As noted in previous chapters, on occasion certain Irish nationalist individuals and/or groups voiced opposition to contemporary British policy toward Iran. The most notable example in the nineteenth century was The Nation's coverage of the Anglo-Iranian War of 1856–57 (see Chapter Four). This was an instance of Irish Nationalist expression of cross-territorial anti-imperialist solidarity with Iranians; more specifically with the Iranian state in that setting. Some Irish nationalists also objected to London's handling of Iranian affairs during the 1891–92 Iranian “tobacco protest” movement. However, the most sustained and widespread Irish nationalist condemnation of London's Iranian policy occurred during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906–11. Irish nationalist critics of London on this occasion ranged from members of various Home Rule parties and organizations to militant republican groups.

The Iranian Tobacco Protest of 1891–92 and London's direct diplomatic intervention in the event elicited parliamentary and extra-parliamentary opposition in the United Kingdom to the Conservative prime minister Lord Salisbury's handling of affairs, with Salisbury also doubling as foreign secretary. This crisis concerned a tobacco concession granted on March 8, 1890, by the Iranian government to a British subject, Major Gerald Francis Talbot (coincidentally also a relative of Lord Salisbury). The comprehensive concession gave Talbot's company a monopoly over the purchase, sale, and export of Iran's entire tobacco output. Talbot then transferred his concession to two consecutive front syndicates (the last being the Imperial Tobacco Corporation of Persia) for grossly inflating the company's share prices and earning Talbot a lucrative profit without the company having undertaken any operations in Iran yet. In Iran itself, the concession sparked off a vehement popular condemnation, before erupting into a nationwide protest movement lasting from January 1891 to early 1892, with protests continuing even after the concession was finally cancelled by Iranian authorities in late December 1891. The Iranian monarch, Nasser al-Din Shah, who had also been on the throne during the Anglo-Iranian War of 1856–57, revoked the concession in light of the fierce domestic opposition that threatened his reign as well as steady diplomatic pressure by Russia, which regarded the concession as a substantial economic reinforcement of Britain's leverage in Iran contra Russia. The annulment of the concession encountered opposition from the British government, and authorities in Tehran were subsequently pressured by London to grant Talbot's Imperial Tobacco Corporation of Persia an exorbitantly inordinate indemnity for the abrogation of the concession.