Vosugh od-Dowleh prime minister again

The British chronology of the war records under 7 August 1918 that Vosugh od-Dowleh became prime minister of Persia. Four days earlier, on 3 August, according to the same chronology, his predecessor had stepped down: the Bakhtiari chief Samsam ol-Saltaneh, who had headed the government since May and reshuffled his cabinet in June. The date of 7 August is also given by F. J. Moberly’s British official history of the Mesopotamian campaign and by the Encyclopaedia Iranica. Persian lists of governments end Samsam’s cabinet and begin Vosugh’s on the same day, 15 Mordad 1297 in the Iranian calendar, that is, 6 August (conversions of Iranian dates from these years often differ by a day), while English-language studies sometimes give 8 August. According to Persian accounts, Shah Ahmad summoned Samsam to the Golestan Palace and ordered him to resign.

The Shah changes sides

Behind the change lay the events of the war. In British eyes Samsam’s government was hostile: General Percy Sykes called the prime minister a politician “decidedly unfriendly to the Entente” and accused his cabinet of encouraging the Qashqai chief to fight the South Persia Rifles. In the summer, however, the balance tipped in Britain’s favour. At the beginning of July Sykes’s forces stationed in Shiraz inflicted a decisive defeat on their main opponent in Fars, and in the middle of the month a column from Shiraz relieved a besieged British detachment at Abadeh. The Bakhtiaris were keeping their agreement to protect the oilfields, in the north the British defeated the Jangalis at Rasht and secured the road to the Caspian Sea, and on the Western Front the Germans were falling back from the Marne. Moberly writes that all this together induced the Shah to dismiss the “anti-British government” and appoint a cabinet more favourable to Britain. Sykes put it similarly: after the victory in Fars the Shah took courage to replace a hostile cabinet with a friendly one.

The choice of Vosugh was obvious. Hassan Vosugh, the elder brother of Ahmad Qavam, had already headed the government from August 1916 and had then maintained a “benevolent neutrality” towards the Entente. In March 1917 his cabinet had recognised the South Persia Rifles, and after his resignation in May 1917 his successors withdrew that recognition. In Persia he was regarded as a politician close to the British, and his opponents were already accusing him of subservience to London.

The foreign minister

The chronology records two more changes at the foreign ministry: on 10 August the minister, Ali Qoli Khan Ansari, Moshaver ol-Mamalek, is said to have resigned, and to have taken up the office again the very next day. Persian lists of ministers know nothing of this break. According to them Moshaver ol-Mamalek, who had directed foreign policy from January to June 1918, returned to the ministry on 11 Mordad, that is, 2 August, before the new government had formally been formed, and remained there until the summer of 1919. The sources do not explain what the August episode described in the chronology was about; it may have been merely a formal step in forming the cabinet.

This time Vosugh governed for almost two years, until the summer of 1920. His cabinet conducted talks with Britain that in August 1919 ended in the conclusion of the Anglo-Persian Agreement. Moshaver ol-Mamalek, who had gone to the Paris Peace Conference at the head of the Persian delegation, then lost his office. Opponents saw the agreement as an attempt to subordinate Persia to London, and the prime minister was accused of accepting British money. The agreement never came into force.