IRAN (See Cover)
Over a suburb of Teheran, Iran's capital, suddenly appeared four Soviet bombers one day last week and dropped six bombs which exploded a half-mile from the home of U.S. Legation Secretary James S. Moose Jr. Within 30 minutes the Cabinet of new Premier Ali Furanghi ordered Iranian troops to cease resistance to the Anglo-Russian advances. The order took a while to filter through. Next day hard-of-hearing Russians bombed Kazvin, set afire thousands of gallons of gasoline Russia could have used. But 1,500 miles to the east on a mountaintop at Simla, General Sir Archibald Wavell, commanding the Indian Army and the British share of the Iranian operation, could collapse his figurative telescope, order himself a great big literal drink. Because:
1) The Allies now had a Burma Road to Russia.
2) Russia was given her first concrete evidence that Britain was an actual ally. Diminished was the possibility that Russia might make a separate peace with Hitler out of distrust of the democracies.
3) One more hole in the dike around the Axis was plugged.
4) Empire troops could cooperate in the defense of the Caucasus oil field if the Germans pass the Dnieper.
5) Four thousand German "specialists" were hustled away from contact with the inflammable tribes of India's Northwest Frontier.*
6) Britain's oil supplies in the East were safeguarded.
Beside the Götterdämmerung thunders of the Russo-German War, the 80-hour campaign to achieve all these desirable things sounded like the popping of a little corn. Down either side the Caspian came the Cossacks—horsed, mechanized and propellered. Their western column rapidly took Tabriz; their eastern the port of Bandar Shah (see map). To the south the British crossed from Iraq and made sure of the richest single oil field in existence; their warships in the Persian Gulf squashed Iran's minuscule Navy, sinking two sloops, capturing seven Axis ships. Indian troops landed at Bandar Shahpur and, after a brief brush, made sure of the world's largest oil-cracking plant, at Abadan. Not needed were more Indian troops poised on the border of Baluchistan, where shaving the head and varnishing the skull is the poor man's pith helmet.
Fighting on the same side again, Britain and Russia were delighted to have Iran, and with so little trouble. But there was one party to the taking who could not have shared their delight, and that was Iran's 65-year-old Shah in Shah ("King of Kings").
Last week the Shah held aloof from any official notice that his country was occupied. All that officially happened was that Premier Ali Mansur, to whom the Anglo-Russian ultimatum demanding the Nazis' expulsion had been handed, turned down the ultimatum and ordered resistance. Twenty-four hours later Ali Furanghi was in and the war was off. This week he was arranging peace terms.
Ali Furanghi is a prominent Iranian. Prime Minister once before, thrice Foreign Minister, onetime Ambassador to Turkey and onetime President of the Council of the League of Nations, he is a historian and economist of considerable local note. But he does not give the orders in Iran. The Shah does.