891.001 P 15/220
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs (Murray)52a
I called on the Iranian Minister last Saturday afternoon to get his reaction to the recent events in Iran leading to the abdication of Reza Shah Pahlavi.
[Page 466]The Minister stated that, in his opinion, the British had committed a great blunder in forcing the abdication of Reza Shah and that the results of this blunder would soon come home to plague them. He said he referred to the rearming of the native tribes of Iran. It had taken Reza Shah twenty years to disarm effectively these tribes and to start integrating them into the civilized life of the country. Before they were disarmed, the tribes had rendered travel in Iran precarious by reason of the pillaging, plundering and kidnapping expeditions along the main routes of travel. (It may be recalled in this connection that the Lurs captured three American consular officers and held them for ransom in the mountains some years ago, and only by a miracle and, in fact, inadvertently were they rescued by the Iranian military.)
The name of Reza Shah, continued the Minister, had been a magic one in Iran in preserving law and order and, whatever the temptation to banditry, the tribal population had such a fear of the Shah that they dared not move. The Minister claimed that, in subduing the tribes, the Shah had not pursued a merciless policy of killing the leaders but had brought several of them to Tehran and kept them under surveillance in comfortable quarters.
Expressing the opinion that Iran had been thrown back forty years in her latter day reforms and progress, the Minister said he believed the British may have created a situation which would require a far larger occupying force in the country than they had anticipated. If this were the case, the British might, he said, use this argument for any failure to evacuate the country at the termination of their present hostilities with Germany.
Of interest in the above connection is the following comment made by Mr. Dreyfus in the concluding paragraph of his telegram no. 171, September 28, noon:
[Here follows concluding paragraph of telegram printed on page 464.]
- Addressed to the Secretary of State, the Under Secretary of State (Welles), and the Assistant Secretary of State (Berle).↩