Word: teheran
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Meanwhile, Red Army tanks and planes were a mere 20 miles from Teheran, at Karaj. Armored columns were said to be moving west by night towards Lake Urmia, near the Turkish and Iraq frontiers. But the British (who garrison Iraq) and the Turks (who are fully mobilized) stayed cannily silent. Both were old hands at playing the nerves game...
...Teheran, capital of Iran, elderly Premier Ebrahim Hakimi and his Government churned in angry frustration. Before the Majlis (Parliament), Hakimi, himself an Azerbaijani, hotly declared his opposition to "the acts and treacherous propaganda . . . [of] a band of adventurers." Meantime, he was still trying to go to Moscow...
...Premier" Pishevari was unimpressed. The Tabriz Government, he asserted calmly, would henceforth collect its own taxes, but would continue to recognize the sovereignty of the Teheran Government. Promptly he filed the first Tabriz claim on Teheran: a demand for 30,000,000 rials (approximately $900,000 at the official rate) in salaries for his officials...
...Shah's powerful friends were thirsty for his oil. Eager applicants for concessions had been sitting around in Teheran for months. Least pressing perhaps was the U.S.: Washington's concern with declining reserves had not yet reached the stage where it called for the use of aggressive oil diplomacy in Iran. The British thirst was sharper. Dependent entirely on oil from abroad, Britain could not afford to pass up any opportunity. She had played the politics of oil longer, more successfully than anyone else. Now she was ready to play again...
Possibly, too, she planned a sphere-of-influence solution like the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, which solved nothing. More likely was the less ambitious aim of a Communist-controlled, autonomous Az erbaijan with a pro-Soviet Government in Teheran. These would be enough to secure her exposed southern flank...