The Cossack troops were stationed in Maydan-e Mashq (Drill Square), and in the early morning hours of the same day, they began to round up high-ranking Qajar statesmen and notables. Soon, similar arrests were followed in the provinces. By the end of Sayyed Zia’s government some three months later, nearly five hundred officials were in government custody. The detentions and house arrests, a joint initiative of Sayyed Zia and Reza Khan, were meant to emphasize the revolutionary character of the coup, presumably to counter the socialist propaganda of the Jangalis, but also to scare the ruling elite and perhaps even extort from them the assets they were accused of amassing through corruption and nepotism. All telegraph, telephone, and road communications with the provinces were temporarily cut off, and key government offices taken over. Three days later, the vexed Ahmad Shah, sufficiently intimidated by the coup organizers and persuaded by the British minister as well as by his own advisers and courtiers, issued a decree appointing Sayyed Zia prime minister with full authority. His appointment registered a significant shift, for it was the first made from outside the circles of the Qajar elite, anticipating a new era of middle-class politics.
In Reza Khan’s second communiqué two days later, possibly penned by Sayyed Zia, Reza Khan assumed the title of commander in chief of the armed forces. There he made it abundantly clear that he entertained ambitions beyond mere leadership of the Cossack Division. The tone was indignant, underscoring the Cossack forces’ suffering and highlighting the troops’ wounded honor and depravity, but there was nothing that amounted to a program of reform, just an early taste of an autocrat in the making. The reform program came through, however, in Sayyed Zia’s first communiqué, on February 26. It was a manifesto of sorts, aiming to justify the coup as a last resort to save the country from corrupt and inept statesmen who for the previous fifteen years had betrayed the Constitutional Revolution and the sacrifices made by the people. Yet it made no reference to the fourth Majles, which at the time was yet to be convened.
Instead, Sayyed Zia called for the downfall of the landowning and aristocratic elite who long sapped the nation of its riches. “Destiny called on me,” he declared, to save the country and the monarchy from these predators by relying on the loyal armed forces to shoulder his sacred duty and end misery and insecurity. The communiqué further called for measures to stop corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency, to promote reliance on domestic income in order to improve national security and the standard of living of working people, and to overhaul the dysfunctional judiciary. He also highlighted the need for greater social justice through land reform and distribution to the peasants the crown and state lands, and called for an end to the chaos in the government’s finances. He further called for the promotion of a spirit of patriotism and national pride, and promised modern schools for children of all classes, growth of trade and industry, a campaign against high inflation and racketeering, a better communication network, urban amenities and the beautification of the capital.
On the sensitive question of foreign policy, Sayyed Zia promised peace and coexistence with all neighbors but called for an end to the capitulatory rights of the so-called most favored nations—the discriminatory extraterritorial privileges extended to foreign subjects as early as the 1828 Treaty of Torkmanchay. Shortly thereafter, in another statement, he renounced the 1919 Anglo-Persian Agreement, although for all intents and purposes it was already dead. Praise for British assistance in Iran over the past century, as well as for the Iranians’ loyalty toward Britain, were other predictable features of the communiqué, as was Zia’s hope that revoking the 1919 Agreement would remedy the misunderstanding between the two nations.
With minor variations, Sayyed Zia’s program following a course already set out by the governments of Vosuq al-Dowleh and later Moshir alDowleh, and it served as a blueprint for the forthcoming Pahlavi reforms. As an important counterbalance, the new regime also announced the conclusion of a friendship treaty with the newly established Soviet Union. Although in 1918 Iran was among the first countries to recognize the Bolshevik regime, the signing of the treaty in Moscow actually took place on February 26, 1921, five days after the coup in Tehran. As early as 1919, Vosuq al-Dowleh and his successors in office—and the insightful foreign minister ‘Ali-Qoli Ansari Moshaver al-Mamalek, who had negotiated the treaty—realized the value of normalizing relations with the Soviets. Like the abrogation of the 1919 agreement, the signing of the 1921 agreement with the Soviet Union further vindicated a return to Iran’s traditional “buffer” position.
The twenty-six-article treaty, which remained in effect until the early days of the Islamic Republic, reaffirmed the Soviets’ renunciation of Russian imperial concessions, economic interests, and unpaid loans. It recognized Iran’s full sovereignty, called for nonintervention in internal affairs, recognized existing boundaries, and called for resolving border disputes through negotiation. In return, the treaty stipulated a unique concession to Soviet Union: the right to intervene militarily in Iran in the case Iran was threatened by a third party, in effect reaffirming the conduct of tsarist Russia since 1909. In a reference to Britain and its anti-Bolshevik policy, article 6 stipulated the following: If a third party should attempt to carry out a policy of usurpation by means of armed intervention in Persia, or if such power should desire to use Persian territory as a base of operation against Russia, . . . and if the Persian Government should not be able to put a stop to such menace . . . Russia shall have the right to advance her troops into the Persian interior for the purpose of carrying out the military operation necessary for its defiance.
Moscow’s further clarification in December 1921 defining the contingencies for any military intervention and confirming the Bolsheviks’ evacuation from Gilan persuaded Iran to ratify the treaty. The initiative demonstrated a certain degree of agency on the Iranian side even at a time of great turmoil and uncertainty. Whether the conclusion of the treaty was also a motivation for British support for the coup is a matter of debate. What is clear, however, and important for future the of Iran, was that by the end of 1920—what we might call Iran’s “Wilsonian moment”—a new equilibrium between the two powers began to emerge that allowed Iran to join the League of Nations and enjoy a period of relative freedom in its foreign affairs.
Sayyed Zia’s critics almost instantaneously labeled his government as “divorcer” (mohallel) and the “black cabinet.” Its hundred-day term, nevertheless, was a major shift, for it relied on a coup by a populist British proxy and a Cossack officer to implement a course very different from Curzon’s vision to incorporate Iran into the British colonial sphere. The move cost Norman his career. The seasoned diplomat who knew Arabic and Turkish and earlier had served in Cairo and Istanbul and then at the Paris Peace Conference grasped the depth of Iranian resentment toward British designs better than his superior. Curzon, who called him back from Tehran after only sixteen months, refused to meet with him and soon after Norman was forced to retired at the age of fifty-two.
The Qajar Shah and His Subjects
