The Shah

by Abbas Milani

  According to Mossadeq, he refused the offer first because he did not think the Shah had the constitutional authority to appoint a prime minister. The job of the King, Mossadeq wrote, was “more of a figure-head.” The argument, made while Mossadeq was in jail and long after the time the offer was made, seems inconsistent and concocted after the fact. In reality, in his meeting, Mossadeq told the same “figure-head” Shah that should the British agree with the appointment, he would accept the offer. Mossadeq further added that he knew full well the power of the British in Iran—at the time, they were occupying half of the country. Moreover, Mossadeq wrote that he knew of the British opposition to his politics and personality, and thus knew the appointment would never materialize.28

  As it turned out, Mossadeq was right on this point. When the Shah raised with Bullard the issue of the offer he had made to Mossadeq, the ambassador was incensed, and tried, in his own words, to “deprecate” the idea by telling the Shah that such an appointment would be a “departure from the constitution.”29 Of course, at other times, this same Bullard had no compunction asking, even demanding, that the Shah fire one prime minister or appoint another. So concerned was the British government about the possibility of a Mossadeq appointment that Bullard was instructed to meet with the Shah again and draw “his attention to the effect such unconstitutional action might be expected to have on public opinion abroad (to which he is sensitive).” In case even this warning did not work, Bullard was instructed to remind the Shah “about the danger of following in his father’s footsteps.”30 In 1944, the “father’s footsteps” had led him to a lonely house in Johannesburg where he was a virtual prisoner of the British. A couple of days after the meeting, the Shah called Mossadeq to tell him about British opposition to the idea.

  In the meantime, as the Azerbaijan crisis continued, the Soviet Union made it clear that they would not negotiate with any prime minister other than Qavam. They particularly ruled out the then-sitting prime minister, Ebrahim Hakimi. By the end of the war, the Soviets had up to 60,000 soldiers in Iran, and the vast territories they occupied included Qazvin, a mere two-hour drive from Tehran.31 About this time, Qavam decided to try his hand in politics yet again. On June 4, 1945, he sent Javad Ameri to the British Embassy, “to sound [the Ambassador out] about Qavam as a candidate for the Prime Minister.” The embassy was less than enthusiastic. While “it would be difficult to work with Qavam,”32 they said, they were also no longer opposed to such an appointment. The British knew that the Shah would be opposed to Qavam’s premiership. Two years earlier, the same embassy had all but concluded that the Shah had conspired with the military to topple Qavam during his earlier turn at the helm. Moreover, as late as January 24, 1944, the British Ambassador had “informed the Shah that HM Legation no longer considers Qavam . . . a suitable candidate for the post of Prime Minister.” At that time, Bullard had shown the Shah a “note drawn up by British Security authority and based on good evidence showing that Qavam had at least connived at fifth column activities [with the Nazis] when he was Prime Minister.”33 But much to the Shah’s surprise, the British were now in favor of Qavam’s premiership. The British wanted Iran’s problems with the Soviet Union resolved, lest the issue jeopardize their own monopoly of the southern region’s oil, and Qavam was, in their view, the only man capable of bringing about such a resolution. The American Embassy, too, had all along shown a favorable disposition toward Qavam while the Soviets were all but demanding Qavam’s appointment as prime minister.

  During those months, the Shah had two things on his mind: an overambitious prime minister like Qavam and what Great Britain might have in store for Iran. He was worried that Qavam might be planning to appease Stalin as a first step toward overthrowing the monarchy. He was also anxious that the continued impasse between the Soviet Union and the West would tempt the British to make a secret deal with the Soviets and bargain away Iran’s independence or territorial integrity. So worried was the Shah about this possibility, that on January 28, 1945, in a two-and-a-half-hour meeting with the British ambassador, he threw his customary caution to the wind and asked Bullard point-blank, “Do you think there is any possibility that the British government . . . might give Persia up . . . and fall back on a division of the country, for example on the 1907 model [when Tsarist Russia and Britain divided Iran in half, each claiming a part as their virtual protectorate].” Bullard’s response was less than reassuring. On the one hand, he said “absolutely no” to the possibility of Britain’s participating in a new partition of Iran. But then he went on to say that “the only situation which could conceivably bring about the physical partition of Persia . . . would be one which necessitates our armed intervention to protect our oil interests.”34

