Tehran Conference

The Tehran Conference (codenamed Eureka) was the first face-to-face strategic summit of the principal Allied leaders of the Second World War: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. Convened in the Iranian capital from 28 November to 1 December 1943, it followed immediately after the Cairo Conference (22–26 November 1943), where Roosevelt and Churchill had met Chiang Kai-shek to coordinate the Pacific war and issue the Cairo Declaration on Japan. Tehran was selected largely to accommodate Stalin, who refused to travel far from the Soviet front while the war against Nazi Germany hung in the balance after Stalingrad and Kursk. The conference marked the consolidation of the Grand Alliance and the first occasion on which the three powers jointly planned the defeat of the Axis and the contours of the post-war order.

The dominant decision at Tehran was the firm commitment to Operation Overlord—the cross-Channel invasion of German-occupied France—set for May 1944 (executed as the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944), coordinated with a supporting landing in southern France (Operation Anvil/Dragoon). In return Stalin pledged a simultaneous Soviet offensive on the Eastern Front to prevent German reinforcement of the west, and—crucially for the United States—promised that the USSR would enter the war against Japan once Germany was defeated. The leaders discussed the post-war fate of Germany, including partition proposals, and endorsed the principle of a future international organisation, foreshadowing the United Nations. They recognised Iran's independence and sovereignty in the Declaration of the Three Powers Regarding Iran, acknowledging Iranian assistance and promising economic aid and post-war withdrawal of occupying forces. The contentious question of Poland's borders surfaced, with tentative agreement that Poland's frontiers should shift westward—the eastern boundary along the Curzon Line and compensation in the west at Germany's expense.

Tehran set precedents later formalised at the Yalta Conference (4–11 February 1945) and the Potsdam Conference (17 July–2 August 1945). Its insistence on Overlord over Churchill's preferred Mediterranean/Balkan "soft underbelly" strategy reflected the growing weight of American and Soviet priorities, and the spheres-of-influence discussions anticipated the post-war division of Europe and the onset of the Cold War. The promise of Soviet entry against Japan was honoured on 8 August 1945. The Iran declaration is significant in diplomatic history because Allied troops did not fully withdraw on schedule, and Soviet reluctance to leave northern Iran (Azerbaijan) in 1946 produced the Iran Crisis, one of the earliest Cold War confrontations brought before the UN Security Council.

For the examination, Tehran is tested in World History papers (UPSC GS Paper I; optional History) within the sequence of wartime conferences—Casablanca, Cairo, Tehran, Yalta, Potsdam. Candidates must distinguish the participants, dates, and signature decisions of each: Tehran is identified by being the first Big Three meeting, the launch decision for Overlord, and the Soviet pledge on Japan. Question angles include matching conferences to outcomes, sequencing them chronologically, and explaining how Tehran shaped the post-war settlement and the emerging bipolar order.