Word: shahs
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Britain and Russia hoped the trickle would soon swell to a torrent and wash away their apprehensions. Prime British fear is of a back stab like the Nazi-inspired revolt in Iraq last spring of Rashid Ali El-Gailani. For at almost every compass point from Teheran, the Shah's capital, the Russo-British positions are potentially vulnerable...
...Shah is in a sticky economic position as he had already paid for certain German goods and services before the war started. Not all Germans in Iran are fifth columnists; most are technicians. Many work on the Trans-Iranian Railway, which is 870 miles long, was eleven years abuilding and connects the Caspian Sea with the Persian Gulf. Others run the new iron smelter at Samnan, which hopes to become Iran's Pittsburgh. The Shah can hardly shove these technicians out abruptly without crippling transportation and production...
Nonetheless, Teheran and Tabriz, the Shah's second city, are reported swarming with Nazi secret operatives ("spending millions of pounds" say the Russians), who have filtered in from Iraq, Syria and Ethiopia. They are accused of gunrunning, blackmailing and bribing Iranian officials, conducting training schools for spies to work in India and the Near East...
...Reza Shah Pahlavi is Iran's equivalent of Turkey's late, great KamÂl Atatiirk. Both men were rough soldiers who rescued their countries from the rule of nincompoop despots, strove to make them great. Almost singlehanded during the past 20 years, the Shah has mastered Iran...
Before he ascended the famed Peacock Throne, the Shah's name was Reza Khan. The Pahlavi he added means "Parthian" in Persian. The phrase "a Parthian shot" refers to the classic Parthian archers' tactic of shooting arrows over their shoulders as they fled. Last week, before he started shoving out Germans, the Shah first told the Allies that to do so would violate Iranian neutrality. The British will be contented to have him continue firing over his shoulder as long as he keeps the Germans moving...