War and Peace in Qajar Persia: Implications Past and ... - Oguzlar.az

Building a new army 75190 Iranian officers and 5,400 in the Iranian ranks. The cost of the forcewas borne entirely by the British and Indian governments. Envisaged as acrucial component of the national army proposed by the Anglo-IranianMilitary Commission, created under the terms of the Anglo-Iranian Agreementof 1919, the SPR never shook off its reputation as a tool of foreigninfluence. British determination to impose acceptance of the SPR on Iranpoisoned relations with a succession of Iranian cabinets down to and evenbeyond the coup of 1921 and although officers and men of the force wereaccepted into Reza Khan’s new army, they remained the object of suspicionand none achieved high rank.The Anglo-Iranian Military CommissionDespite the chequered history of the SPR, in 1919 Britain put forward a muchmore grandiose scheme for the modernization of the army under Britishofficers. After the war, the foreign secretary, Lord Curzon, prevailed in hisview, against the opposition of the Government of India, that Britain shouldconsolidate its new predominance in Iran, resulting from the withdrawal ofRussia after the Bolshevik revolution, through a long-term agreement withpro-British elements in the country. The mechanism adopted for this consolidationwas the Anglo-Iranian Agreement of 1919. Under the terms ofthis Agreement, an Anglo-Iranian Military Commission was set up to deviseplans for a complete overhaul and reorganization of Iran’s military forces. 71The mixed commission of British and Iranian officers assembled in January1920 and at the beginning of April presented a report recommending the mergingof Iran’s existing forces and the construction of a uniform national forceunder British officers. 72 In practical terms, the commission envisagedrebuilding the Iranian army around a core constituted by the SPR.The scheme devised by the Commission bore a strong similarity to earlierplans for military modernization within a framework of comprehensiveadministrative reform, but the role it prescribed for British officers was now,in the new political and ideological climate, an intolerable affront to nationaldignity. In the rapidly changing circumstances of post-war Iran, both theAgreement itself and the proposals of the Military Commission caused outrageamong nationalist opinion and specifically among the Iranian officersand men of both the Gendarmerie and the Cossack Division. 73During the constitutional period the Iranian government had continuedto advance schemes for creating a national army while the SepahsalarAgreement had provided nationalist opinion with the opportunity to link thefate of the Russian mission with the Cossack Division to that of the Britishofficers of the SPR and to demand the substitution of both with officers ofa third and neutral power. 74 The Allies and, after 1917, the British alone, hadrepeatedly discouraged the idea. With the Anglo-Iranian Military Commission,it seemed that Iran was at last to obtain a uniform national army, but