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The Politics of Radicalism within the Iranian Army: The Jahansuz Group of 1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Stephanie Cronin
Stephanie Cronin*
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and University College, Northampton
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Extract

When the Iranian Revolution of 1979 Overthrew Pahlavi Power in Iran the attention of historians was suddenly attracted towards a study of the antecedents of the revolutionary movement and of opposition to the Pahlavi dictatorship in general. This redirection of attention produced, during the 1980s, quite novel historical and historiographical analyses of modern Iran. The army, however, largely escaped these revisionist approaches. Yet it is clear that the image of the army conventionally accepted, the military structures a bedrock of monarchical rule and the officer corps a key element on which the regime could depend, is a considerable oversimplification. Although ideological trends within the army tended to be dominated by secular nationalism and modernism, political attitudes towards the Pahlavi shahs were always capable of marked variegation. The relationship between the shah and the officer corps, both senior and junior, especially during periods of political crisis and uncertainty such as the early years of Pahlavi rule or the oil nationalization crisis, was susceptible to considerable tension.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , Winter 1999 , pp. 5 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1999

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References

1. For the period 1921-26 see Cronin, Stephanie The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State in Iran, 1921-1926 (London and New York, 1997).Google Scholar

2. Cronin, Stephanie “An Experiment in Revolutionary Nationalism: The Rebellion of Colonel Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan in Mashhad, April-October 1921,” Middle Eastern Studies, 33, no. 4 (October 1997): 693-750.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Seymour, Tehran to Eden, 18 June 1937, FO371/20835/E3685/904/34.

4. Since the 1979 revolution, however, considerable attention has been devoted to identifying, locating, and publishing historical material. See, for example, Ettehadieh, Mansourah and Bayat, Kaveh “The Reza Shah Period: Document Collections Recently Published in Iran,” Iranian Studies 26, nos. 3-4 (Summer-Fall 1993): 419-28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the journals of the National Archive, Ganjīnah, and of the Institute of Research and Cultural Studies, Tārīkh-i Muᶜāṣir-i Īrān, Majmūᶜah-i Maqālāt, and the publications of these two bodies.

5. Pasyan, Najafquli Vāqiᶜah-i iᶜdām-i Jahānsūz (Tehran, 1370).Google Scholar Najafquli Pasyan was the brother of Brigadier Haydar Quli Pasyan, who had been imprisoned by Riza Shah in the early 1930s and was only released after shahrivar 1941, and a cousin of Colonel Muhammad Taqi Khan Pasyan. After his release from prison Najafquli Pasyan became a well-known author and journalist. He wrote for the daily Iṭṭilāᶜāt and became its editor-in-chief. He later became managing editor of the daily Nidā-yi Īrān Nuvīn, an organ of the Iran Nuvin party and was a deputy to the twenty-third Majlis on an Iran Nuvin ticket. He wrote a famous account of the Democratic party of Azerbaijan, Marg būd, bāz gash ham būd (Tehran, 1328).Google Scholar After the revolution of 1979 he wrote his account of Jahansuz, which was published in 1991. He subsequently also wrote an autobiography, which provides more information about the circumstances of his own arrest in 1939, as well as a general description of his life and work: Pasyan, Najafquli Dar ᶜaṣr-i dū Pahlavi (Tehran, 1377).Google Scholar An additional source for Jahansuz, also published after the revolution, and dealing particularly with the role of Muhkhtar and his conduct of the case, is Abduh, Jalal Chihil sāl dar saḥnah-i qaẓāᵓi, siyāsī, dīplūmāsī-yi Īrān va jahān, 2 vols. (Tehran, 1368).Google Scholar

6. For a general discussion of the impact of the revolution on the academic study of Iranian history see Cronin, Stephanie “Writing the History of Modern Iran: A Comment on Approaches and Sources,” Iran 36 (1998): 175-184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. See Cronin, The Army, 36-41, 256-58.

8. For a discussion of the mythologizing of Colonel Pasyan see Cronin, “An Experiment…,” 742, and the introduction to Bahar, Mihrdad Dar bārah-yi qiyām-i zhandārmirī-yi Khurāsān bih rāhbarī-yi Kūlūnil Muḥammad Taqī Khān Pisyān (Tehran, 1369).Google Scholar

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11. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 154; Reza Ghods, M. Iran in the Twentieth Century (Boulder, Colorado, 1989), 113.Google Scholar

12. This prohibition was clearly in the minds of the police when they formulated their conclusions about the Jahansuz group. According to a final police report the group were alleged to have been aiming at the formation of a jumhūrī-yi ishtirākī. Pasyān, Vāqiᶜah-i iᶜdām, 304.

