The other clerical father of the Constitutional Revolution, Sayyed Mohammad Tabataba’i, had wisely retired from politics; he later died in Tehran in near obscurity. The clerical element did not abandon the revolutionary stage altogether, but never again would it occupy the prominent position it had maintained since the Tobacco Protest of 1891. The incident also demonstrated the disruptive role of the radical left in the politics of the period. Three major assassination attempts since 1907, all orchestrated by Haydar Khan and his cohorts, helped polarize the climate. In the decade after 1911 more political violence justified further draconian measures.
A more extensive clash between rival revolutionary factions occurred shortly afterward in August 1910. Most Tabriz fighters headed by Sattar Khan backed the moderates. Yet they acted as free agents, causing huge problems of law and order in the capital. Their street clashes with the equally rowdy, and superior in number, Bakhtiyari fighters from the province of Isfahan, were seen by the Supreme Council as a precursor to another civil war. The Tabriz Fada’is’ grievances revolved around their inability to financially support themselves, which in turn made some resort to extorting the rich. Their exclusion from the newly reorganized police force under Yeprem Khan was another source of discontent. Accused of insubordination, the Azarbaijani fighters who were clustered in the Atabak Park, the confiscated residence of the assassinated premier Amin al-Soltan, engaged in a random shootout with government troops. The combined forces of Cossack regiments, serving under the revolutionary government; the regular troops; and the Bakhtiyari riflemen routed the Fada’is’ resistance. Sattar Khan, who unsuccessfully tried to mediate a cease-fire, was shot in the ankle and removed from Atabak Park in disgrace. The Tabriz fighters were disarmed, and some of the most radical elements among them, mostly Caucasians, were forced to return to their homelands.
The incident was a clear victory for the government and the Majles, which had long called for the disarming of the revolutionary factions. Sattar’s downfall epitomized the end to street resistance in favor of the provincial landed elite, that came to substitute for the old Qajar nobility, and the new generation of the officials, mostly sons of high bureaucrats of the Naseri period who had been brought up in wealth and privilege. The latter formed the backbone of a new class of officialdom. Mostly educated in Europe or exposed to Western ways, the air of respectability of these ministers and officials came to define the emerging polity of the period and the conduct of its agents. The large landowners who were their natural allies were distant from the mass constituency of the revolution who had put them in office. Yet patriotism, devotion to the constitution, and belief in reform and progress were still powerful motives among the members of the new elite, often outweighing personal and group interests.
What was missing was a common vision to nurture an indigenous mode of democracy that had been first made tangible in its early days of the revolution. The new elite simulated this goal more in form than in substance. What remained a characteristic of the postrevolutionary period, for instance, was the mutual distrust between the Majles and the executive branch, manned by the political elite. Between March 1907 and November 1911 there were eleven changes of prime ministers and additional reshuffling of the cabinets. The widespread problem of a rapid succession of weak and irresolute governments, each holding power for a few months, recalled musical chairs, with characters from the old and new elite routinely occupying various posts to a monotonous tune of timidity and indecision. The ministers were often backed by the Moderates in the Majles, who viewed the ministers’ inefficiency as an opportunity to protect their own privileges against threats from the Democrats’ quarter. Both tendencies, however, shared the misperception that the Majles’ function did not end with legislation but also included close monitoring of the day-to-day affairs of the executive branch—a notion understood by many in the parliament as an abiding principal of constitutionalism.
Even if such confusion in the division of powers can be excused in a nascent democratic experiment, the obvious increase in foreign influences cannot. In the following years, leading up to the rise of Reza Khan Pahlavi in 1921, Russia and Britain brazenly pressured the government and the Majles, persuading its members through intimidation or favors. The Russians in particular acted with a vengeance, having felt discredited after the fall of Mohammad ‘Ali Shah. Even more than the Qajar officials of the past decades, some members of the new elite feared the European powers and their intrigues or felt helplessly inferior, if not entirely submissive, to them. The haughty conduct of the two powers, especially during the 1911 Shuster episode, fostered feelings of desperation and disillusionment among Iranian statesmen and the public.
Iran, Geopolitical Rivalry and Coalescing Pro-US Neighbors
