influence because of their employment in strategic government industries and Iran's transport and communications network". However, the Iranians also began to reduce their trade with the Germans under Allied demands. Reza Shah sought to remain neutral and to anger neither side, which was becoming increasingly difficult with the British and Soviet demands on Iran. Many British forces were already present in Iraq as a result of the Anglo-Iraqi War earlier in 1941. Thus, British troops were stationed on the western border of Iran prior to the invasion. In 1941, the Allies forced Reza Shah to abdicate the throne to his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. His followers, who refused the British occupation of Iran, such as Fazlollah Zahedi and Mohammad Hosein Airom ,shared similar fates. The British believed that Zahedi was planning a general uprising in co-operation with German forces. He was arrested and found with German weapons and correspondence from a German agent. He was flown out of the country and interned in Palestine. Second Pahlavi era Postwar Iran came under the inescapable diplomatic shadow of the United States, which reduced the chances of further deepening relations between Tehran and Bonn. In commercial links, West Germany still remained well ahead of other European countries, even the United States, until 1974. In 1972, after the visit to Tehran of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, Iran and West Germany signed an economic agreement to provide for Iranian exports of oil and natural gas to Germany, with West German exports to and investments in Iran in return. However, given its huge surplus in foreign trade in 1974 and 1975, the Iranian government bought 25% of the shares of Krupp Hüttenwerke (German for smelting plants), the steel subsidiary of the German conglomerate Krupp, in September 1974. That provided the much needed cash injection to Krupp, it also gave Iran access to German expertise to expand its steel industry. Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant was also designed and partially built by the German Kraftwerk Union of Siemens, meanwhile, an agreement that was inked. Along with the agreement, a letter of intent was also signed on November 10 by which the West German firm would construct four new 1,200-megawatt nuclear power stations in Iran over the next ten years. The letter was signed by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and a director of Siemens on behalf of Kraftwerk Union. The four new plants were to