With some flexibility and the spreading of more money amongst elements in the clergy and the hand-picked newly-elected members of parliament he felt he could complete elections and have the Agreement approved. It also appeared to Sepahdar that Pimia had been too legalistic in pursuing unattainable goals. Had Pim ia been a realist he would have bowed to British pressure, dismissed the Russian officers, allowed the British financial team more freedom a t the Ministry of Finance, and more importantly he would have excluded from his Cabinet people who were objectionable to Britain. Finally Sepahdar believed that the timing of British troop withdrawals was negotiable. If he did as the Legation instructed him, Britain would be more likely to keep her troops longer in Iran.
Things began going badly for Sepahdar soon after assuming office. The first tremour came when a British Junior Minister at the Treasury, in answer to a routine question by a member of parliament as to the status of the £2 million loan to Iran, inadvertently revealed that ‘except for a small fraction of the loan which had been disbursed at the time of the execution of the agreement, the balance had not been withdrawn by the Persian government’. The news was telegraphed by Reuters to the British Legation in Tehran but escaped the notice of censors at the Legation. Sepahdar, although a member of Vosouq’s Cabinet, had not known of the bribe paid to the triumvirate and asked Norman to issue a flat denial that any fraction of the loan had been used. Norman had to explain to Sepahdar that he could not do so because the statem ent was in fact true. He suggested that Sepahdar let his colleagues and the press know that ‘a small sum had been deducted from the loan for commissions and to defray the expenses for underwriting’.
Soon thereafter Norman had to admit to Sepahdar that in fact £131,147,11s had been paid to and divided among the triumvirate. Sepahdar, whose reputation was now at stake, knew that people would assume that as a member of Vosouq’s Cabinet he at least had known'of the bribe,, if not benefitted from it. He told Norman that he had to make the m atter public and demand restitution from the three offending parties. Norman, faced with a difficult situation, asked Curzon for guidance and suggested naively that the best solution would be that the British Government somehow ’make up the loan to the original sum’, enabling Sepahdar to state that the British Government had decided to bear the ‘incidental expenses for underwriting’ and thus the £2 million loan was intact and ‘nothing has been deducted from the original sum’.
Curzon’s haughty reply was laced with his custom aiy piety: This phase of the Agreement was, as you know, extremely repugnant to me, and I only gave way on the urgent and repeated insistence of Sir Percy Cox. Present [Persian) Prime Minister was at the time a member of the Cabinet and continued in office for eight months afterwards. We m ust therefore hold him jointly responsible with his colleagues for the official act of the Cabinet, and you should speak to him very strongly in this sense... We can on no account consider the suggestion made in your telegram.
Norman passed on Curzon’s pronouncement on joint and several responsibility of Vosouq’s ministers to Sepahdar who repeated that he knew nothing of the bribe and intended to pursue the m atter and collect the money from the recipients. Sepahdar begged Norman to assist him in this pursuit. Norman answered that the British Governm ent had no information as to how the money had been divided and pleaded with Sepahdar to delay his inquiries ‘as more important m atters lie ahead’. Norman of course knew the exact division of the bribe among the trium virate. His prim ary concern was th at these revelations would make it much harder, if not impossible, for a num ber of deputies to vote for ratification of the Agreement. Any member who supported it would be presumed to have been bribed. Norman also felt that members of Sepahdar’s Cabinet would be wary of supporting the Agreement.
The New Frontiers: Myth and Reality
