Sword of the Sea:
Persia in the Second Great War
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
April 2023

In the world of the Second Great War, the original Great War ended in December 1916 with a negotiated peace settlement mediated by American President Woodrow Wilson. Plebiscites would settle sovereignty over disputed areas, and the great empires of Eastern Europe – Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Turkey and Russia – would survive to fight another war in the next generation.

The peace required that Ottoman, Russian and British troops withdraw from Persia, where all three powers, plus German and Austro-Hungarian agents, had battled for influence. None of them fully complied with the agreement, still using cash and clandestine shipment of weapons to support various clans and factions – many of which, in turn, accepted aid from multiple patrons.

Note: The battle-for-influence part actually happened, but the foreign contingents withdrew for different reasons.

Several years of anarchy followed, with the British candidate, Reza Khan, emerging with the reins of power in 1919. Reza, a colonel commanding the Persian Cossack Brigade, marched on Tehran and overthrew the government of Ahmad Shah, which had no control outside the capital and little within it. Reza declared himself Shah in place of the old Qajar dynasty, retaining both the 1906 constitution and the portfolio of War Minister.

Note: The real Reza Khan indeed led the Persian Cossack Brigade, and immediately after taking command he used the force to overthrow the Persian government, retaining Ahmad Shah as a figurehead until 1925. In our alternative history, things move a little faster.

Turkish-backed rebellions immediately followed along his western border, as Arabs, Kurds and Azeris rose against the new central government. Reza imported huge stocks of war-surplus weaponry from neighboring British India, along with hundreds of veteran instructors to build a new Imperial Persian army. British authorities quietly assisted his recruiting of several thousand Muslim veterans of their own Indian regiments to bolster his forces. Both Britain and Italy warned the Ottomans to stay out of the conflict, or they would openly intervene to support Reza.

Iranian cavalry, seen sometime in the 1930's.

By 1922, the new government’s better-armed and better-led troops had suppressed the rebellions. Reza Shah, as he now styled himself, set about creating a modern army organized along British lines. By 1930 the new army would have 20 infantry and six cavalry divisions, raised by universal conscription. Initially, officers came from the Persian Cossack Brigade and the cadre of Indian mercenaries, but Reza established a military academy to train Persians youth for the roles. The most promising went on to the Royal Indian Military College at Dehradun.

To feed his war machine with literate men, Reza also invested heavily in a system of secular education, modeled on that arising across the border in the Ottoman Empire. That brought on direct conflict with the Shi’ite Islamic clergy; Reza reacted with ever-broadening secularization. He banned the chador and hijab, the traditional covering worn by women in much of the Islamic world, opening schools and universities to girls and women and requiring that all government officials and military officers be accompanied by their wives (and as women joined his government, husbands) on social occasions. He extended full civil rights to religious and ethnic minorities, making his stand clear by praying in Jewish temples.

Notes: Reza Shah did try to secularize Persia/Iran as described, though without the British influence and without the massive military buildup. And he did pray in a Jewish temple to make his point clear.

The new-model Imperial Army crushed clerical protests. Reza’s pliant new court system obediently sentenced leaders of the uprising to death, and outspoken opponents to an exile which they never reached. Those bound with wire and tossed from Navy aircraft into the Persian Gulf included an angry young poet named Ruhollah.

Iranian infantry on parade. Seen sometime in the 1930's.

New public investment saw construction of ports, railroads, and highways. State-owned factories sprung up, employing women and non-Persian minorities on an equal footing. Economic benefits would extend to all subjects of the new empire, Reza declared, including old-age pensions and universal medical care. Reza Shah insisted on changing his country’s name to Iran starting in 1935, with mixed success; most foreigners continued to call the country Persia.

Notes: This is fairly close to Reza Shah’s actual program.

Oil revenues fueled that economic and social change. British influence remained strong, as almost all oil exports went to British India. A pipeline stretched from the oilfields in south-western Persia along the coast of the Persian Gulf into India. The British also oversaw the development of Reza’s army, structuring it to oppose the Ottoman Turks across Persian’s western borders as the shield of British India.

By 1940, most Persian Army officers were native-born, and educated in Reza’s academy or the military cadet schools. The diversion of so much human and economic capital into the military had likely stunted the empire’s progress, but the outcome suited Reza’s foreign patrons. Persia could provide valuable military assistance, but would not become a competitor in the international marketplace.

The Imperial Army numbered 32 infantry divisions in 1940, supported by six cavalry divisions and two armored divisions equipped with Italian-made vehicles and Russian-made helicopters. The Imperial Guard, known as the Immortals, provides an additional mechanized infantry division during wartime.

