Soviet-Iranian friendship treaty

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The English text of the Russian-Persian Friendship Treaty.

The Soviet-Iranian friendship treaty of 1921 was signed on February 26, 1921 in Moscow by representatives of the Soviet and Iranian governments. The treaty was supposed to regulate the basis of relations between Iran and the Soviet Union .

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In the treaty, Iran was guaranteed full territorial integrity. All previous treaties between Russia and Iran, including the Treaty of Turkemantschai of February 22, 1828 and the Treaty of Saint Petersburg, are canceled. Iran, along with Russia, is granted the right to freely navigate its ships in the Caspian Sea with its own flag.

Under Article 5 of the Treaty, both governments undertook to:

  1. to prevent the formation or toleration of any organization or group of persons, whatever their name, engaged in hostile activities against Russia or Persia or allies of Russia on their territory. The formation of military units or armies with a comparable goal should also be prevented.
  2. not to allow third parties or organizations, whatever their name, which are hostile to the contracting parties, to import equipment or to leave it in transit through the respective country that could be used against the respective contracting party.
  3. to prevent the stationing of armies or military formations from third countries by all available means. The stationing of appropriate military units would be interpreted as a threat to the borders, interests and security of the partner country.

Article 6 is also of particular importance:

"Should a third country attempt to illegally occupy Persian territory by force of arms, or should the third country use Persian territory as a base of operations against Russia, or should a third country threaten the borders of the Russian Federation or its allies, and the Persian government should not be able to To end the threat, upon request by the Russian government, Russia has the right to invade Persia in order to undertake appropriate military operations in its defense. Russia will withdraw its troops immediately when the threat has been eliminated. "

background

After the collapse of the Russian Empire and the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution in 1917, contractual relations between the newly created Russian Soviet Republic and Iran had to be reorganized. The Treaty of Saint Petersburg, concluded in 1907 between Great Britain and the Russian Empire, in which Iran was an object of the contract but not a contractual partner, had been declared void by the Soviets. Great Britain had already attempted in 1919 in the Anglo-Iranian Treaty of 1919 to reorganize relations with Iran based on its political interests. The treaty was signed by the then Iranian government but not confirmed by parliament . The Bolsheviks wanted to avoid a similar fate at all costs. In order to change the status of the contract between the two countries, negotiations began in 1920.

The prerequisites for a successful conclusion of the negotiations appeared to be in place. Iran was among the first countries to recognize Lenin's government on December 14, 1917. On January 27, 1918, Leon Trotsky declared the Treaty of Saint Petersburg "null and void".

It was Prime Minister Hassan Pirnia who sent a delegation to Moscow in 1920 to reorganize the question of relations between Iran and Soviet Russia. Even before the agreement was signed, the Iranian negotiators managed to achieve that

  1. all Persian officials arrested by the Soviets will be released with an apology for the injustice suffered.
  2. a commission is set up to determine compensation payments to the Iranians affected, whose property was confiscated or damaged during the Russian occupation of northern Iran.
  3. Soviet troops stationed on the Persian coast of the Caspian Sea withdraw and Bandar Anzali is evacuated.

The signing of the agreement fell during the reign of Prime Minister Seyyed Zia al Din Tabatabai . However, the conclusion of the treaty did not lead to the final withdrawal of Soviet troops from northern Iran. British troops were still in Iran, so the Bolsheviks saw no reason to withdraw their troops. After the conclusion of the contract, Theodor Rotstein became the Soviet ambassador to Iran. The embassy staff was increased to around 100 and Soviet consulates were set up in all the larger cities.

Articles 5 and 6 were clearly directed against the stationing of British troops in Iran, who had been in Iran since the beginning of the First World War , first to protect the oil facilities in Abadan from acts of German sabotage and later, after the October Revolution, against the oil region around Baku to defend Turkish attacks and later against the takeover by the Bolsheviks. The headquarters of the British troops were in Qazvin . General Ironside , however, had already been commissioned in October 1920 to move the British troops from Iran to Baghdad after they were unable to hold out against the overwhelming forces of the Red Army . The British now pursued the policy of countering Soviet influence not through the direct presence of troops in Iran, but rather to prevent communist forces from taking over power by building a strong Iranian army.

On May 9, 1921, the British Ambassador Norman informed the Soviet Ambassador Rotstein that the British troops had left Qazvin and would withdraw completely from Iran. On May 19, 1921, the Soviet military attaché confirmed that the Red Army was also in retreat and that Mirza Kuchak Khan's suppression of the Jangali movement would be left to the Iranian armed forces. On May 23, 1921, all British troops except one unit in southwest Iran had left the country.

The signing of the agreement ended the British dominance in Iran that had prevailed after the end of the First World War and the collapse of the Russian Empire, and led to the withdrawal of almost all foreign troops from the state territory of Iran, as requested by the Iranian government.

Further development

After the treaty had accelerated the withdrawal of the British troops stationed in Iran since the beginning of the First World War and, as a result, the withdrawal of the Soviet troops that had marched into Iran, it was to have the opposite effect at the beginning of the Second World War . In August 1941, British and Soviet troops invaded Iran as part of the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran . The Soviet Union relied on Article 6 of the treaty, which granted it the right to invade Iran if its security was threatened by Iranian or foreign troops. A period of several years of occupation by foreign troops began, which lasted beyond the end of the Second World War. The actual goal of the occupation was the establishment of a supply line, the Persian Corridor , which was supposed to ensure the supply of Soviet troops with American military equipment. Initially, the Iranian railways and the telephone system, later the entire infrastructure essential to the war effort, were used to ensure supplies. In addition to British and Soviet troops, US troops were soon to march into Iran in order to further expand the technical infrastructure and secure it militarily. On January 29, 1942, the Iranian Parliament ratified the tripartite agreement negotiated by Prime Minister Forughi and the British and Soviet ambassadors, which guaranteed the territorial integrity of Iran and the withdrawal of allied troops after the end of the Second World War. In return, the Allies were given complete control over all traffic and communications links, such as the railroad, road network, airfields, ports, pipelines, telephone network and radio. This freed the transport route from the Persian Gulf through Iran to the Caspian Sea and then further up the Volga to Stalingrad . The Battle of Stalingrad , led by the USA with military technical support , also brought about the turning point that the Allies had hoped for.

