Anglo-Iranian Treaty (1919)

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The Anglo-Iranian Treaty of 1919 was signed on August 9, 1919 by representatives of the British and Iranian governments. The treaty was intended to reorganize the basis of relations between Iran and the United Kingdom. The treaty came about on the initiative of the British Foreign Minister Lord Curzon . The contract negotiations were mainly between the British ambassador in Tehran Sir Percy Cox and the Prime Minister of Iran Hassan Vosough , Finance Minister Akbar Mas'oud and Justice Minister and later Foreign Minister Firuz Nosratdoleh .

content

In the treaty, Iran was guaranteed full territorial integrity. The British government committed itself to the Iranian government

  • to make any expert available to advise the Treasury and any other ministry.
  • to send British officers to Iran as military advisers for the reorganization of the Iranian armed forces . A merger of the South Persian Rifles, already commanded by British officers, and the Persian Cossack Brigade, which was under Iranian command, was planned . The new Iranian army should be provided with ammunition and weapons from British stocks.
  • to send British customs experts to Iran to revise the Iranian customs tariffs.
  • to send British engineers to Iran to plan and carry out the construction of railways and highways.
  • to provide a £ 2 million loan at 7% interest. In return, customs revenue and part of the taxes for interest and repayments would be paid directly to the British Imperial Bank of Persia in Tehran.

In two letters annexed to the treaty, addressed to the Iranian government, the British government assured that existing treaties from previous years that Iran wishes to revise could be negotiated, so that the diplomatic immunity of British nationals, if they are not diplomats, could be negotiated In the future, taking into account the security interests of those affected, and that the British government would support the Iranian position on the issue of Iranian borders with regard to Turkish Kurdistan, Turkey and Russian Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.

The contract should be valid for an indefinite period.

background

The architect of this treaty was Lord Curzon , who intended to secure British India and the sea route to it via the Suez Canal through a chain of satellite states that stretch from the Mediterranean to India. Iran played a key role in this. The mandate areas of Palestine (including Transjordan) and Mesopotamia, newly created after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, were under direct British control. Only Iran was still largely independent and could have become a problem. In addition, the 1907 Treaty of Saint Petersburg concluded with Russia to secure the economic interests of the British in Iran had become obsolete after the collapse of Tsarist Russia .

Curzon, who traveled the country as a young man from 1889 to 1890 and had summarized his impressions in a book ( Persia and the Persian Question ), knew Iran better than any other Western diplomat. It was also clear to Curzon that the peace conference that had been meeting in Paris since January 1919 would not grant the British any rights in Iran. The only viable way to resolve the "Persian question" was through a bilateral treaty between the United Kingdom and Iran.

Conclusion of the contract and reactions

Ahmad Shah was against the agreement from the start. Instead of negotiating with the British, he sent a five-person delegation to Versailles for the peace negotiations against the will of Prime Minister Vosough. Iran's demands related mainly to reparation payments to compensate for war damage. The amounts required were quite modest: Russia was supposed to pay 1,000,000 tomans, Turkey 500,000 tomans and Germany 20,000 tomans, whereby 10,000 tomans were equivalent to about 3,500 British pounds at the time. Contrary to expectations, the Iranian delegation was refused to attend the conference. The head of the delegation, then Foreign Minister Moshaver al Mamalek, tried several times in vain to meet British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour, who was in Paris, or Lord Curzon in London. Lord Curzon informed him that he would not see him or any other member of the Iranian delegation and that no one could do anything for them at the Versailles Peace Conference. So the delegation left without having achieved anything.

Ahmad Shah, however, had a weak position on the issue of this agreement. In order to comply with the request of the British to appoint Hassan Vosough as Prime Minister, Ahmad Shah had secured a monthly payment of 5,000 British pounds from the British government and received it from August 1918. The British ambassador told Ahmad Shah that payments would be stopped immediately if he continued to oppose the agreement negotiated with Vosough. This had an effect and Ahmad Shah gave up his resistance. Vosough had requested a monthly payment of 350,000 tomans from the British government for the courtesy of his assumption of office "to support government work financially". The British Foreign Office also approved these payments. On April 11, 1919, Prime Minister Vosough, Finance Minister Akbar Mas'oud and Foreign Minister Firouz Firouz, who ran the affairs of government as a quasi-triumvirate, demanded 500,000 tomans "in cash and without further questions." The British ambassador negotiated the amount down to 400,000 tomans, or £ 131,000, and the agreement was signed. The majority of the public in Iran reacted negatively to the signing of the contract. Of the 26 newspapers published in Tehran at the time, all but one rejected the treaty.

