The Pittsburgh Press (March 19, 1946)
Love: Troubled Iran
By Gilbert Love
Since Iran seems likely to be in the news for some time to come, let’s devote a few minutes to getting acquainted with it.
Iran was called Persia until 1925, when it succeeded in getting the rest of the world to use the name that its natives had been using all the time. It’s a big blob of territory about the size of Texas, lying in a section of the world that is just a blur in most of our minds. It’s bounded on the east by Turkey and Iraq (which was part of Turkey until World War I), on the southeast by the Persian Gulf, on the south by the Arabian Sea, on the west by India and Afghanistan, on the north by Russia and trouble.
The Caspian Sea bulges into the northern border of the country. About a hundred miles below the center of this bulge is Tehran, the capital, principal city, and scene of one of the Big Three conferences during the war.
Except for its oil, Iran is nothing to get excited about. A large part of it is desert and mountain country. It’s hot as blazes in summer and there’s little rainfall. Farmers think they’re very lucky if they get back ten times the grain they plant. Fruits and melons do well in the coastal region, however, and some are exported.
Has world’s richest oil field
Wandering tribes in the interior produce a lot of wool. Most of it is used in Persian rugs, which are practically the only articles manufactured in the country.
The oil, which seems to be causing the present uproar, is located chiefly in the southern part of the country, although there is more than a suspicion that the northern part also has oil.
The oil field in the southwest, at the head of the Persian Gulf, is the richest in the world. It has been controlled by British interests for years. American oil companies have been in eastern Iran since 1937.
The people of Iran number about 15 million. Most of them are primitive, uneducated and very poor. They belong to the Shiah branch of Mohammedans, the followers of Ali, who was Mohammed’s brother-in-law. The country is ruled by a Shah, plus a prime minister and a congress called the Majlis.
Until recent years, transportation was so poor in Iran that the northern and central parts of the country actually imported oil from Russia. Before World War II, a number of railway and road projects were undertaken, many of them under the direction of American engineers.
Foreigners, and foreign nations, have practically run the country in modern times. In 1907, Great Britain and Russia partitioned Iran into a Russian sphere of influence in the north and a British sphere in the south, with a no man’s land in between. In 1919, Great Britain got the Shah to agree to place the whole nation under British control. Then the Russians got back on their feet and, in 1921, invaded the country and forced the Shah to cancel the agreement.
Revolt started present trouble
After the outbreak of World War II, the British forced the Shah to abdicate and replaced him with his son. Then the Allies occupied the country. In September of 1943 Iran declared war on Germany
and became one of the United Nations.
The country became a great assembly depot for supplies going to Russia. American G.I.’s built a great port at Khurramshah and clanked up and down the country in American-built railroad equipment.
At the Tehran Conference, however, the Big Three agreed to respect the independence of Iran.
The present trouble started with a revolt in Azerbaijan Province, on the Soviet border, last November. Iran charged that it was inspired and equipped by Russia, and that Red Army forces in the area wouldn’t permit troops from Tehran to enter the province.
The situation became tense when Russia failed to live up to a Big Three agreement to remove all troops from Iran by March 2. American and British forces had departed, but on March 1 Moscow announced that it would keep troops there because of unsettled conditions. Then came rumors that the Red Ary was marching south.
What Iran can do about it won’t be much. Before the war it had an army of 32,000, an air force of 300 planes, and a navy composed of an antiquated gunboat and several converted yachts.