Context for the Islamic Republic of Iran, Part 2
—Jason

Listen here: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/hwts-282-context-for-the-islamic-republic-of-iran-part-2--69677942

This is part two of a continuing series discussing the context of Iran beginning with a history of the country in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Please read part one for more background information pertaining to the region before the outbreak of World War I.

The horror of the Great War (1914-1918), and its aftermath, was not limited strictly to Europe: the creation of the modern Middle East is direct result of the conflict. Old empires were dismembered, new states emerged, and the people living within the area were subjected to a continuing series of ethnic, nationalist, religious, and social divisions that exist to this day.

Before the outbreak of conflict in the summer of 1914, European powers had been deeply involved in the affairs of the native peoples of the Near East. In the previous episode, I discussed how the British and Russian empires had been in fierce competition for control of Central Asia and the Near East (as the Middle East was referred to at this time). Great Britain was able to gain economic and political control of southern Persia and Russia likewise dominated the northern portion.

Tensions between Great Britain and Russia eased with the Anglo-Russian Convention singed in St. Petersburg (the Russian capital) on 31 August 1907. This effectively solidified the spheres of influence for both empires throughout Central Asia and the Near East. While this was no means an alliance or defensive pact, it did allow both powers to shift more of their attention and militaries to a “more important” theater: Europe.

Longstanding military alliances pitted European powers into two broad opposing camps: the Entente and the Central Powers. The Entente officially included France and Russia, and a friendly relationship with Great Britain. The Central Powers consisted of Imperial Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy.

These were defensive agreements between their members for mutual military aid during a war with another power. Effectively these systems of alliance were supposed to act as a war deterrent. If any party went to war in Europe, then all great powers would be drawn into the conflict.

The tensions over the control of overseas colonies, growing militarism, and nationalism erupted into warfare following the 28 June 1914 assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Serbian militants carried out the murder of Ferdinand and his wife Sofie in Sarajevo. Throughout July, the Great European Powers hoped that mediation between Austria-Hungary and Serbia would avoid war.

Austria-Hungary issued an impossible ultimatum to Serbia near the end of July 1914. This was done with a full understanding that Serbia would reject it and allow Austria-Hungary to deal with its troublesome southern neighbor. Another unrealistic Austrian assumption was that Russia, and by extension France, would be too intimidated by the fear of war with Germany to stop Austria from swallowing Serbia.

Once the ultimatum was issued, and every diplomat in Europe panicked, the militaries of Europe began to mobilize. Each of the Great Powers had a standing military presence (army and navy) always active, and they also had the potential to call back into arms hundreds of thousands of reservists.

The reservists were men who had already finished their term of mandatory military service and returned to civilian life, yet they could still be called back to army/navy in times of crisis or war. Once this process started in one country, every other state needed to begin calling in its reserves, rearming them, and sending them to whatever area the country needed them to go to. Calling up mobilization was effectively one step away from declaring war.

Beginning in August 1914, the European alliances declared war against one another. Austria-Hungary was the first empire to declare war, with Serbia, Germany, Russia, France, and Great Britain following suit.

The Central Powers started the war short one of its members: Italy. The Italians were never keen on being part of this alliance to begin with. Since its unification in the 1860s and 1870s, Italians sought to gain regions they believed belonged to them via history and ethnicity. Those areas they desired were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, their supposed allies. With the Austrian and Germany declarations of war coming before any other countries, Italy correctly pointed out the defensive alliance between themselves, and the other Central Powers was void.

Germany and Austria-Hungary had already understood that Italy was a weak link and likely to not join them in a war. But they still needed another ally somewhere in the east to help hold Russia’s attention.

The Ottoman Empire was the perfect solution to this Germanic problem. The Ottomans were an ancient empire that had dominated much of the modern Middle East for roughly the previous 500 years. It shared borders not only with the Russian Empire, but also Persia in the east and Egypt in the west.

In October 1914, the Ottoman Empire declared war on the Entente with the promise of reclaiming lost in north Africa, the Caucasus region, and potentially southeastern Europe.

Despite its surprise entry into the war, the Ottomans were not in the best shape militarily, economically, or politically, to fully take advantage. In terms of military power, the Ottomans were still in the long process of trying to update their antiquated army and navy. Economically, the Ottomans simply did not have the financial or industrial base to conduct such a huge war on so many fronts. Politically, the Ottomans were also fractured along ethnic, nationalist, and religious divisions that made coordination of their entire population impossible.

Now why dear listener am I giving you this additional information beyond Persia/Iran? The devil is in the details of how the Great War expanded beyond Europe to the rest of the world.

Britain had a garrison located in Egypt to protect its control of the Suez Canal, but this was not large enough to launch an immediate invasion of the Ottoman Empire. Along with this small military force, the British also faced the challenges of the physical terrain of the Sinai Peninsula (which connects North Africa and the Middle East). The lack railroad of tracks, hardened roads, or natural sources of freshwater made largescale combat across Sinai impossible until these issues had finally been addressed in 1916 and 1917.

The British did have one other option open to them to strike the Ottomans in 1914: an invasion of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). While most of the British Army was tied down desperately trying to hold the Germans in France, their imperial possessions were raising huge numbers of soldiers to support London. One very large pool of manpower that was “close” to Mesopotamia was the enormous Indian subcontinent, the British Raj.