  The Shah’s fears were initially the result of some unusual moves the British had been making those days. These fears were confirmed during the Yalta Conference in February 1945, for example, when the British Foreign Secretary told his Soviet counterpart that “it was not part of the British policy to prevent Soviet Union obtaining oil in Northern Iran,” adding that in Britain’s view, Russians were “a natural consumer for Iranian oil.”35 Once the Soviets made their push for just such a concession, the Shah realized that the British were toying with what was initially called the “Bevin Plan,” giving the North to the Soviets and keeping the South and its oil-rich Khuzestan province for themselves. According to the Shah, in anticipating such a prospect, the British had gone so far as to “unite the varieties of tribes of the South into a federation”36 and resume their ties to the Khaz’al family, which had once run that region as a virtual British protectorate; in addition, “British troops in the Iraqi city of Basra [had been] reinforced and two warships were sent to Abadan.”37 Britain’s expressed hope that Russia would obtain the petroleum rights in the North was based on the calculation that such a concession would make British rights in the South safer. They assumed that no future Iranian government would dare take on both the Russian and British governments and nationalize the country’s oil.38

  Another key component of the British policy had been to dissuade Iran from filing a complaint against the Soviet Union in the UN Security Council—the first complaint ever filed with the newly created international body. For his part, the Shah made every effort to keep and push forward Iran’s complaint on the Security Council agenda. British policy paralleled the Soviet point of view and insisted on the idea that the “Azerbaijan question” was a domestic Iranian issue, and therefore no concern of the United Nations.39 At one time, the British Ambassador marched into the offices of Ebrahim Hakimi, Iran’s prime minister, with British tanks standing outside, and dictated a letter to Iran’s representatives to the UN, demanding that they withdraw Iran’s complaint against the Soviet Union. Lest Hakimi get cold feet, Bullard insisted on using the British military’s secure lines to send the coerced telegram. As it happened, Hussein Ala, Iran’s ambassador to the UN and the United States at the time, buoyed by words of support from American officials and from some of his colleagues, decided to ignore the telegram or, more accurately, he decided to pretend it had arrived too late and he proceeded with the complaint.

  So worried was the Shah about these British machinations that, as a gesture of displeasure, he refused to meet with the British Ambassador for a short while in 1946.40 A few months earlier, in an attempt to force Britain’s hand and abort the possibility of an Anglo-Soviet collusion, the Shah had toyed with the idea of ordering Iran’s military forces into Soviet-occupied Kurdistan without seeking “Russian permission.” This would, he hoped, “create an incident” and pit the British and American forces against the Soviet Union.41 The United States defused the situation by convincing the Shah to seek Soviet permission, but the sense of distrust continued to fester.

  The Shah’s anxieties about Qavam were also not baseless. Fully aware of Qavam’s past ambitions, the Shah was now faced with the reality that the three big powers, which had once either reviled or at least distrusted Qavam, were suddenly a
ll enamored of him. Eventually, the Shah had no choice but to succumb to these pressures, and he appointed Qavam prime minister on January 26, 1946. For decades after the end of the war, Qavam and his supporters cultivated the myth that only his cunning, nationalism, and political acumen had saved Iran’s territorial integrity and fooled Stalin into pulling Soviet troops out of Iran. Archival evidence does not support this claim.

  The Soviets’ sudden affection for Qavam was no accident, but had been carefully solicited by Qavam himself. Even “before coming to power, [Qavam] had met in secret with members of the Russian Commission visiting Iran” and assured them that, had he been the prime minister, “he would have complied with all the suggestions of the Soviet Union.”42 He knew that the Soviet threats, and their intentionally provocative act of occasionally moving their forces near the Iranian border, had cowed and frightened many members of the Majlis, and he publicized his intention to appease the Soviet Union if he became prime minister.43

  To lessen America’s objection to a Russian concession, Qavam promised American officials that if any arrangements were made with the Soviet Union, he would see that America was given some “rights for exploration of oil in Baluchestan.”44 In other words, Qavam’s plans were in reality to give the “Russians all they wanted”;45 he would balance the Russian concession by giving American companies a stake in Iran’s oil. The American Ambassador ended his report by concluding that it was now up to the Shah to dissuade Qavam from making the ominous deal with the Soviet Union.

