The humiliation of foreigners meddling !.
in its internal affairs was keenly felt by a country with an illustrious history and a strong Islamic tradition, and provides a key for undertsanding the fall of the Shah and the turbulent events of 1978-79. .
In 1925, when Reza Khan founded the Pahlavi dynasty, Persia was a country in name only. The writ of the Shahs extended not much further than the outskirts of Tehran. Regional, local, and tribal chieftains ran the rest of the country manipulated by British and Russian agents. Reza Khan spent the next fifteen years centralising authority and restoring the integrity and independence the newly named Iran had not known for many years. In 1942, however, this chimera of independence was cruelly exposed when the Soviet Union and the British occupied Iran to guarantee the oil reserves and supply routes vital to the allied war effort. The pro-German Reza Khan was summarily removed and his young son, the last Shah, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi was placed on the Peacock Throne. .
The alliance between the United States and the Shah began in 1946, when Washington decided to help protect Iran from the Soviet Union which was seeking to set up a puppet regime in the north of the country. However, it was the 1953 coup, in which prime minister Mohammad Mussadiq was overthrown, that marked the start of the close political, economic, and military relationship between the two countries which endured until 1979. .
In concert with many other Third World countries, the end of World War II witnessed a marked increase in nationalist feelings in Iran, especially towards Great Britain, the pre-eminent power throughout much of the middle-east. This hostility resulted in the nationalisation of the British owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company by the Majlis (Iranian Parliament) and the election of the fiercely nationalist prime minister, Dr Mussadiq, in 1951.