Under the existing circumstances, it became painfully evident to the Majles and its radicalized supporters among the revolutionary societies (anjomans) that no peaceful solution was in sight. The return of Amin al-Soltan, the shrewd premier of the Naseri and Mozaffari eras, to the post of prime minister in April 1907 provoked various reactions from the constitutionalists. Some viewed the reinstatement as Mohammad ‘Ali Shah’s design to forge an anti-Majles front consisting of the court, the conservative mojtaheds (headed by Nuri), the tribal chiefs, and the patronage of the Russian legation, with which the new premier was reputed to be on excellent terms.
Amin al-Soltan’s claim to mediate peace between the Majles and the shah won him few supporters among moderates in the Majles, but it also angered the radicals, especially once it became evident that the he was financing Nuri’s anti-Majles operation in the sanctuary of Shah ‘Abd al-‘Azim. His assassination in front of the Majles in August 1907, at the hand of a young devotee affiliated with a socialist revolutionary cell with connections to the Iranian émigré community in the Caucasus, was a shocking development. The act, perpetrated by a small-time moneylender originally from Tabriz, was justified in the eyes of the plotters because of fear of the return to power of the crafty pro-Russian statesman would soon result in the closure of the Majles and destruction of the revolution.
Weeks before Amin al-Soltan’s assassination, the prorevolutionary orators in Tehran had called for the premier’s removal as the opening act of an inevitable revolution—a term with a peculiarly fresh ring to Iranian ears. The person presumed to be behind the clandestine cell was Haydar Khan, later known as ‘Amu-Ughlu but also known as Bombi (bomb maker), an Azarbaijani émigré trained as electrical engineer in Tiflis. He was employed by Tehran municipality to run the capital’s first tiny electrical power plant. A Marxist revolutionary motivated by the Baku oil workers’ labor movement and radicalized by the botched Russian Revolution of 1905, Haydar Khan, a handsome and charismatic man of persuasive character, would come to play a distinct, and arguably destructive, part in Iran’s dissident politics over the following decade.
The assassination of the premier on August 31, 1907, coincided with the signing in St. Petersburg of the 1907 convention recognizing two “zones of influence,” clearly drawn diagonally across Iran’s map. The agreement, part of a larger understanding between the two powers, also included Afghanistan and Tibet. With an ironic ring to its curious wording, the agreement was only a step short of occupation, at least on paper. Although the two powers had the temerity to announce it to the Iranian government a month later, the press abroad and at home had already drawn public attention to its ominous consequences.
Most evident was Russia’s free hand to force its wishes on the Iranian government in every way possible, including military intervention, especially in the adjacent provinces of Azarbaijan and Gilan. Even before the conclusion of the agreement, Russia repeatedly threatened to dispatch troops to Tabriz under the pretext of protecting the interests of its citizens and protégés in the face of revolutionary chaos. The agreement only made such threats more real and, as far as the powers were concerned, blatantly legitimate. Iranian constitutionalists were dumbfounded.
Facing Russia’s hostility, Iranian constitutionalists in and out of the Majles hoped for British support. Yet the combined effect of Amin alSoltan’s assassination and the conclusion of the Anglo-Russian agreement dissuaded Britain from lending its support to the Iranian cause. New geopolitical realities, above all the rise of Imperial Germany, were the chief motive behind the 1907 agreement. One outcome so far as Iran’s domestic politics was concerned was a greater polarization of Iran’s revolutionary politics, which less than a year later led to open confrontation with the Qajar shah and a civil war. The anti-constitutional camp consolidated once influential courtiers joined hands with the mashru‘eh supporters. There was also strong regional support for anti-constitutionalists.
The Russian tsar Nicholas II (r. 1894–1918), alarmed by the revival of the 1905 revolutionary spirit at Russia’s southern borders, threw his moral weight and military support behind the Qajar throne. And so did Sultan ‘Abd al-Hamid II having been equally terrified of the mounting discontent among his officer corps at the very outset of the Young Turk Revolution. That he dispatched troops to the Iranian frontier to back the marauding Kurdish irregulars who looted and killed Azarbaijani and Assyrian Christian villagers may be viewed as token enmity toward the Iranian constitutionalists.
Constitutional Monarchy, Will of People and Diluted Theocracy in Early Modern Persia