  But the Shah was never in favor of appeasing the Soviets and by the time of Qavam’s new tenure as prime minister had become unflinchingly opposed to any deal with them. He had long been concerned about the American Embassy’s close relations with Qavam, and he wanted to make sure that, if ever forced to choose, the Truman administration would not hesitate to pick the Shah over Qavam. Standing up to the Soviets was, he knew, a sure way to ensure American support. The Shah declared that he considered it “unthinkable to allow Soviet technicians to wander freely over Northern provinces during 50 year life of the proposed agreement.”46

  Qavam quickly realized the seriousness of the Shah’s opposition to the Soviet deal and first tried to convince him that Iran should at least “prepare a counter-proposal.” The Shah objected, suggesting that the Soviets were so eager to get a toe in the door that they would in fact agree to any deal, “no matter how favorable to Iran.” Qavam then tried to frighten the Shah into submission by telling him that failure to grant some kind of a concession to the Soviets might well beget their full attack on Iran, and that Americans have been unwilling “to give . . . any categorical assurances of prompt and effective”47 support in case such an attack took place. But this too failed to change the Shah’s mind. The Shah had ties of his own to the American Embassy and figured, rightly as it turned out, that the Truman administration would not abide “losing” Iran to the Communists.

  The question of a possible Soviet attack was, of course, not just a Qavam ploy. With the Shah and members of the parliament increasingly hardening their position against Qavam’s proposed concessions, the Soviet Union began to move its troops on the Iranian border, intimating the possibility of an attack on at least parts of Iran. Instead of withdrawing their forces from Azerbaijan, the Soviets began reinforcing them, particularly by pouring offensive mechanized units into Iran. The Soviets even made an “official” threat by declaring that it would be “very dangerous” for Iran if Russia did not get the concession she sought.

  The Shah and the U.S. Embassy in Iran grew concerned that these Soviet threats might not be a mere bluff or bluster. On March 4, 1946, the American Consul in Tabriz sent an “urgent cable . . . reporting ominous Russian troop movements: Some 500 trucks, leaded with ammunitions and supplies and twenty tanks were being deployed in the direction of Tehran.”48 A few days later, the American Ambassador warned the Shah and Qavam that “Russians might occupy Tehran.”49 An authority no less informed about the Soviet intentions than George Kennan—the chief architect of America’s containment policy—concluded that it was “a foregone conclusion that Soviets must make some effort in immediate future to bring into power in Iran a regime prepared to accede to major Soviet demands.”50 While in Moscow as America’s chargé d’affaires, he had followed developments in Iran closely. According to Kennan, the future success of the containment policy and the West’s ability to manage the Soviet threat were predicated on “the cohesion and rigor it could muster” against the USSR in Iran.51

  Based on these warnings, the American Embassy in Tehran began to prepare several contingency plans for just such an attack. In the midst of this dire planning, in June 1946, the Shah received a surprising communication from the Russian Embassy inviting him to a special dinner party. The Soviet ambassador, Ivan Sadchikov, insisted that “it would create a very favorable impression on Soviet circle if HM would accept the invitation.” Lest the Shah had somehow missed the full implication of the invitation, the Ambassador added that accepting such an invitation “would be a serious blow for the Tudeh Party.” The target of the invitation was as much the Tudeh Party as Qavam. The Soviets were willing to make a deal with anyone to get the concession they so coveted, and if Qavam was unable to seal the deal, they were ready to sacrifice him, or even their comrades in the Tudeh Party, to make the deal with the Shah. The Shah demurred, suggesting that it would be more proper if the King invited the Ambassador to the Court for tea.52

