Persia and Iraq Command - Formation of The Command

Formation of The Command

In August 1942 the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill accompanied by a senior delegation including the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Alan Brooke, held discussions in Cairo which resulted in a reorganisation of Middle East Command. This included the replacement of Auchinleck in his role as GOC-in-C Middle East by General Harold Alexander and in his role as Eighth Army commander by Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery and the splitting of Middle East Command to create a new Persia and Iraq Command. Aware that the Commander-in-Chief, Middle East Command needed to devote his full attention to halting the German-Italian forces in North Africa Churchill wanted to free him of the burden of the forces in Iraq and Persia. With Commander-in-Chief, India also having to devote his full time attention to fighting the Japanese the solution seemed to be the creation of a new command to guard the northern front. After some resistance the British cabinet approved its creation on 8 August and Auchinleck was offered the command but turned it down. He opposed the idea of the new command, believing that all forces in Iraq and Persia should be under the same leadership as those in the Middle East area. The War Cabinet believed that with the renewed threat from the Caucasus that the argument for a unified command was even stronger now, than it had been in January.

On 21 August 1942, the Persia Iraq Command was offered to General Sir Maitland Wilson who accepted the post. On 18 September, the headquarters was opened in Baghdad. Wilson's tasks, in order of priority, were as follows: First, to secure at all costs from land and air attack the oil fields and oil installations in Persia and Iraq. Second, to ensure the transport from the Persian Gulf ports of supplies to Russia to the maximum extent possible without prejudicing my primary task.