Reza Shah

Reza Khan joined the Persian Cossack Brigade at 14 and climbed to brigadier-general. In February 1921, commanding the Cossacks from Qazvin, he marched on the capital, forced the government's dissolution, and installed a new prime minister - first taking the war ministry for himself. Two years later he was prime minister; by 1925 the assembly had deposed the last Qajar shah and amended the constitution to elect him in his place. He sought American and Weimar German partnerships to counter British and Russian sway, then after 1931 turned to Czechoslovakia and Denmark, drawing on Škoda Works and Kampsax to build infrastructure and industry through the 1930s. His modernization clashed with the Shia clergy; his insistence on ethnic nationalism and Persianization suppressed ethnic minorities and left the peasantry behind. The Anglo-Soviet invasion of 1941 forced his abdication in favor of his son, and the gap he left - reunification and railroads, but no rural reform - would crack open four decades later.