How would these Indian troops, led by British officers, strike the Ottomans?

Large numbers of Indian divisions were massed in Persia. The British attack relied on these Indian troops being transported into the Persian Gulf and then up the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. They would use the rivers as highways to take the Ottoman-controlled cities along their banks. Local Arabs were not friendly to the Ottomans yet also were not thrilled at the idea of having Turkish rule replaced by that of Britain.

Another very tempting element that helped advance this plan was the pre-war discovery of large deposits of petroleum in Mesopotamia. British control of those oilfields would give them another source of fuel for the Royal Navy as well as deny it to the Central Powers. An added benefit was that the Anglo-Persian oil fields in Khuzestan province (southwest Persia) and the Shatt al-Arab waterway would be protected and the material could go to Britain without interruption.

The British advanced from Al-Faw (a port in the Shatt al-Arab which had been ceased in early November 1914) to the city of Basra in southern Mesopotamia. Following the landings, British/Indian forces won a string of victories along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, including the repulse of an Ottoman attempt to retake Basra at the Battle of Shaiba (12–14 April 1915). The main Ottoman army, under the command of Khalil Pasha, was 275 miles to the north-west around Baghdad that made only weak efforts to dislodge the British.

Victory over the Ottomans in Mesopotamia seemed like a foregone conclusion. Heavy Ottoman defeats by Russian forces in the Caucasus, British and French landings at Gallipoli, and the threat of British attacks from Egypt made reinforcing Mesopotamia difficult for the Ottomans. The counterattacks led by the forces available ended in failure.

However, this seemingly “easy” British campaign would quickly devolve into a quagmire. By late-1915, German-led Ottoman reinforcements arrived in Mesopotamia and quickly stopped the British/Indian advance. Overconfidence by the British officers and unrealistic expectations of an Ottoman collapse ensured that Indian troops were sent further north with ever-dwindling resources. The lack of supply boats stalled the delivery of ammunition, medicine, and other basic supplies going to the most forward elements of the Indian army ensured that the British campaign would fail dismally.

The final straw for the first Mesopotamian Campaign came with the arrival of the Ottoman Sixth Army on 5 October 1915. Its commander was a 72-year-old German general, Colmar von der Goltz, who had previously been a military advisor to the prewar Ottoman Army. Goltz instilled a sense of order in the region and got the Ottoman units back into fighting shape.

Meanwhile, British Major General Sir Charles Townshend had been ordered to advance and capture Baghdad. But on 22 November, British and Ottoman forces fought a five-day battle at Ctesiphon, a town 25 miles south of Baghdad. It was a stalemate as both the Ottomans and the British ended up retreating from the battlefield. However, Townshend concluded that a full-scale retreat was necessary and started to withdraw his forces south.

The local Ottoman commander realized the British were retreating and cancelled his own withdrawal, then followed the British. Townshend withdrew back to Kut-al-Amara (a town roughly 100 miles southeast of Baghdad) where he halted and fortified the position. Ottoman troops were right on their heels. The British retreat was finalized on 3 December. The Ottomans encircled the British at Kut-al-Amara and sent other forces down river to prevent the British from marching to the relief of the garrison.

The Siege of Kut lasted for 147 days, during which the British/Indian soldiers were cut off from the outside world. While the town could be defended, it could not be reinforced or resupplied by the British. Ottoman forces prevented any relief effort from arriving. Heavy artillery pounded the garrison while their supplies of food and medicine dwindled. General Townshend tried to arrange a ceasefire on the 26th and, after failed negotiations, he simply surrendered on 29 April 1916. Around 13,000 Allied soldiers survived to be made prisoners.

The first Mesopotamian Campaign had failed, but the British had no intention of stopping further efforts. The commanding British generals were removed, and a new commander was placed in Persia: Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude. Maude made the effort to retrain his existing troops alongside new recruits, gather the required supplies and boats, and prepare for a second Mesopotamian Campaign.

Ten months after the Siege of Kut, the British Indian Army conquered the whole region from Kut to Baghdad as part of the fall of Baghdad on 11 March 1917. With Baghdad captured, the British administration undertook vital reconstruction of the war-torn country.

Part of the reasoning behind this second campaign and rapid advance north was the weakening state of the Ottomans and potential for a Russian occupation of northern Mesopotamia. While Maude and his forces increased in strength, the Ottoman garrison in Mesopotamia shrunk throughout 1916 and 1917 as reinforcements and equipment was sent either to Syria-Palestine or the Caucasus region. By fall 1918, the entirety of Mesopotamia was in British hands.

While the Great War consumed a generation of men throughout the world, Persia also felt the conflict’s heavy hand. British, Russian, and in some regions, Ottoman occupation left the Qajar Dynasty with little legitimacy within the lands it ruled. The Russian Revolution(s) beginning in 1917 and the subsequent Russian withdrawal in 1919 created tremendous difficulties as the Qajar Shah was dependent on Great Britain for much of his authority.

This series on this history of modern Iran will continue with the episode discussing the transformation of Persia into Iran during the Interwar Period (1919-1939) and World War II.