As oil revenues increased and the strategic importance of oil rose, the British felt the need for a stronger ruler who would both centralize and modernize administration and ward off the Soviet Union, whose forces were threatening a southward advance on Persia, similar to what Russia had done in the nineteenth century. The British found their protégé in Colonel Reza Khan, commander of the Cossack brigade, who mounted a coup against the last ruler of the Qajar dynasty in 1921. A prime minister was imposed upon the monarch, and Reza Khan first became war minister and then prime minister. In
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