The triumph of diplomacy. James Byrnes and the Iran Crisis of 1946.

The Iran crisis of 1946 marked the end of America's wartime policy of accommodation toward the USSR. Russia's refusals to withdraw her occupation army from northern Iran at the end of the war as per treaty obligations and agreements with her allies proved that policy which had anticipated postwar cooperation by the USSR, was ineffective. Instead, the resolution of the dispute between the two victorious great powers came about as a result of a diplomatic strategy pursued by Secretary of State James Byrnes. Contrary to popular belief, the Iran crisis played over the conference table of the newly inaugurated United Nations Security Council not American ultimatums or threats of armed force against the USSR. Byrnes diplomatic strategy at the Security Council abandoned FDR's soft Soviet policy but preserved his greater foreign policy goal of establishing a viable United Nations. American support for Iran's complaint lodged against the USSR before the Council (the first order of business ever taken up by the new body) legitimized the executive branch of the U.N. as one that would hear grievance by smaller nations even when the accused party was a veto proof permanent member of the UNSC.