The Azerbaijan crisis of 1946 represented a landmark in the early stages of the Cold War and played a major role in shaping the future course of Iran's political development. In this book, originally published in 1992, Louise Fawcett presents a comprehensive study of the five-year struggle for control of Iran which culminated in the crisis of 1946. Dr Fawcett examines both the Iranian domestic scene and the role played by the three great powers. She explores the causes, course and consequences of the Azerbaijan crisis from an Iranian perspective. Dr Fawcett then argues that the Iranian crisis was a far more complex affair than was once realised. It brought into play the competitive and often conflicting relationship between not only the United States and the former Soviet Union, but also between Britain and these two superpowers. This study is firmly located within the extensive international relations literature of the Cold War. Iran and the Cold War is an ideal text for students and specialists of both international relations and Middle East studies.

This study examines the Iranian crisis of 1946 and its role in shaping the dynamics of the Cold War. The author uses the encounter as a case study to analyze how the United States used its atomic monopoly to achieve its international objectives in the early postwar era.

For half a century, the United States and the Soviet Union were in conflict. But how and where did the Cold War begin? Jamil Hasanli answers these intriguing questions in At the Dawn of the Cold War. He argues that the intergenerational crisis over Iranian Azerbaijan (1945–1946) was the first event that brought the Soviet Union to a confrontation with the United States and Britain after the period of cooperation between them during World War II. Based on top-secret archive materials from Soviet and Azerbaijani archives as well as documents from American, British, and Iranian sources, the book details Iranian Azerbaijan's independence movement, which was backed by the USSR, the Soviet struggle for oil in Iran, and the American and British reactions to these events. These events were the starting point of the longer historical period of unarmed conflict between the Soviets and the West that is now known as the Cold War. This book is a major contribution to our understanding of the Cold War and international politics following WWII.

The United States, under the presidential administration of Harry Truman, began its policy of containing the Soviet Union during the Iranian Crisis of 1945-46. It was during this crisis that the US first sought to contain the USSR's attempts to expand its political influence, military presence and economic well-being at the expense of another less powerful country. President Truman and other members of the government had witnessed how poorly the policy of appeasement had worked prior to World War II. When the Soviet Union acted in an aggressive manner toward Iran following World War II, the United States did not back down, but instead took a stand to aid its ally. This was containment before containment had a name.