Subscriber Essay: The 1941 Anglo-Iraqi War

Britain intervenes to reverse a coup in one of its most strategically important client states.

This week’s question was about Allied interventions in Iran and Iraq during World War II. The joint British-Soviet invasion of Iran in August 1941 overthrew the shah, Reza Pahlavi, and is plenty interesting in its own right, but since we're running right into the 76th anniversary of the British intervention in Iraq (in May 1941), I thought it would be more timely to talk about that.