence assessment of 20 December 1946 that was issued less than two weeks after Iranian troops ousted the Tudeh-supported Azerbaijani provincial government, an action in which the USSR tacitly but reluctantly acquiesced in order to protect an oil agreement signed with Tehran earlier in the year. Calling the denouement in Azerbaijan a “debacle” for the Soviets and noting that it weakened the Tudeh party in Iran, analysts suggested that “the Soviets may now be expected to abandon direct action in favor of intensified infiltration and clandestine activity.” This was, of course, precisely what the Soviets were attempting to do in Greece and Turkey and what they would attempt to do the next year in Italy and France. Intelligence assessments of this nature coupled with continuing evidence of Soviet efforts to subvert governments and government institutions (such as the Four Powers Control Commission in occupied Berlin) almost certainly caused worry in the Truman White House when Iranian prime minister Mossadegh’s flirtation with the Tudeh party became apparent.
There was more: a 4 June 1947 intelligence analysis entitled “Developments in the Azerbaijan Situation” asserted that while the “collapse” of the pro-Soviet government in Iranian Azerbaijan had eased tensions in the region, continued political turmoil and “persistent Soviet activities and ambitions” would keep the pot boiling. The analysis remarked the geographical value of Azerbaijan, highlighting its 202-mile border with Turkey, 70-mile border with Iraq, and 480-mile border with the USSR. Furthermore, it was a mere 125 miles from the border to the capital of Soviet oil production, Baku. By dint of being located near two diverging mountain ranges, Azerbaijan was a gateway opening Iran to easy conquest. Intertribal strife and the absence of anything approaching a viable governmental structure virtually invited Soviet subversion, and operatives could be easily infiltrated via indigenous groups whose tribal lands straddled the border with the USSR.
Despite the USSR’s political setback in the Azerbaijan region, the analysis predicted that the Soviet Union would not “abandon its ultimate objective of controlling Azerbaijan, and eventually all of Iran.” After outlining the economic pressures the Soviets could bring to bear on Iran, the analysis opined that continued disorder in the border province could create “a pretext for subsequent unilateral Soviet intervention” on the presumption “that Soviet security was in jeopardy.” Control of Azerbaijan by forces unfriendly to the USSR would doubtless be seen as a serious threat to the Soviet oil fields (which produced three-quarters of the USSR’s petroleum supplies) and hence a grave threat to Soviet security.15
By the spring of 1949 the U.S. ambassador to Iran was convinced that a Soviet invasion of Iran was imminent. The CIA’s Daily Intelligence Summary for 17 March 1949 cited a report from the ambassador to the State Department expressing the opinion that “the only uncertainty about Soviet intentions in Iran is the timing of a Soviet move to return” to Iran. Noting recent “setbacks” (probably including the West’s defeat of the Berlin blockade and electoral losses for the Soviets’ surrogate parties in Italy and France) and “particularly the imminent conclusion of the Atlantic Pact,” the ambassador thought it “possible that the USSR may enter Iran in the near future.” Expressing its own view, the CIA disagreed that a Soviet incursion was in the offing. An invasion might do more harm to the USSR than good because it would probably “decisively facilitate the rapid and effective implementation of the Atlantic Pact.”16 But the disagreement between State and CIA settled no minds.
A telling document disseminated by the CIA on 27 July 1950 titled “Special Evaluation No. 39, Possibility of Soviet Aggression against Iran” again predicted that the Soviets would resort to clandestine subversion of the Iranian government instead of an open attack.17 Agency analysts suggested that the Soviet Union would “intensify its efforts to build up subversive forces within Iran and to weaken the country by means of propaganda, border activities, and diplomatic pressure.” The assessment went on to review the advantages that would accrue to the USSR should it gain control of Iran. First, the “extension of [the] Soviet frontier to Iraq and Pakistan would facilitate Soviet penetration of the Near East and the Indian sub-continent.” Second, the USSR “would be in a more favorable position for extending its control over those areas in the event of global war” and “would gain access to Iran’s great oil resources.” And, third, the United States “would be denied an important potential base of operations against the USSR [and, conversely] the USSR would obtain buffer territory between its vital Baku oil fields and the bases from which Baku might be attacked.” The evaluation examined several scenarios in which the Soviets could generate pretexts for overt intervention in Iran cloaked with some semblance of legality and finished by declaring that if the Iranian government were to lose faith in the United States, it might “feel compelled to seek an accord with the USSR or at least to attempt a course of neutrality.” The consequences of either would leave the Soviets in a “greatly improved position for taking over the country without the
