On 4 March 1946, 15 Soviet tank brigades entered Iran and advanced towards Tehran and Iran’s borders with Iraq and Turkey. This provoked strong protest from Iran itself, as well as from the US and UK. The event triggered the so-called Iranian Crisis, a diplomatic conflict between the USSR and its former allies.
Two weeks later, on 18 March, the Iranian government convened a UN Security Council meeting and demanded that the USSR withdraw its troops from the country. Soviet diplomats failed to delay the meeting, and Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet Union's representative to the UN, was forced to leave the hall. On 8 May, the UN Security Council adopted the final resolution on the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Iran.
The crisis originated in 1941 when the UK and USSR moved their armies into Iran because they were worried that the country might support the Axis powers. Another reason was the need to ensure the safe transportation of Lend-Lease supplies. This way the oil fields in Iranian Azerbaijan were protected from possible sabotage and accordingly the Persian Corridor was created, through which 34 percent of the total volume of Lend-Lease supplies arrived in the USSR. The deadline for the withdrawal of the Allied forces from Iran was specified in the Treaty of 1942; then adjusted in the Potsdam Agreement, and later at the negotiations in September 1945.
After the end of the war, the Soviet Union was concerned about the activity of American and British oil companies in Iran. Furthermore, there was the threat of the political influence of these countries on their southern republics. For its part, Moscow sought to incorporate the northern territories of Iran by supporting the self-proclaimed Azerbaijan People's Government and the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad.
Following the UN Security Council resolution, the USSR withdrew its military forces from Iran completely by 9 May 1946, but the Iranian Mejlis refused to ratify the Soviet-Iranian agreement on a joint oil company. In response, the USSR created training bases for Kurdish militants in Soviet Azerbaijan, whose main objective was to fuel a rebellion in Iranian Kurdistan. Armed clashes between the Iranian army and Kurdish rebels began in 1947, but this conflict remained an internal Iranian problem.
Historians say the Iranian Crisis was one of the reasons for the outbreak of the Cold War. At the same time, the crisis has shown the effectiveness of the UN and the Security Council as an instrument for resolving acute conflicts.
Source:
diphis.ru – the online portal on Motivation and History of Diplomacy