According to the Iranian constitution, however, the parliament, the Majlis , had to ratify the treaty in order for it to become legally binding. The last parliamentary session took place in 1915, the last parliamentary election in 1917. Because of the First World War and the occupation of the country by British and Russian troops, the parliament had not met for its constituent session. After the end of the war, several governments delayed convening the Majlis for fear of not being able to control the delegates. As long as there was no parliament in Iran, the agreement could not come into force.

Both the British and Iranian governments consider the parliamentary confirmation of the agreement to be a formality that does not need to be taken into account at first. An account was opened with the Imperial Bank of Persia, to which the loan of £ 2,000,000 was credited. The £ 131,000 bribe was debited from the loan account and paid out to the beneficiaries. Further payments should be made after confirmation by Parliament.

In late 1919, rumors were circulating in Tehran that Prime Minister Vosough and members of his cabinet had been bribed by the British. After Vosough resigned in June 1920 and Fathollah Akbar Sepahdar became Prime Minister, he received a copy of a receipt for £ 131,000 signed by then Treasury Secretary Akbar Mas'oud. Inquiries at the British Embassy confirmed that this sum had been paid to Prime Minister Vosough and Finance Minister Akbar Mas'oud and Foreign Minister Firouz Firouz.

Further developments

Now that it was clear that the agreement had come about through bribery of the Iranian government at the time, some members of parliament also demanded “their share”. Ahmad Shah, who had meanwhile gone to France “for health reasons”, wanted to appeal to the Iranian parliament for the approval of the agreement in exchange for the payment of 400,000 Toman . The British now threatened to stop paying the Iranian government the 350,000 Toman monthly payments if they did not finally submit the agreement to parliament for a vote. In addition, the 100,000 tomans transferred monthly from London to finance the Persian Cossack brigade would no longer be paid. It didn't help, the agreement stayed in the government's drawer. The loan remained unaffected.

In the end, the British government had to realize that once the circumstances surrounding the conclusion of the agreement became known, no Iranian politician would advocate it in parliament. The additional provision of bribes would not help either. The deal had thoroughly ruined Britain's already ailing reputation. In February 1921, the new Prime Minister Seyyed Zia al Din Tabatabai stated that the circumstances under which the agreement had been negotiated had since changed. He advocated repealing the agreement. Seyyed Zia went one step further. He asked the now legendary American Morgan Shuster , who had served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the days of the constitutional revolution of the then government, whether he wanted to establish an agricultural bank in Iran, which would later take over the tasks of an Iranian national bank, and thereby replace the British Imperial Bank of Persia . In addition, Seyyed Zia wanted to hire US technicians at the Department of Post and Telegraphy, which would have affected British interests as well, as the Indo-European telegraph line that ran through Iran was British owned. Lord Curzon wired the British ambassador in Tehran to tell Seyyed Zia that he was strictly against the Iranian government hiring American advisors. Since Seyyed Zia only remained in office for 100 days, Morgan Shuster was no longer employed.

By June 1921 at the latest, however, it became clear that all attempts to have the agreement confirmed by parliament had finally failed. Seyyed Zia’s successor, Prime Minister Ahmad Qavām , had instructed his future ambassador to the US to inform the US government that the Iranian government had decided, due to the lack of popularity of the 1919 Anglo-Iranian agreement, not a British but a US American one Invite experts as advisors and help set up your own Iranian national bank. They also wanted to take out a $ 5 million loan in the US that would be repaid from the APOC's concession income . Now it was official. The 1919 Anglo-Iranian treaty would not be presented to the Iranian parliament for approval. The agreement was no longer valid.

literature

  • Cyrus Ghani: Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah. From Qajar collapse to Pahlavi Rule. IB Tauris Publishers, London et al. 2000, ISBN 1-86064-629-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Amir R. Begli Beigie: Repeating mistakes. Britain, Iran & the 1919 Treaty. In: The Iranian , March 27, 2001.
  2. ^ Cyrus Ghani: Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah. 2000, p. 29.
  3. ^ Cyrus Ghani: Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah. 2000, p. 35 f.
  4. ^ Cyrus Ghani: Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah. 2000, p. 26.
  5. ^ Cyrus Ghani: Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah. 2000, p. 27.
  6. ^ Cyrus Ghani: Iran and the Rise of Reza Shah. 2000, p. 43.
  7. ^ David Fromkin: A Peace to End All Peace. 2nd edition, New York 2009, p. 457.

See also