A Soviet View on the Assassination of the Iranian Prime Minister, Haj ʻAli Razmara, in the Context of the Early Years of the Cold War

Abstract Using Soviet foreign ministry documents found in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, this article seeks to shed a new light on the identity of those behind the assassination of Haj ʻAli Razmara in 1951, and the reasons for it. In seeking a power to back his aspirations to become the ruler of Iran, Razmara hopped between the USSR and the United States, finally gambling on USSR. In spite of this, the United States was not in a hurry to get rid of him; instead, they preferred to use the Shah's fear of Razmara to secure the former's cooperation and to extract from him what they wanted, especially oil concessions in Iran. However, by then Iran was already marching rapidly toward oil nationalization, which Razmara opposed on the grounds that the USSR should be the power that produced the oil for the Iranians. This was unacceptable to the Americans, who, according to Soviet sources, decided to get rid of Razmara during the early stages of the Cold War.