August 1941 The Anglo-Russian Occupation of Iran and Change of Shahs

Coming shortly after the British occupation of Iraq and the German invasion of Russia, the Anglo-Russian occupation of Iran secured a vital route for supplies to Russia and assured British control of the oilfields. To save the Pahlavi regime, Reza Shah was replaced by his son and Iranians were given a New Deal. The Allied occupation thus ushered in a brief period of democratic freedoms. Having described the rise of Reza Shah in a previous work, Majd completes the story by describing his downfall. The author has made an extensive search of the widely scattered U.S. diplomatic and military records and these are supplemented by reports in the The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Chicago Daily Tribune, as well as other press accounts. More than seventy years later, this interesting story has remained untold. August 1941 is the first detailed and documented account of the affair.

Mohammad Gholi Majd has written widely on the history of Iran in the inter-war period. His books include From Qajar to Pahlvi: Iran, 1919-1930 (University Press of America, 2008), Oil and the Killing of the American Consul in Tehran (University Press of America, 2006); The Great American Plunder of Persias Antiquities, 1925-1941 (University Press of America, 2003); and Great Britain and Reza Shah: The Plunder of Iran, 1921-1941 (University Press of Florida, 2001). He holds a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Cornell University and resides in Rockville, Maryland.