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Sunrise at Abadan: The British and Soviet Invasion of Iran, 1941

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This book recounts the manueverings by the British and Soviets (and to a lesser degree the US and the French) in Iran during WWII. This is more of a political/foreign policy history, rather than a military history. The details of this campaign and the issues that lead up to it were almost totally unknown to me before I read this book. The extant of my knowledge consisted only of a vague awareness that the US and British transfered massive amounts of supplies and equipment through Iran during the war. The events related in this book can only be described as eye-opening. Did you know that the UK and the Soviet Union invaded Iran using a Pearl Harbor style surprise attack while deliberately misleading the Iranian govt about their motives and intentions?

There are so many wonderful pieces of information in this book that it is impossible to list them all. I'll just summarize a few that struck me as particularly interesting, either out of historical interest or relevence to current events. First, Stewart explains the complex nature of the relationships between the major combatants (Germany, Italy, the UK, France, and the Soviet Union) that existed prior to June 22, 1941. It was not at all clear that the UK and France would side with the Soviet Union against Germany. In fact, France and England had a detailed plan in place to bomb the Soviet oil facilities in Baku in 1940! Only the German invasion of France in May of that year prevented this from occuring. Second, the Iranians viewed the US as their natural allies who would respect the rights of neutral non-belligerents and would protect them from the self-serving machinations of the UK and the Soviet Union. At the time, the US was viewed as the country most likely to uphold international laws and moral justice. I wonder how many people feel this way today? Third, Stewart makes in clear how critically important the Khuzestan oil was to the British war effort, the Baku oil fields to the Soviet effort, and the absolute necessity of opening a transit route for US goods to the Soviet Union for the overall war effort. The loss of Baku and Abadan would probably have knocked both the Soviet Union and the UK out of the war. Finally, Stewart discusses at length the moral issues related to surprise attack against Iran. The Germans were rightly criticised for invading non-hostile neutrals such as Norway and Belgium, but the same approbation does not apply to the UK for the same duplicitous act vis-a-vis Iran. It is this last point that makes this book particularly relevent to the situation in Iran today. The neo-con leadership of the US today draws inspiration from Churchill and Trotsky, and one could read Churchill's writings on this affair contained in this book and think they were reading the line from the Bush administration.

This is a dense book written primarily for scholars and is packed with information, so if you have a passing interest in this subject you should probably avoid. This is also more of a political history than a military history, more than 2/3 of the book described the political maneuverings amongst the participants. There wasn't much of a military campaign as the Iranian Army didn't put up much resistance to the British or the Soviets. The price is steep ($108!), I borrowed this book from my local library, and I recommend that even if you are a serious student/collector of books about WWII or Iran, you should think about borrowing before buying. If I had to make any negative comment about this book, the discussions on the purely military aspects contain way too much trivial detail about individuals' personal experiences. There are single paragraphs interspersed where some individual saw this or that, and this person is never referred to again. I got the sense that Stewart wanted to include every anecdote of everyone he interviewed. In any case, for any serious student of WWII, or anyone who wants to better understand the duplicitous and utterly dishonest dealings the West has had with Iran and more generally the Muslim world, this book is a must read.