13. Perhaps “pseudo-modernists.” See Katouzian, Homa The Political Economy of Modern Iran: Despotism and Pseudo-Modernism, 1926-1979 (London, 1981), 124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Ibid.

15. The National Party specifically claimed Jahansuz as a precursor. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 258.

16. For an expression of this outlook see for example the famous speech given by Sami Shawkat in Baghdad in 1933, “The Profession of Death,” Haim, Sylvia G. ed., Arab Nationalism: An Anthology (Berkeley, 1976), 97-99.Google Scholar

17. Miron Rezun, The Soviet Union and Iran, 318-35.

18. Seymour to Eden, 18 June 1937, FO371/20835/E3685/904/34.

19. For a discussion of conscription see Cronin, Stephanie “Conscription and Popular Resistance in Iran,” International Review of Social History 43 (1998): 451-71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. For a discussion of the complications of the War Office budget in the 1930s see Katouzian, Political Economy, 131. Breakdowns of military expenditure may be found in the annual reports prepared by the British minister in Tehran; see note 21.

21. See for example Annual Report, 1933, Hoare to Simon, 24 February 1934, FO371/17909/E1620/1620/34; Annual Report, 1934, Knatchbull-Hugessen to Simon, 5 February 1935, FO371/18995/E1606/1606/34; Annual Report, 1935, Knatchbull-Hugessen to Eden, 28 January 1936, FO371/20052/E1147/1147/34; Annual Report, 1936, Seymour to Eden, 30 January 1937, FO371/20836/E1435/1435/34; Annual Report, 1938, Seymour to Halifax, 3 March 1939, FO371/23264/E2586/2586/34; Intelligence Summary no. 5, 11 March 1939, FO371/23261/E2589/216/34.

22. Report on the Present Relations between the Shah and his Army and their bearing on the Stability of the Pahlavi Regime, Percy C. R. Dodd, M.A., 3 December 1930, Parr to Henderson, 3 December 1930, FO371/14542/E6707/469/34.

23. Cronin, “Conscription.“

24. Pasyan, Vāqiᶜah-i iᶜdām-i Jahānsūz, 44.

25. Ibid., 19-20; Amirahmadi, Ahmad Khāṭirāt-i Nakhustīn Sipahbud-i Īrān, 2 vols. (Tehran, 1373), vol. 1, 36-37.Google Scholar

26. Ghulamriza Najati, Sarhang-i Tarikh-i siyāsī-yi bīst va panj sālah-i Īrān, 2 vols. (Tehran, 1373), vol. 1, 47Google Scholar; Abduh, Chihil Sāl, 941.

27. For a discussion of the case against Ghaffari see Abduh, Chihil Sāl.

28. Letter from Mr. Herrick Young to A. C. Trott, 6 August 1937, FO371/20835/E5370/904/34.

29. Najati, Tārīkh-i Siyāsī, 47.

30. Pasyan, Vāqiᶜah-i iᶜdām, 43.

31. Ibid., 41.

32. Ibid., 42-3.

33. Ibid., 20; Najati, Tārīkh-i Siyāsī, 47.

34. Pasyan, Vāqiᶜah, 176-78.

35. Ibid., 13, 172.

36. Ibid., 48.

37. Ibid., 49.

38. Ibid., 49. Turkey under Mustafa Kemal appeared to embody many of the virtues which admirers of the strong state perceived in Italy under Mussolini and Germany under Hitler.

39. Ibid., 46. Mirza Jahangir Khan Shirazi was the founder and editor of the radical left-wing and anti-clerical newspaper of the constitutional period, Sūr-i Isrāfīl. He was hanged after the monarchist counterrevolution in 1908.

