ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses Iran's experience in the war and then turns to the attempts of Kurdistan and Azerbaijan to assert their regional and ethnic rights in 1945-1946. Though elections remained subject in large measure to the control of the shah, army, large landlords, and the foreign embassies, there was a gradual democratization of the system in the 1940s. The struggle for control of the state culminated in the 1951-1953 oil nationalization movement led by Prime Minister Muhammad Mussadiq, which activated the second full-scale twentieth-century version of Iran's urban multi-class populist alliance. The post-war movements for autonomy in Azarbaijan and Kurdistan were the first tests of the potential for new social movements in the changing domestic and international environments of post-Reza Shah Iran. The 1951-1953 oil nationalization movement differed from the earlier revolution in that it emphasized the struggle against external dependency more than the internal conflict with the shah.
