New Persian foreign minister

A British chronology of the war records under 20 February 1915 a change of foreign minister in Persia. Ala al-Saltaneh, who had headed Persian diplomacy since August 1914, stepped down, and his place was taken by Mo’aven od-Dowleh. Some lists give 21 February as Ala al-Saltaneh’s last day in office.

An experienced official

Mo’aven od-Dowleh, that is Mohammad Ebrahim Khan Ghaffari, was one of the veterans of the Qajar administration. He was born around 1860. He worked in the commercial courts, was chief of police and minister of commerce, and at the beginning of the 20th century was Persia’s minister to the Balkans, based in Bucharest, and in Rome. He knew foreign affairs from practice: he had already been foreign minister in 1910. He was considered an efficient administrator who kept up contacts with the intellectuals of the day. The Encyclopaedia Iranica dates his renewed tenure at the ministry in general terms to 1913–1915, which does not exactly match other lists.

His predecessor, Ala al-Saltaneh, was a diplomat of the older generation, for many years minister in London, and from January 1913 prime minister. He took over the foreign ministry in August 1914, when Mostowfi ol-Mamalek took over the government in Tehran. In 1917 Ala al-Saltaneh once again became head of government.

A neutrality nobody respected

The new minister took office at the most difficult moment for Persian diplomacy. Persia, ruled since July 1914 in his own right by the young Shah Ahmad, had declared neutrality in November 1914, but war was already being waged on its soil. Russians and Turks were fighting in Persian Azerbaijan. In January Tabriz was taken by the Kurds and the Turks, and at the end of the month the Russians recaptured the city. In the south the British guarded the oilfields and the pipeline on the Persian Gulf, and German agents incited the tribes against Great Britain and Russia.

The government in Tehran had no army capable of stopping any of the parties. It could only protest and demand the withdrawal of foreign troops, which Russia had no intention of doing, while Turkey justified its own entry precisely by the presence of the Russians. The cabinet changes reflected the instability of power. Less than a month later, in mid-March 1915, the whole government of Mostowfi ol-Mamalek fell, and Hassan Pirnia, Moshir od-Dowleh, became prime minister. In the following months Persia was drawn ever deeper into the war it had wanted to avoid.