After the Cossack Coup, a power struggle between rivals leads to Reza Khan rising to the top. He defangs an American financial mission, jails and executes his rivals, plunders the tribes, makes a personal bank, and becomes not only Shah, but in Gholi Majd’s words, “the largest private landowner… in all likelihood in the recorded history of mankind.” Britain’s sponsorship of his rise, and Britain’s sponsorship of his fall in 1941, ends our study of Interwar Iran.
