Tehran Conference

The Tehran Conference (codenamed Eureka) was a strategy meeting of the Allies of World War II, held between Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill from 28 November to 1 December 1943. It was the first of the Allied World War II conferences involving the "Big Three" (the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom) and took place at the Soviet embassy in Tehran more than two years after the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran. The meeting occurred shortly after the Cairo Conference was held in Egypt for a discussion between the United States, the United Kingdom, and China from 22 to 26 November 1943. The Big Three would not meet again until 1945, when the Yalta Conference was held in Crimea from 4 to 11 February and the Potsdam Conference was held in Allied-occupied Germany from 17 July to August 2. Notably, President Franklin D. Roosevelt arrived on the USS Iowa.

Although the three leaders arrived in Tehran with differing objectives, the main outcome of the meeting was a British and American commitment to opening a second front against Nazi Germany, thereby forcing it to pull military assets away from the Eastern Front with the Soviets. In addition to this decision, the Tehran Conference also addressed: the Big Three's relations with Turkey and Iran, as the former was being pressed to enter the conflict and the latter was under Allied occupation; operations in Yugoslavia and against Japan; and the envisaged settlement following the expected defeat of the Axis powers. A separate contract also saw the Big Three pledge to recognize Iranian independence.