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speculation. Mine is contained in enclosure. The Future of Persia, to my
demi-official letter No. 815-S-, dated the 28th October 1932 to Hoare, copy
forwarded to the Government of India and India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. under my demi-official
letters Nos. 691-S. and 692-S., dated the 17th October 1931, respectively.
4. At the end of paragraph 17 of that report I envisaged the possibility>
if ‘ Iran ’ became once more the old unregenerated ‘ Persia ’, of our having,
as in pre-war days, to interfere actively in the internal affairs of this country.
Since I wrote, however, five years have passed, and during that time our
interests in Iran have diminished. Our Air Route and Naval Base are now
fortunately on the Arab side, and unfortunately our trade with Iran has
dwindled, and a number of our traders—British Indians for the most part—
have left the country. This being so, except of course for protecting the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s refinery at Abadan and their oil-fields, we
might I suppose safely let Iran indulge in as much anarchy as she liked
without intervening.
5. Whether Iran holds firm after the Shah’s disappearance seems to me
to depend almost entirely on the Army, wffiich has given her law and order,
the foundation on which the present modern Iranian edifice is constructed.
If the Army disintegrates with the disappearance of the Shah, (and it is
of course more than any other Iranian institution his personal creation), then
the rest of the edifice will undoubtedly crash. The opinion of the Khorassan
landowner quoted in paragraph 2 of Butler’s despatch is certainly pessimistic
but perhaps not unduly so.
6. With regard to Iranian Officials, I imagine that the situtation is as
indicated in paragraph 3 of Butler’s despatch. During my time here local
Governors have succeeded one another fairly rapidly. One or two of them
have had ability and ‘ guts ’, but most of them have been poor creatures
frightened of giving any decision, however unimportant, without reference
to Tehran. What it comes to is that there are of course able and energetic
Iranian Officials, but not enough of them to go round. No team is much
good which is composed of a few ‘ tigers’, and the rest ‘ rabbitsV^^sin the
Iranian Civil Service side the rabbits unfortunately preponderate. ^ .
7. I quite agree with what Butler says in his paragraph 4 about Iranian
national feeling. This feeling even in the old days existed as pointed out
in paragraph 15 of my report already quoted, and has undoubtedly been
intensified by the rule of the present Shah.
8. One does not hear much of the Valiahd, and so Butler’s paragraph
6 was interesting. He—the Valiahd—will certainly require to take an out
size in footwear in order to slip into his father’s shoes, though of course the
longer his father lives, the easier will it be for him to do this.
I am sending copies of this letter to Metcalfe and Walton.
( 20 )
(Received on 6th March 1937 with Political Secretary's letter No. 7, dated 18th
February 1937).
Enclosure in Foreign Office covering letter dated 11th February 1937.
P. Z., 1004/37.
LEAGUE OF NATIONS
Communicated to the C. 123. M. 75. 1937. VII.
Council and Members
of the League. Geneva, January 28th, 1937.
Communication from the Iranian Delegation
Geneva, January 27th, 1937.
To the President of the Council.
At the meeting on January 25th, 1937, the representative of Chile in
formed the Council that the right of asylum had existed in Iran for centuries.
Ttie allusion was obviously to the practice of that right in remote times, and