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terms, is still superior to that of Iraq. To reduce this disadvantage the Iraqi
government has only one recourse - to turn to the Soviet Union.

In the autumn of 1971 the 2,500th anniversary of the Persian monarchy was
celebrated with great pomp and circumstance at Persepolis in southern Persia.
It was Muhammad Reza Shah’s way of announcing the re-emergence of Persia
as a great power upon the world’s stage. Rather more pointedly, perhaps, it was
also an expression of satisfaction at the impending withdrawal of Britain from
her role of guardian of the peace of the Gulf, and an intimation of the shah’s
intention to assume that role himself. The character and personality of
Muhammad Reza Shah have been decisive in the shaping of Persia’s policy in
the Gulf over the past decade. From the moment of his accession in the summer
of 1941, when he was placed upon the throne by the British and Russian envoys
in Tehran following the joint occupation of Persia by British and Russian
forces, he had nursed a galling resentment against the two powers for the dual

humiliation they had inflicted upon him by deposing his father, Reza Shah, and
setting him up in his stead. That Reza Shah had himself abdicated, out of a fear
that the Russian troops advancing on Tehran were bent upon his deposition,
was ignored by his son, as it was by most Persians. Muhammad Reza Shah’s
whole reign was spent in an attempt to erase the memory of this humiliation,
and to release his country from the dominance which Russia and Britain had
exerted over it from the early decades of the nineteenth century.
The iron circumstances of geography, and of military and economic power,
however, combined to frustrate his efforts. Like his predecessors on the
Peacock Throne, he was compelled, simply to ensure the continued existence
and integrity of his country, both to seek accommodations with those he could
not resist and to obtain assurances of support from those whose goodwill he
could not afford to spurn. Thus the withdrawal of Russian troops from Persia
after the Second World War had been partially secured for him by the United
States and Britain, his throne was saved for him by American intervention in

the early 1950s, and the security of his country was afterwards assured by
American economic, military and political aid. The awareness of these past
debts did not sit well with Muhammad Reza Shah: it served more to irritate
than to chasten, especially as it did not harmonize with his own plans and
ambitions. Conscious of the humiliations Persia has had to bear in the past as an
economically backward country, he proclaimed his determination to make it
the most powerful industrial nation in Asia, outside Japan, within two decades.
Unquestioning in his belief in the superiority of Persian civilization over that of
his Muslim neighbours, whether Turks, Afghans or Arabs, scornful of the
apparent frivolity of the West (which he saw as sliding hopelessly into deca­
dence), and unalterable in his conviction of the soaring destiny which awaited
him and his country, he regarded it as nothing short of axiomatic that the other
governments of the Middle East should look to Tehran for inspiration and