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persons acting against the war-time interests of Persia or her Allies or committing
breaches of the peace. This Bill was not passed by the end of the quarter. The
Bill was attacked by the Tudeh press as reactionary, and it was suggested in
some papers that the Minister of the Interior, who as Minister of Communica
tions had paid a long visit to London, had drafted this Bill under British
inspiration. _
40. The new Governor-General of Isfahan was the cause of an interpellation
by the Deputy Farivar on the 17th May. Farivar’s argument was based on the
fact that Afshar had been tried and condemned for fraud in the time of Reza
Shah, and had been deprived permanently of the right to hold a Government post.
The Government survived the interpellation, as the Prime Minister gave as his
reply the reason that Afshar was a strong Governor who appeared the most
suitable man available for the task of restoring order in Isfahan—a task which
he had accomplished—and that legal opinion, which the Prime Minister had
taken, was against the argument of the interpellator on the point of deprivation
from the right of entering Government service. However, the Prime Minister
promised to submit the question to the High Court of Appeal; and when this
promise was fulfilled the court decided against Afshar, and he had to be recalled.
41. The elections in Azerbaijan Province were practically finished before
the end of the quarter. Two Communist Deputies, Ipekjian and Pishavari,
secured election with Soviet support at Tabriz, and the Armenian Deputy for
the North, Ardashez Hovanessiantz, is a well-known Communist who was
imprisoned as such for many years under Reza Shah. The election at Ardebil
also resulted in a victory for a creature of the Russians, Sheikh Hussein
Lankurani; in this case the intervention of the Russians in the conduct of the
elections was unusually open. The elections in Fars have also been finished,
except for Abadeh and Firuzabad. For Shiraz town the candidates who were
agreed to by Qawam-ul-Mulk were successful, while the Qashgais were not. At
Jahrum also a local man, Hazaqi, was successful, and at La Azadi, the previous
member defeated his rival Faramarzi. Whether Nasir Qashgai will now stand
for the Majlis is doubtful; his natural constituency would be Firuzabad; he
might also stand for Abadeh. But the fact that he did not visit the Shah during
his trip to the south was not a good augury for the submission to the Persian
Government which w’e hoped he would make.
42. Anti-Bahai riots were reported in June at Abadeh, Hamadan and
Senneh. A marked wave of anti-Bahai feeling seems to have begun, though the
reasons for it are obscure. Certain mullas are known to have expressed surprise
that the Shah when at Shiraz visited the Bahai Deputy Dehqan, and the
credentials of the latter were opposed in the Majlis on account of his religion.
43. The Shah had shown little sign of fulfilling the promise he is known
to have made of keeping clear of politics; for instance, he seems to have sent his
Minister of Court to reprove the Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Justice for
receiving British visitors on matters of departmental business; a step which
brings back unpleasant memories of the foolish and irritating restrictions under
which all diplomats in Persia had to work in the latter years of Reza Shah’s
reign.
44. Several new newspapers appeared during the quarter, one of which,
named Darya, uttered the purest of pure Marxian doctrines, though these were
explained by M. Maximov, the Soviet Ambassador, as being the work of a crypto-
Fascist. The rest of the papers were for the most part scurrilous and ephemeral
publications, full of sound and fury, but signifying hardly more than that the
Shah, who subsidised a lot of them, did not like Seyyid Zia.
Tribal Situation.
45. The tribes have recently come in for some attention in the political
arena in Tehran. Seyyid Zia, with the object of gaining tribal support, made
known his sympathy with the tribes for the neglect and oppression they had
suffered in recent years and his view that they merited much greater consideration
from the Government and that they should" be allowed to retain their arms to
protect themselves against oppression until they were assured of just adminis
tration. This put the Tudeh party, always in opposition to Seyyid Zia, into a
difficult position. They had themselves for political purposes been championing
the cause of the tribes, but their hostility to Seyyid Zia obliged them to cry
loudly against what they alleged was incitement of the tribes to rearm and
oppose the Government. The Shah, too, was disturbed by the thought that Seyyid
Zia was trying to secure the support of the tribes with a view to using them to
bring off a coup d'Etat as the Bakhtiari had done in 1909. For a time it seemed