ABSTRACT
World War II had a different impact on the Middle East from World War I. Iran became a very strategic potential convoy area to the Soviets for military supplies, particularly with the new Trans-Iranian Railway after 1939. Iran played host to a major Allied summit in November and December 1943: the Tehran Conference. Iran became one of the first sites of conflict in the emerging Cold War. Instead of withdrawing from the country entirely after the end of hostilities as promised, Stalin declared the establishment of two People’s Democratic Republics in northwest Iran: the Azerbaijan People’s Republic and the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad. The situation in Turkey, which managed to retain its neutrality in the Second World War despite severe pressures from both sides, was substantially different from what happened in its neighbor Iran. Modernization also swept across other parts of the region as a direct result of economic demands imposed by the war, in particular the greatly increased need for fuel.
