Coll 28/97 ‘Persia. Diaries. Tehran Intelligence Summaries’ [‎326v] (652/749)

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Kuh-i-Sefid and Susan by bands of Balimai and Teyyibi said to number as many
as 1,200 men. He even accuses Humayuni of encouraging these raids with a
view to discrediting him in the eyes of the Central Government and forcing him
to resign.
Persian Army.
6. More information about the recent mutiny in Khorassan (see last
Intelligence Summary, paragraph 8) has been received. The Chief of the
General Staff informed the British military attache that eighteen officers in all
deserted from the Meshed garrison. Six officers, headed by a lieut.-colonel on
the General Staff, deserted from Tehran and one from Tabriz, and effected a
junction with the Meshed mutineers just before the skirmish at Gunbad-i-Qabus.
These seven and six of the Meshed mutineers are still at large. Some have
made good their escape to a place in the Turcoman Sahra, close to the Russian
frontier, and some, including the lieut.-colonel on the General Staff, are known
to be in hiding in the house of the Russian commandant at Gunbad-i-Qabus. In
Tehran a commission was appointed to examine the antecedents and contacts of
officers of the central garrison. Thirty officers have been found to have close
contacts with the Tudeh party or the Russians, and have been detained under a
clause of the Military Governorship law until military governorship comes to an
end. Ten, less deeply implicated, have been sent away to divisions in the south.
Further arrests are being made as further details of the mutiny come to light.
The Chief of the General Staff, on the strength of the information so far
extracted from the captured mutineers, is of the opinion that a plot for a general
uprising existed and that the Meshed party acted precipitately, thus causing the
general mutiny to go off at half cock.
Two officers sent by the General Staff to make a full report on the
Gunbad-i-Qabus skirmish and to retrieve the captured vehicles and arms have
been sent away by the Russians without being able to complete their task. A
party of 200 gendarmes proceeding by lorry as reinforcements for the
gendarmerie at Gunbad-i-Qabus has been turned back by the Russians at
Firuzkuh. A lorry conveying bombs for the Persian Air Force detachment at
Meshed has been turned back by the Russians at Semnan. Reinforcements for
the Meshed garrison coming from Turbat-i-Sheikh Jam were stopped at the
Russian control post south of Meshed. The fact that the original party of
mutineers was able to leave Meshed at all and pass through the Russian control
posts en route, the attitude of the Russian-controlled Tudeh party in Meshed and
elsewhere towards the mutiny, and the presence in Bujnurd of the Russian
Vice-Consul at Meshed a few hours prior to the arrival of the mutineers add to
the growing weight of testimony to the effect that the whole affair from beginning
to end—and the end is not yet in sight—‘had the knowledge and approval of the
Russians. The Chief of the General Staff has compiled a letter giving chapter
and verse for all these incidents and others in the past of Russian interference in
Persian affairs which the Minister for War is to lay before the Cabinet to induce
that body to protest officially to the Russian Ambassador. There is no doubt
that the financial embarrassment of the junior officers was a prime cause of the
mutiny by rendering them receptive to Tudeh propaganda on the subject of better
pay and living conditions and the inefficiency and corruption of their seniors.
Economic.
7. The Cabinet has finally sanctioned the abolition of the cotton monopoly.
In future there will be no restriction on the local sale or purchase of cotton, but
the import of cotton will be subject to permits obtainable from the Ministry of
Agriculture.
Censorship.
8. The Anglo-Soviet-Persian censorship ceased to function as from the
30th August. The Russian representative, though still without his instructions
on the subject, joined in informing the Persian censor that with effect from the
30th August no outgoing or incoming letters or telegrams (including press
telegrams) between Persia on the one hand and the British Empire and the
United States, or its dependencies on the other, need be shown to the Russian
censor.
Communications.
9. 3,300 railway wagons are being transferred to the Russians from the
United States Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. Command.