Persian Campaign - Aftermath

Aftermath

After the Ottoman Empire lost World War I, the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire soon followed. Enver Pasha's political vision which stated as "If Russians beaten in the key cities of Persia, they could be forced to out from the region", failed as Russian and Bakhtiari troops landed in 1920 and forced majles to temporarily cease. The immediate outcome of the Campaign was the Anglo-Persian Agreement, which gave the drilling rights of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. The "agreement" was issued by British Foreign Secretary Earl Curzon to the Persian government in August 1919. It stated a guarantee of British access to Iranian oil fields. In 1919, northern Persia was occupied by the British General William Edmund Ironside to enforce the Armistice of Mudros conditions and help General Dunsterville and Colonel Bicherakhov to contain Bolshevik influence (of Mirza Kuchak Khan) in the north. Britain attempted to establish a protectorate in Iran. Britain also took tighter military control over the increasingly lucrative oil fields.

After the Russian left the Persia in 1917 (for a short period—later to come back) following the Russian revolution, Mar Shimmun wholly understood the difficult situation the Assyrians. In 1918, he was convincing Agha Putrus not to fight against Persians but to make peace with them in his messages. We can see that Assyrians did not put down their weapons as the Patriarch advised but on the contrary chose to attack. After the defeat Major Pesyan went to live in exile in Berlin. During his time in Berlin, he was trained as a pilot in the German Airforce and was rewarded with the Eisernes Kreuz Medal for shooting down more than 25 enemy aircraft during World War I.

In late 1920, the Soviet Socialist Republic in Rasht was preparing to march on Tehran with "a guerrilla force of 1500 Jangalis, Armenians, and interestingly this time Kurds, and Azerbaijanis were on their side", reinforced by the Soviet Red Army. Britain attempted to establish a protectorate in Iran following 1919, which this goal aided by the Soviet Union's withdrawal in 1921. In that year, a military coup established Reza Khan, a Persian officer of the Persian Cossack Brigade, as dictator and then hereditary Shah of the new Pahlavi dynasty (1925). Reza Shah curtailed the power of the majles. He effectively turned it into a rubber stamp organization. While Reza Khan and his Cossack brigade were securing Tehran, the Persian envoy was in Moscow negotiating a treaty with the Bolsheviks for the removal of Soviet troops from Persia. The coup d'état of 1921 and the emergence of Reza Khan were assisted by the British government that wished to halt the Bolshevik's penetration of Iran, particularly because of the threat it posed to the British colonial possession of India. It is thought that British provided "ammunition, supplies and pay" for Reza's troops.