Mobilization plans call for the army to be concentrated on the western border by the tenth day, with an offensive against the Ottoman Empire to open by the twentieth day. There are no plans to face the Russians to the north, or the British to the east. Iran will fight as her patrons demand.

Iranian artillerymen with Bofors mountain guns. Seen sometime in the 1930's.

Reza turned to Italy for assistance in building his air force and navy, both to provide a political counterweight to the British and because of low prices and generous credit terms offered by Italian producers at the behest of the fascist state. A large Italian training mission operates a flight school and assists with squadron and higher-level operations. About half of the aircraft come from Italian manufacturers, and the remainder from Russia.

While the Shah hopes to build an indigenous aircraft industry, that hasn’t gone very far. Using state subsidies from their own governments to sell below cost, the foreign makers effectively undercut these efforts. Iran is a dependent state in terms of most high-end manufactured goods such as aircraft.

The Imperial navy, re-founded in 1925, began with a core of two old Spanish dreadnoughts, purchased by the Shah’s government and re-furbished in Italian shipyards. They are slow, weakly-armed and vulnerable to bombs and torpedoes, but were never meant as front-line fighting units. They serve to train the next generation of Persian seamen and officers, in conjunction with the shore-based academies.

Under Reza Shah, the Navy poured money into a chain of naval and air bases at
Bandar-e Abbas, Khorramshahr, and Chah Bahar, all along the southern coast, and Bandar-e Anzali on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. They included drydocks at Khorramshahr capable of repairing even the largest Persian warships, and while Reza hoped to found shipbuilding industries of his own, his foreign partners balked him here as well with artificially low prices.

Notes: While Reza Shah did bulk up his military, it was not anywhere near this scale. He did found the Imperial Guard Division and name them the Immortals.

The Imperial Navy’s first true combat units would be eighteen used Russian destroyers, boats of the Novik class. Russian crews delivered them in 1928, drawing Turkish protests but no other reaction. Only six would still be in service with the fleet in 1940, with three having been used for spare parts, one lost to accidental grounding and eight more laid up in reserve. They formed the core of the fleet until more crews could be trained and larger, more effective ships brought into service.

In 1934, Shah Reza announced a major arms purchase from Italy, including two hundred light tanks, two hundred aircraft, three large coast defense ships and four oversized light cruisers. To assuage Russian disappointment, the Shah’s Navy also bought eight modern destroyers from Russian yards.

With one move, Reza Shah had made his empire a regional naval power, making a bid to at least contest if not control the Persian Gulf when the inevitable war with the Turks broke out. But the Imperial Navy still lacked the ability to project power into the Arabian Sea. That came in 1936, with an order for a pair of Italian-designed “armored cruisers” built in Russian yards. These were big, modern ships capable of running down and destroying the cruisers and coast defense ships fielded by the Ottomans and Germans in the theater, or running away from their heavier ships. With these new ships and the new base at Chah Bahar ready to support them, the Shah had become a player in the Indian Ocean.

Iranian warships at Khorranshahr naval base, seen sometime in the 1930's.

The Turks, facing threats in the Black Sea from the Russians and the Mediterranean from the British, French and Italians, by necessity had to view the Persian Gulf as a secondary theater. They built a large naval base at Umm Qasr, a small fishing port located at the head of the Persian Gulf, with repair facilities including dry docks – its rail connection to the remainder of the Ottoman Empire and from there to Europe and Turkey’s Central Powers allies made it a very valuable location. Germany contributed much of the cost of the base and the large-scale coastal defenses necessary to protect it – British-ruled Kuwait lay directly across the narrow waterway leading to the port.

The Ottomans also controlled the south shore of the Persian Gulf and built a smaller base at Doha on the Qatar Peninsula. Doha lacked the rail connection, but provided a good location from which torpedo craft could protect against Persian raids or landings that threatened the Arabian oil fields. But they kept only an odd collection of small coast-defense ships and elderly ex-German destroyers in the Gulf, unwilling to allow more valuable units to be bottled up there in case of a shooting war.

There was no question that Shah Reza would join his allies in case of war; the only variable was whether he would jump alongside the Italians, the Russians or the British. The prizes dangled before him would increase his empire’s power and wealth: the oilfields of Basra Vilayet in southern Iraq, Qatar, large swathes of Kurdistan. Out of earshot of the Russians, the British also spoke of returning Azerbaijan, lost to the Russians in the previous century and now held by the Turks, to Iranian rule. Whether called Iran or Persia, Reza Shah’s empire would answer.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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