40. Ibid., 172-76.

41. Ibid., 42-43.

42. Ghods, Iran in the Twentieth Century, 109-110.

43. Intelligence Summary no. 7, 8 April 1939, FO371/23261/E3024/216/34.

44. Pasyan, Vāqiᶜah, 237.

45. Ibid., 53, 172.

46. The Adalat (Justice) Party was founded at Baku in 1917. In 1920 it changed its name to the Communist Party of Iran.

47. In 1948 Qurayshi was elected to the Advisory Board of the Tudeh party. In 1949, in the crackdown following an attempt on Muhammad Riza Shah's life, he was tried in absentia and given a long prison sentence. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 313-14, 318.

48. Katouzian, Political Economy, 115-16; Ghods, Iran in the Twentieth Century, 102.

49. The text of Musaddiq's speech is reproduced in Pasyan, Vāqiᶜah, 293-301.

50. Ibid., 41-42.

51. Ibid., 42.

52. Lambton, Ann K. S. Landlord and Peasant in Persia (London, 1953), 256.Google Scholar A description of some of the shah's methods may be found in ᶜAli Akbar Darakhshani, Khāṭirāt-i Sartīp-i ᶜAli Akbar Darakhshānī (Bethesda, 1994), 241-56Google Scholar; Hoare to Simon, 24 May 1932, FO371/16077/E2780/2780/34.

53. Pasyan, Dar ᶜaṣr-i dū Pahlavi, 66.

54. Pasyan, Vāqiᶜah, 42-43.

55. Ibid., 47-19.

56. Ibid., 52.

57. Ibid, 43.

58. Ibid., 53.

59. The role played by Mukhtar in the 1930s as an instrument of political repression and control had been exactly prefigured in the first half of the 1920s by Muhammad Dargahi. See Cronin, The Army, 139, 154-56, 248-9.

60. Samsam Bakhtiyari, Ali Murtaza Peaks and Troughs: A Tentative Interpretation of Iran's Modern History (London, 1996), 250.Google Scholar

61. Ibid.

62. Pasyan, Vāqiᶜah, 113.

63. Ibid., 115.

64. Descriptions of the shah's apparent paranoia may easily be found in the British sources. See, for example, Nicolson to FO, 2 October 1926, FO371/11490/E5612/284/34; Report on Personalities in Persia, Clive to FO, 18 December 1928, FO371/13783/E98/98/34.

65. For Qavam and Puladin see Cronin, The Army. The Puladin case displays many parallels with that of Jahansuz. Both officers appear to have engaged in little more than careless talk, the evidence against both was concocted by the police, and the shah, perceiving mortal danger from each, was determined upon their execution. For Sardar Asᶜad see Hoare to Simon, 16 December 1933, FO371/17889/E41/41/34.

66. Pasyan, Vāqiᶜah, 111-12.

67. Report on the Present Relations between the Shah and his Army and their bearing on the Stability of the Pahlavi Regime, Percy C. R. Dodd, M.A., 3 December, 1930, Parr to Henderson, 3 December 1930, FO371/14542/E6707/469/34.

68. Cronin, The Army, 155.

69. For the activities of Razmara in the 1940s, see Reza Ghods, M. “The Rise and Fall of General Razmara,” Middle Eastern Studies 29, no. 1 (January 1993): 22-35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70. Pasyan, Vāqiᶜah, 113.

71. Ibid.

72. Political Review of the Year 1939 in Iran, Bullard to Halifax, 17 January 1940, FO371/24581/E584/584/34.

73. Miron Rezun, The Soviet Union and Iran, 335-53.

74. Pasyan, Vāqiᶜah, 221.

75. Ibid., 203-4.

76. Ibid., 204-5.

77. Ibid., 221-23.

78. Ibid., 236.

79. Ibid., 239.

80. Ibid., 245.

81. Abduh, Chihil sāl, 942. Political offenders often served sentences longer than those actually imposed by the courts.

82. Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 164.

83. Lambton, Landlord and Peasant, 257. The actual fate of this landed property was rather more complicated: see Lambton, 257-58.

84. Some sporadic attempts at armed resistance did take place. For an account of one of these episodes see Bayat, Kavih Farmān-i muqāvamat, khāṭirāt-i Ibrahim Shushtarī az shūrish-i pādigān-i havāᵓi-yi Qalᶜah-i Murghī, 8 Shahrīvar 1320 (Tehran, 1376/1956).Google Scholar

85. Pasyan, Vāqiᶜah, 12-13, 248.

86. The phrase is from Abrahamian, describing Muhammad Riza Shah, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 499.