The lightening operation to seize Iranian oil fields and railroads to fuel the Red Army was launched a few months after Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
By John Leake
Courageous Discourse
March 28, 2026
For most of the 19th century, the British and Russians vied with each for control of Central and West Asia in what Rudyard Kipling the "Great Game" in his 1901 novel Kim.
One of the most intriguing British characters of this era was Harry St. John Bridger Philby, also known as Jack Philby or Sheikh Abdullah. Philby was a British Arabist, explorer, and key advisor to King Abdulaziz ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia.
Though a member of the British upper class, Harry seems to have harbored some sort of resentment against the British, and he advised the Saudi King to sign a deal to exploit Saudi Arabia's oil fields with American instead of British concerns.
Harry's only son-Harold Adrian Russell Philby-whom he nicknamed "Kim" after the titular spy in Kipling's novel-became the most notorious Soviet double-agent in the history of the British Secret Intelligence Service.
In 1941, the Great Game between Britain and the Soviet Union ended in the most spectacular conceivable way when they jointly invaded Iran to secure its oil fields and railroads to supply the Soviet Red Army with fuel to fight the Germans.
At the time, Iran had virtually no modern army with which to stop them, and their resistance collapsed in three days.
Though I can already hear the howls of protest, I suspect that the Europeans-including the British-will be forced by the looming energy crisis to make peace with Russia and start purchasing gas via the one remaining pipeline (Line B of Nord Stream 2) which was not ruptured by the criminal act of sabotage in September 2022 that destroyed Nord Stream One lines A and B and Nord Stream Two line A.
Russia has pretty good relations with both Israel and Iran (hundreds of thousands of Israelis hold dual citizenship with Russia) so I increasingly wonder if Russia will need to play a role in bringing this disaster to an end before it destabilizes and ruins the entire world.
The following YouTube video does a good job of recounting the 1941 invasion.
This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.