No Soviet withdraw from Iran

What would happen due to Soviet presence

  • More war

    Votes: 2 6.5%
  • Communist Iran

    Votes: 3 9.7%
  • Iran split in two

    Votes: 16 51.6%
  • Sanctions galore

    Votes: 5 16.1%
  • Western backed Iranian resistance

    Votes: 5 16.1%

  • Total voters
    31
What would have happened if the Soviet Union didn't withdraw its troops from Iran following the second World War? How would the allies (and the U.N.) react? Would it lead to something much worse?
 
I think the most plausible outcome of a less thorough Soviet withdrawal would have been an annexation of Iran's northwestern provinces to the Azerbaijani SSR, and possibly also the creation of a Kurdish SSR from Iran's former majority-Kurdish areas nearby. This would give the USSR a land border with Iraq.
 
The British argued for a continued military presence in their soon to be disbanded Indian Empire in OTL and I am guessing that if the Soviets are annexing a next-door neighbour, the new dominion of Pakistan agrees to it.
A stronger Baghdad pact. RAF and maybe even SAC bombers based in Pakistan (OTL, USAAF was quite upset to lose access to the bases in Lahore and Peshawar, which had been earmarked for B-29 in a war)
 
Iran would possibly be split in two in a similar way to Yemen and Korea: a Soviet-backed North Iran and a pro-Western South Iran. A Iranian communist state would give the USSR a better foothold in the Middle East.
 
My guess is communist Iran/Afghanistan but cold war starts in earnest in 1946. Probably earlier partition of Korea along with an attempt at a two chinas/split china policy.

Maybe Dewey wins in 1948 due to more anticommunism in the air, I guess.
 
The real reason Stalin withdrew from northern Iran and abandoned the "democratic" republic of Azerbaijan to its fate probably had less to do with US threats than with Stalin's belief that he had reached a satisfactory oil agreement with Qavam. I think the fallacy of some of the posts here is that they assume that Stalin ever intended the division of Iran, rather than the use of an Azerbaijani separatist regime as a tool to pressure Iran into an oil deal.

"There was no “Truman ultimatum” to Stalin over Iran, as recent research has conclusively demonstrated."

"The ADP [Azerbaijan Democratic Party], as Soviet documents now attest, was designed as a lever of pressure and bargaining chip for Moscow."

"This view is supported by Stalin's later rebuke of Pishevari [leader of the Azerbaijan Democratic Party] following the decision to withdraw Soviet troops, which were necessary, Stalin claimed, to render more efficient “liberationist policy” elsewhere. Pishevari, in his words, had “misjudged” the situation in Iran. There was “no profound revolutionary crisis”. Rather there was a conflict between Qavam and “Anglophile circles”. In such conditions, Stalin explained, appropriate Soviet tactics should be to “wrench concessions from Qavam, to give him support, to isolate the Anglophiles, thus, and to create some basis for the further democratization of Iran.”"

https://www.academia.edu/6451564/The_Iranian_Crisis_of_1946._How_much_more_do_we_know_

As it turned out, of course, the concessions Stalin thought he got from Qavam proved meaningless, because the oil deal was contingent on ratification by a later Majlis. Qavam took the position that he could not bring the deal before the Majlis without a new election, and that such an election could not be held until Soviet troops had been withdrawn from Iran. Qavam may have assured Stalin (sincerely or otherwise) that he would use his influence to see that the new Majlis ratified it, and Stalin may have believed this--or Stalin might have thought that in any event the *possibility* of future ratification *plus* the pressure the Western powers were exerting was enough reason to withdraw the troops. Qavam's party, the Democrats, did win the election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_legislative_election,_1947 including all the seats in Teheran, but in the first place they were not as successful in the provinces where "local powers had always had a greater effect on election outcomes" https://books.google.com/books?id=M9xbJQyFMe8C&pg=PA105 and in the second place even members who had supported Qavam rebelled against the oil deal. Also, to mollify the Soviets, Qavam had agreed to the appointment of three Tudeh party members to his cabinet--to the health, commerce, and education portfolios. https://books.google.com/books?id=M9xbJQyFMe8C&pg=PA100 Under pressure from the military and the Shah, he later dismissed them. https://books.google.com/books?id=M9xbJQyFMe8C&pg=PA103

It has been argued that Qavam's deal was not a sellout but really a clever move on Qavam's part because he supposedly knew that no Majlis would ratify the agreement. Gholam Reza Afkhami, in his *The Life and Times of the Shah*, p. 108, expresses skepticism about the view that Qavam "played the game skillfully enough to dupe Stalin and Molotov. The proposition makes a hero of Qavam, but it is a moot claim at best. There was no evidence at the time to point to such a game..." http://books.google.com/books?id=M9xbJQyFMe8C&pg=PA108 My own guess is that if Stalin had stood firm on "no withdrawal before ratification" the Iranians would have yielded. Or at least Qavam would have--if the Shah and the Majlis had revolted against the deal, and Stalin decided to keep the troops, and both sides dug in, there would be a de facto separation of "South Azerbaijan" and the nearby Kurdish Republic of Mahabad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Mahabad from Iran and an early acceleration of the Cold War. But I don't think the Soviets would have moved on Teheran and I don't think there would have been an actual war.

(Pishevari, who fled to to the USSR after the fall of the ADP, died in an accident--or "accident"--in Baku in 1947. )
 
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