FROM FRIENDSHIP TO ENMITY SOVIET-IRANIAN RELATIONS (1945-1965)
Authors:   Bursa Uludağ University, YEŞILBURSA BEHÇET KEMAL 
Published: June 2021

On 26 February 1921, the Soviet Union signed a «Treaty of Friendship» with Iran which was to pave the way for future relations between the two states. Although the Russians renounced various commercial and territorial concessions which the Tsarist government had exacted from Iran, they secured the insertion of two articles which prohibited the formation or residence in either country of individuals, groups, military forces which were hostile to the other party, and gave the Soviet Union the right to send forces into Iran in the event that a third party should attempt to carry out a policy of usurpation there, use Iran as a base for operations against Russia, or otherwise threaten Soviet frontiers. Furthermore, in 1927, the Soviet Union signed a «Treaty of Guarantee and Neutrality» with Iran which required the contracting parties to refrain from aggression against each other and not to join blocs or alliances directed against each other’s sovereignty. However, the treaty was violated by the Soviet Union’s wartime occupation of Iran, together with Britain and the United States. The violation was subsequently condoned by the conclusion of the Tripartite Treaty of Alliance of 29 January 1942, which permitted the Soviet Union to maintain troops in Iran for a limited period. Requiring restraint from propaganda, subversion and hostile political groups, the treaty would also appear to have been persistently violated by the Soviet Union: for example, the various radio campaigns of «Radio Moscow» and the «National Voice of Iran»; the financing and control of the Tudeh party; and espionage and rumour-mongering by Soviet officials in Iran. Whatever the Soviet’s original conception of this treaty may have been, they had since used it one-sidedly as a treaty in which both countries would be neutral, with one being «more neutral than the other». In effect, both the 1921 and 1927 treaties had been used as «a stick to beat the Iranians» whenever it suited the Soviets to do so, in propaganda and in inter-governmental dealings. During the Second World War, the treaty between the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and Iran, dated 29 January 1942 - and concluded some 5 months after the occupation of parts of Iran by allied forces, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union were entitled to maintain troops in Iran, but the presence of such troops was not to constitute a military occupation. Nonetheless, Soviet forces in the Northern provinces used their authority to prevent both the entry of officials of the Iranian Government and the export of agricultural products to other provinces. The treaty also required military forces to be withdrawn not later than six months after «all hostilities between the Allied Powers and Germany and her associates have been suspended by the conclusion of an armistice or on the conclusion of peace, whichever is the earlier». This entailed that the Soviet Union should have withdrawn its forces by March 1946, six months after the defeat of Japan. Meanwhile, however, there emerged in Iranian Azerbaijan, under Soviet tutelage, a movement for advanced provincial autonomy which developed into a separatist movement under a Communist-led «National Government of Azerbaijan». In 1945, Soviet forces prevented the Iranian army from moving troops into Azerbaijan, and also confined the Iranian garrison to barracks while the dissidents took forcible possession of key points. At the same time, Soviet troops prevented the entry of Iranian troops into the Kurdistan area, where, under Soviet protection, a Kurdish Republic had been set up by Qazi Mohammad. In 1946, after Iran had appealed to the Security Council, the Russians secured from the Iranian Prime Minister, Qavam es Saltaneh, a promise to introduce a bill providing for the formation of a Soviet-Iranian Oil Company to exploit the Northern oil reserves. In return, the Soviet Union agreed to negotiate over Azerbaijan: the Iranians thereupon withdrew their complaint to the Security Council, and Soviet forces left Azerbaijan by 9 May 1946. In 1955, when Iran was considering joining a regional defensive pact, which was later to manifest itself as the Baghdad Pact, the Soviet Government threatened that such a move would oblige the Soviet Union to act in accordance with Article 6 of the 1921 treaty. This was the «big stick» aspect of Soviet attempts to waylay Iranian membership of such a pact; the «carrot» being the conclusion in 1955 of a Soviet-Iranian «Financial and Frontier Agreement» by which the Soviets agreed to a mutually beneficial re-alignment of the frontier and to pay debts arising from their wartime occupation of Northern Iran. The Soviets continued their war of nerves against Iranian accession to the Pact by breaking off trade negotiations in October 1955 and by a series of minor affronts, such as the cancellation of cultural visits and minimal attendance at the Iranian National Day celebrations in Moscow. In a memorandum dated November 26, the Iranian Government openly rejected Soviet criticisms. Soviet displeasure was expressed officially, in the press and to private individuals. In the ensuing period, Soviet and Soviet-controlled radio stations continued to bombard their listeners with criticism of the Baghdad Pact, or CENTO as it later became. In early 1959, with the breakdown of the negotiations for a non-aggression pact, Iran-Soviet relations entered into a phase of propaganda warfare which intensified with the signature of the bilateral military agreement between Iran and the United States. The Soviet Union insisted that Iran should not permit the establishment of foreign military bases on its soil, and continued to threaten Iran despite the Shah’s assurance on this issue. Consequently, the Iranians denounced Articles 5 and 6 of the 1921 treaty, on the basis of which the Soviet Union was making its demands. Attempts by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to improve relations met with little success until September 1959, when Russia offered massive economic support on condition that Iran renounced its military agreements with the United States. This offer was rejected, and, as relations continued to become strained, the Soviets changed their demand to one neither for a written agreement that Iran would not allow its terrain to be used as a base of aggression nor for the establishment of foreign missile bases. The publication by the Soviet Union of the so-called «CENTO documents» did nothing to relieve the strain: the Soviet Union continued to stand out for a bilateral agreement with Iran, and the Shah, in consultation with Britain and the United States, continued to offer no more than a unilateral assurance. In July 1962, with a policy of endeavouring once more to improve relations, the Shah maintained his insistence on a unilateral statement, and the Soviet Government finally agreed to this. The Iranian undertaking was accordingly given and acknowledged on 15 September. The Instruments of ratification of the 1957 Agreements on Transit and Frontier Demarcation were exchanged in Moscow on 26 October 1962 and in Tehran on 20 December, respectively.