  While the Shah refused to conspire with the Soviets against Qavam, he had no qualms about meeting secretly with politicians opposed to Qavam and encouraging them to act against him. At the same time, the Shah began offering covert financial help to some royalist political parties. Of these, the most unusual was the Sumka Party, led by a scholar named Davud Monshizadeh who modeled his looks and ideology, as well as his title of “rahbar,” on Hitler. The Shah, according to one source, even helped buy a house as the party’s headquarters.53

  By then, the Shah was also taking an active role in monitoring the activities of opposition parties, particularly the Tudeh Party. Probably unbeknownst to the Shah, in late 1945, leaders of the party had contemplated the idea of seizing power in Iran and “inviting” the Soviet Union to join in their plans, which would have made Iran the first instance of the kind of “People’s Republics” that soon came to dot the map of Eastern Europe. Tudeh Party leaders had at the time prepared a document called “Political Conditions in Iran and Measures on the Development of a Democratic Movement.” It referred to the “frequent change of governments” in Iran as a sign that the “ruling classes” were incapable of solving Iran’s problems. The party leaders recommended a “democratic coup” against the Shah and his family, who, in their words, were “at the center of intrigues.” The party claimed to have 1,000 members in Meshed, the capital of the province of Khorasan, and 6,000 in Tehran, all ready to participate in the coup. In an early reference to their clandestine network of military officers that was discovered some years later, the document added that “Tudeh-supporter pilots would bomb the buildings of Majlis and army.”54 By then the Truman administration had made it abundantly clear to Stalin that Iran was in the West’s “sphere of influence” and that Soviet adventurism there would not be tolerated. At Yalta and at Potsdam, the two big powers’ “spheres of influence” had been discussed. Stalin even walked into one meeting with a small note on which he had jotted down the countries he considered in his “sphere of influence.” He allowed Churchill to keep the note as a souvenir while keeping the countries written on the note himself. The Tudeh Party plan for a “democratic coup” ran counter to these “spheres of influence” and was rejected by the Soviet “Big Brother.”

  The Shah was, of course, never oblivious to the danger posed by the Tudeh Party. During this period, Colonel Hassan Pakravan was in charge of the section of the army intelligence unit—Rokne do—entrusted with the task of fighting Communists. Pakravan reported directly to the Shah, who, one day, ordered him to find a rel
iable officer for a highly sensitive job. By then tensions over turf had already developed between the police and army intelligence, particularly on the question of who should have the lead role in fighting Communists. More than once, these battles allowed the Tudeh Party to escape detection.

  Pakravan chose his close friend and colleague, Lieutenant Hassanali Alavi-Kia. Both Pakravan and Alavi-Kia would go on to play important roles in the life of the Shah and his security organization, SAVAK. The Shah ordered Alavi-Kia to meet once a week, at an already set time and place—“Tuesdays, at two, in the corner of Seyyed Ali avenue”—with a man55 who would report on the activities of the Tudeh Party leadership. It was a sign of the treacherous nature of Iranian politics in those years that the “mole” was allegedly introduced to the Shah by Mozzafar Baghai—a man of myriad talents and as many mysteries who was considered in those years a fierce foe of the Shah and who continued to play a peripheral role in the Shah’s political life for the next quarter century. According to Alavi-Kia, the “mole” often provided firsthand knowledge of the most sensitive decisions of the party.56 His reports would be directly conveyed to the Shah.

  In fact, the Tudeh Party machinations, their alliance with Qavam—evident most clearly in the fact that at one time, three of their leaders were given ministerial portfolios in Qavam’s cabinet—the continued crisis in Azerbaijan, Qavam’s increasing power and arrogance, and finally, signs that he harbored plans for “overthrowing the monarchy,” and establishing “a republic (Russian model perhaps) in its place,”57 all combined to make the Shah particularly despondent in those months. His trepidation only increased when, in February 1946, Qavam and an entourage of advisors, translators, and ministers left Tehran for Moscow, where they met with Soviet officials. The night before the group’s departure, Qavam took them to the Court and introduced them to the Shah, but in reality he made every effort to keep the Shah marginal to his negotiations not just with the Soviets, but with the American and British Embassies. More than once, he confided in the American or British Embassy and asked them to keep the Shah in the dark about it.