Persia

Flag of Persia

Persia, Officially the Sublime State of Persia, is a good sized country in the Middle East. Like european monarchies Persia is a Unitary Constitutional Monarchy with the Shah essentially being a puppet to his advisors. It is ruled by the Qajar dynasty. Persia did help in the Arab Revolution against the Ottoman State as a similarly disgruntled member of the Islamic world. This has caused some to rename the war as not only Arab States participated in the war. Persia is the third strongest nation in the Middle East behind Egypt then the Ottomans, but just above Saudi Arabia. The current dynasty in charge of Persia was established as the Afsharid Dynasty collapsed into civil strife and a new dynasty rose up as one of the warlords. Persia like most of Asia did not participate in the Second Weltkrieg as much of their attention was to stabilize the situation in the middle east as Syria and Iraq were both struggling with Ottoman-backed insurgents and Kurdish rebels. Persia is a member of the Cairo Pact holding similar views towards colonialism. But while Egypt works on the Entente Persia's attention is towards the Persian / Turkic world in Afghanistan and the states conquered by Russia.

## History

Persia in 1936 was in a dire situation with an ailing shah and still a large amount of strife between different groups. This was exacerbated by the death of the Shah, causing a regency, and the Black Monday Crisis. However the government barley held together and was able to keep the constitutional monarchy and was able to stabilize the government. This allowed Persia to work on stabilizing its nation throughout 1937 and 1938. In 1939 however the Cairo Conference changed everything as the nations of the Middle East made their hatred for the Ottomans publicly known and formed their own alliance against it. Thus began the Arab Revolution with a combined offensive by every single state in the middle east that wasn't the Ottomans. Persian forces however would be bogged down in their own territory as they were forced to the Zagros mountains where a brutal stalemate would persist for most of the war. In the north Azerbaijan nearly did join the war but soon fell back into the fold of German influence preventing a crucial ally from entering the war and likely saving the Persian war effort. With the Saudis and the Egyptians making great progress the Ottomans diverted troops from Persia witch allowed Persia to make its own offensive into Mesopotamia. Being hit from three sided the Ottomans were forced to withdrawal from the region hoping to make a defensive line in Anatolia and commit another Miracle at Maraş. However the joint offensive by all three states would break this line and the Ottomans where forced to negotiate at the Treaty of Cairo. There an Egyptian dominated conference would take place carving up the Ottoman State with Persia being rewarded mostly with resource rights over Iraq and northern Syria. This made Persia a lot of money allowing it to industrialize. This was helped by the outbreak of the Second Weltkrieg where the Persians sold oil to the Reichspakt in order to try and combat the Russian State's invasion of Central Asia. While this did work to some degree it required the cooperation of other nations in order to be pulled off and most of the oil was sent through Mitteleafrika as a middle man. However the money made off of this allowed Persia to fund a massive growth in oil fields and them along with Saudi Arabia are some of the fastest growing economies on the planet. Persia's future looks bright but storm clouds are gathering. Russia is about to collapse and the Ottomans are looking to make a resurgence. And the rise of a Socialist force in India has destabilized Afghanistan and Baluchistan.

## Military

Persia's military is small but not insignificant. Its army is quite large for the middle east despite it being relatively poorly equipped compared to others in the same region. However should the need arise Persia can, albeit not easily, combat Russia or India. Persia's navy is small as most of that need is provided by Egypt and Oman who guard the straights and canals. Persia does have a small air force but this is mostly for show as the only significant power in the Middle East with an air force is Egypt.