After the end of the Second World War, the question of the withdrawal of Allied troops from Iran on July 21, 1945 was discussed in detail at the Potsdam Conference . It was decided that the troops should withdraw from the capital Tehran but remain stationed in Iran until six months after the end of the war with Japan. After the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Japanese surrendered on September 2, 1945, the Iranian government set the withdrawal date for the Allied troops on March 2, 1946. The British and Soviet governments agreed to this withdrawal date.

However, as agreed between the Allies and Iran, Stalin refused to completely withdraw Soviet troops from Iran six months after the fighting ended. With reference to Article 6, he saw the security of the Soviet Union as being threatened and therefore insisted on further stationing of Soviet troops in northern Iran. Stalin wanted to seize the opportunity. On December 12, 1945, Tabriz occupied by armed members of the Fiqeh Democrat, constituted a National Assembly of Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani people's government with Ja'far Pishevari called as prime minister to life. After the proclamation of the Azerbaijani People's Government in Tabriz, the Iranian General Karim Varahram came across a map printed in Baku in 1943 , on which Iran was divided into several independent republics. The map showed the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan, consisting of the Soviet and Iranian Azerbaijan, the Republic of Kurdistan, which included the territory of the Iranian west as far as Bushehr , the Republic of Arabistan, which consisted of the province of Khusistan , the Republic of Baluchistan, the Kerman and Makran included, the Republic of Khorasan, which consisted of Khorasan Province , Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan , the Republic of Tabaristan , which included the Caspian provinces, and the Republic of Fars, which covered the area of ​​central Iran. The first real crisis, the Iran crisis , had broken out between the Allies .

In mid-January 1946, Prime Minister Ebrahim Hakimi turned to the United Nations Security Council , founded on January 17, 1946 , which called on the Iranian government to negotiate directly with the Soviet Union in order to find a balance of interests on the question of the separatist movements. On January 20, 1946, Prime Minister Hakimi resigned due to a threatened vote of no confidence by the Iranian parliament. At the proposal of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , Ahmad Qavam was elected Prime Minister by Parliament, who traveled to Moscow on February 18, 1946 for negotiations. The US President Harry S. Truman now threatened Stalin with serious consequences to the use of nuclear weapons unless he may go up his troops from Iran. For President Truman, there was no question that the Soviet Union's control of Iranian oil would lead to a shift in the balance of power in the world and could cause massive damage to the emerging Western economy. In the meantime, the United Nations Security Council had intervened in the crisis. Truman's threat did not fail to work. On March 25, 1946, Stalin announced that Iran and the Soviet Union had agreed in principle on the issue of troop withdrawal and that the Soviet troops could withdraw from Iran within six weeks. Iran had achieved a victory, but the Cold War had begun.

When Iran joined the CENTO in 1955, the objectives of Iranian foreign policy changed. To secure the political independence and territorial integrity of Iran through a policy of neutrality, but rather through a close relationship with the West. After the Soviet-Iranian friendship treaty for Iran had revealed itself to be an instrument of Soviet power politics, the Iranian government under Prime Minister Manutschehr Eghbal declared to the Soviet government that it had approved Articles 5 and 6 of the treaty, which still gave the Soviet Union the right to to invade Iran under certain conditions as no longer valid.

See also

literature

  • Mehdiyoun, Kamyar. Ownership of Oil and Gas Resources in the Caspian Sea. The American Journal of International Law. Vol. 94, no. 1 (January 2000), pp. 179-189.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Mehdiyoun, Kamyar. Ownership of Oil and Gas Resources in the Caspian Sea. The American Journal of International Law. Vol. 94, no. 1 (January 2000), p. 185.
  2. ↑ Cosroe Chaqueri: The Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran from 1920 to 1921. University of Pittsburg Pess, 1995, p. 143.
  3. ↑ Cosroe Chaqueri: The Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran 1920-1921. University of Pittsburg Pess, 1995, p. 145.
  4. ^ Cyrus Ghani: Iran and the rise of Reza Shah. IBTauris, 2000, p. 109.
  5. ^ Cyrus Ghani: Iran and the rise of Reza Shah. IBTauris, 2000, p. 210.
  6. ^ Cyrus Ghani: Iran and the rise of Reza Shah. IBTauris, 2000, p. 211.
  7. ^ Kristen Blake: The US-Soviet confrontation in Iran, 1945-1962. University Press of America, 2009, p. 22.
  8. ^ Kristen Blake: The US-Soviet confrontation in Iran, 1945-1962. University Press of America, 2009, p. 34.
  9. ↑ Gholam Reza Afkhami: The life and the times of the Shah. University of California Press. 2009, p. 93.
  10. ↑ Gholam Reza Afkhami: The life and the times of the Shah. University of California Press. 2009, p. 621.
  11. ^ Gerhard Schweizer: Iran . Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-7632-4034-9 , pp. 383 .