Anglo-Russian war for Persia and Central Asia

ar-pharazon

Banned
During the 19th century Britain and Russia famously struggled for control of Central Asia and Persia.

How can we have an Anglo-Russian War for control of the Afghanistan-Central Asian stans(OTL)-Persia war with say direct British and Russian combat against one another in central Iran.

What would it take for direct conflict over control of Iran?
 
If Persia looked like it might collapse in the 1830's and 40's then Russia could take the opportunity to expand south with a second Russo-Persian war. To prevent Russia from encroaching more toward India the British could be forced to send troops to help support the flagging Persians.

The difficulty is that during the Great Game Britain had little desire to control Iran or Afghanistan outside of creating buffer states to keep Russia from getting any closer to India while Russia logistically probably couldn't have invaded India even if they'd wanted to. In OTL the whole thing mostly ended with "you stay over there and I'll stay over here". Afghanistan and northern Iran were probably a step too far for either nation to directly control.
 
During the 19th century Britain and Russia famously struggled for control of Central Asia and Persia.

How can we have an Anglo-Russian War for control of the Afghanistan-Central Asian stans(OTL)-Persia war with say direct British and Russian combat against one another in central Iran.

What would it take for direct conflict over control of Iran?

Russia getting into a position where they can get a major Warm water port close to the Indian Ocean. A Russian fleet that threatens Britian's lifeline to her Asian Empire (The key to the commercial and shipping system that sustained their economic and industrial dominance) would be London's worst nightmare.
 
The main potential flash point was at Mashhad, where both power had a strong presence: the Russian and British consulates in Mashhad were larger than the ones in Tehran.
However, Russian logistics would be awful to mount an attack on British India. There were plenty of covert operations, bribes distributed and some shipments of arms.
 
Maybe Rusia winds up with the Azeri portions of western Persia and makes a few moves towards the frontier in the east, but Russia doesn't have the logistics to make any deep penetrations.

You're liable to see more action in the Baltic than Iran proper.
 
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