His foreign policy, which had consisted essentially of playing the Soviet Union off against Great Britain, failed when those two powers joined in 1941 to fight the Germans. To supply the Soviet forces with war material through Iran, the two allies jointly occupied the country in August 1941.Reza Shah then decided to abdicate, to allow his son and heir, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to adopt a policy appropriate to the new situation, and to preserve his dynasty. He wanted to go to Canada, but the British government sent him first to Mauritius and then to Johannesburg, where he died in July 1944.
