Overlooked victories

enjoys a study of events in Iran and Iraq that offers a fresh perspective on the wider story of the Second World War

Persian Gulf Command: A History of the Second World War in Iran and Iraq by Ashley Jackson With perhaps the exception of the Japanese invasion of Malaya in December, 1941 continues to be a ‘ lost’ year in the study of Britain’s Second World War. But thanks to the advent of Ashley Jackson’s superb new account of British (and later Allied) operations in Iraq and Iran 1941– 44, this should no longer be the case. Jackson’s subject is the story of how, by virtue of two military successes that year, first in Iraq, then by the invasion and occupation of Iran, Britain secured her sources of oil and also secured her eastern Mediterranean flank.

These forgotten victories of 1941 were a crucial turning point in Britain’s fortunes. The campaigns themselves were not large, they were conducted without much fanfare and laughably limited resources. But they were crucial for Britain’s ability to continue fighting in a year when she, together with her empire and Commonwealth, stood firm against Nazism. Jackson tells the full, extraordinary story without neglecting the richness of human experience that might otherwise lie obscured beneath the detail of grand strategy. He reminds us, in but one example, of the unexpected tentacles of British imperialism. King Ghazi of Iraq (who died in 1939) had long opposed British involvement in his country, in large part because he “had hated his time as a pupil at Harrow School, threatening to return one day with his army and burn it down”.

Jackson’s account is essentially in two halves. The first deals with the twin crises of 1941, where a coup in Iraq in April suddenly threatened Britain’s position in the country; and Britain and the Soviet Union’s joint invasion of Iran