The steel mill the West refused — so the Shah went to Moscow | HE WAS NEVER THEIR PUPPET — Part 2

History Onion · Part 2 · 2:58

In 1959 the World Bank refused to finance Iran's steel mill. The same year it approved $72 million for Iranian roads at 6% interest. In January 1966 the Shah signed with the Soviet Union instead: $286 million at 2.5%, repaid in natural gas. The CIA called it "a major breakthrough for the USSR." Part 2 follows one decision. Krupp in 1952, the World Bank in 1959, twenty-five consultancies saying "not viable," Egypt's dam three years earlier — and a king who went to his patron's enemy for the one plant the West would not sell him, watched his own negotiators so it could not leak, and accepted a new dependence on Moscow as the price. The mill opened at Isfahan in 1971. From it grew an industry that made Iran the world's tenth-largest steel producer by 2024 — and in March 2026, in the Islamic Republic's war with the United States and Israel, its two largest plants, Mobarakeh and Khuzestan Steel, were bombed and shut down. The Shah's original plant was not reported among the targets. Sources (all quotations verbatim; every figure attributed): • The 1959 road loan, $72m at 6% — World Bank Report P-196, 19 May 1959: https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/155371468254368085/pdf/multi0page.pdf • Krupp 1952, the 1959 refusal, the Semnan site, the "twenty-five consultancies" count — Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Steel Industry in Iran": https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/steel-industry-in-iran/ • Western warnings and the Soviet offer — Ambassador Meyer to the State Department, 13 Sep 1965 (FRUS 1964–68, vol. XXII, doc. 100): https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v22/d100