US and British involvement in Persia Before it Became Iran

What was the US and British involvement in overthrowing the Persian government in 1953? Persia was once a great empire and is now considered Greater Iran.

In 1925, Reza Shah Pahlavi seized power from the Qajars and established the new Pahlavi dynasty, the last Persian monarchy before the establishment of the Islamic Republic. However, Britain and the Soviet Union remained the influential powers in Persia into the early years of the Cold War.

On March 21, 1935, Iran was officially accepted as the new name of the country. After Persian scholars' protests to this decision, in 1953 Mohammad Reza Shah announced both names "Iran" and "Persia" could be used.

Originally posted by YouveGotWood
What was the US and British involvement in overthrowing the Persian government in 1953? Persia was once a great empire and is now considered Greater Iran.

If you know enough to ask the question in such detail, you probably know the answer, too. At any rate, it's hardly a secret that the Shah overthrew a democratically-elected Iranian government with help from the West. I imagine the Wikipedia article on Iran would give the facts. So would any decent history site.

British involvement in Iranian affairs goes back to Victorian times and the 'great game' - geopolitical manoeuvring against Imperial Russia in Central Asia and the Caucasus. The other player in the region was the degenerate and exhausted Ottoman Empire, though the Ottomans had been out of Iran since the rise of the Safavids in the sixteenth century.

In 1941, the British and the Russians jointly invaded Iran to keep the country from allying with the Axis.

American involvement is of more recent date and mostly had to do with oil - until the Islamic revolution, of course.

reply to post by YouveGotWood


Do you know where the word “IRAN” comes from?
If you don’t know, then I invite you to search where this word originated from, you will have a hell of a surprise when you find where Iran name come from.
And then you may understand why the Islamic Republic prefers to be called Iran then Persia.
As for your question, I suggest that you google your question and you will find endless site that answer it.

Kacou

Originally posted by kacou
Do you know where the word “IRAN” comes from?

I invite you to search... you will have a hell of a surprise... you will find endless site...

Oh go on, you know you're going to tell us eventually.

Iran - "land of the Aryan"

source

Aryan

reply to post by WeirdVibes

Yes, you're right.

Although the change of name in Iran was originally Nazi-inspired, its retention has more to do with the issues discussed in the first Wikipedia article you linked to than with Hitlerian ideas of an Aryan master-race.

You have to understand that connotations the word 'Aryan' acquired in the West during the twentieth century are not universal. To South and Southeast Asians, the word has other meanings - racial indeed, but not actually racist or triumphalist. It just means people of roughly North Indian provenance who are linguistically and culturally related to the ancestral Aryans, a horse-riding, cattle-herding people from Central Asia. A lot of Iranian ethnic groups classify themselves as Aryan in this sense. It does not mean they fantasize about wearing shiny black boots and annexing Austria.

The Western perspective is only one among others. It is often hard for Westerners to understand this because it is such a dominant perspective in historiography, current affairs and the media. Educated non-Westerners probably find it easier to look at things from alternative viewpoints; it is one of the few advantages we enjoy, but it is a real one.

reply to post by Astyanax


I haven’t include the origin of the word Iran , because I have learn that in ATS people are very doubtful about what one can write therefore I always invite people to find the meaning by them self.
Saying this now I will give you what Aryans are from my readings;
Somewhere between 1500B.C and 1200 B.C, the Indian subcontinent was invaded from the northwest by tribes of people known as “Aryans”. The Aryans made themselves India’s new ruling class and forced the native Indians into a servant status.
Exactly who the Aryan where and precisely where they came from is an issue still debated today.
Some historians have generally used the word “Aryan” to indicate those peoples who spoke the Indo-European languages. Aryan also was used to describe mankind’s non Semitic white-skinned race.
The most famous Aryan mythological leader was Zoroaster. Believed to some extent to have lived somewhere between 1000B.C and 6000B.C and introduce monotheism with an apocalyptic message.
It has been said (and this is not a proof what so ever), that the highest cleric ranking of the Islamic republic of Iran believe that they are the Aryan race of the Gods.
We assume that the Islamic Republic of Iran would follow the Muslim calendar, but they don’t, they follow the Zoroastrian calendar.
Now we can all speculate why and would this imply the same superior race doctrine that swept the European continent 60 years a go?
We could also ask the question why so much resistance from the Arab country to worse Iran?

That’s only my take.

kacou

Britain’s involvement in Persia began as part of the ‘Great Game’ in the first half of the 19th century. Britain considered Russian expansionism as a threat to its Jewel in the Crown, India and viewed Afghanistan as a possible staging post for an attack on India. The rest of the 19th Century saw Russia and Britain fighting over control and influence in Afghanistan.

While Britain and Russia were involved in a push-me-pull-me situation over Afghanistan a new empirical threat emerged from Germany that polarized the interests of Russia and Britain. In 1907 Alexander Izvolsky and Edward Grey signed an agreement to unite against German expansionism. Persia was divided into three zones – British, Russian and Neutral. While Russia was able to concentrate on its European territories, Britain looked to diminishing the influence of Germany in the Middle-East.

Germany had made significant in-roads into Persia by this time. They had very good relations with the Ottomans and were in the process of building the German Baghdad Railway which promised to open up Persia to German trade, industry and technology. This was further exacerbated by the incursion of Standard Oil into the Burma fields and their courting of German industrialists.

In 1917, the agreement between Russia and Britain became void and Britain was left to face German expansionism alone for the time being.

By this time the Germans were well established in Ottoman controlled Persia and the
British were busy trying to put the cat amongst the pigeons. A young historian named Thomas Edward Lawrence was posted to the Cairo Intelligence Office and proved to be just what they were looking for. Lawrence while researching his thesis on Crusader architecture had traveled extensively throughout Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Jordan, he had forged friendships with the German engineers and the Arab leaders alike. He was the epitome of being the right man, in the right place, at the right time.

To cut a very long story short – we’ve all seen the film – Lawrence with the Arab Bureau of the British Foreign Office developed a plan to create insurgency amongst the Arabs against their Ottoman overlords. This led to the Arab revolt and eventually to the division of the Ottoman lands to mandates by the League of Nations – which was a complete stab in the back to the Arab’s hopes for self-determination and particularly to Emir Faisal who had worked with Lawrence to unite all the Arab groups. It also meant that Britain’s trade position was preserved from both the Germans and the US in the form of Standard Oil.

After that it just gets really nasty and the tricks even dirtier….in real terms it became a fight between the British (Burmah Oil Co/BP) and the US (Standard Oil) for trading privileges which culminated in Second World War.