The Foreign Service Journal, May 2022

54 MAY 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Mrs. Imbrie received $60,000. Seymour received $3,000. The U.S. government received $110,000 for expenses incurred transport- ing Imbrie’s body by warship from Iran to Washington, for inter- ment at Arlington National Cemetery. Given Iran’s poverty and the dollar’s purchasing power at that time, these were enormous sums. The Broader Implications of Imbrie’s Death Reza Khan used the incident to rally support for his military dictatorship. Whether or not there was any substance to the rumor that he sought the death of a foreigner to justify imposition of martial law, he made clear to the legations that their choice was either to face continuing clerical-led riotous unrest or to support his newmilitary order. As U.S. Minister Joseph Kornfeld put it, “Whatever justice we obtain must come from [Reza] through his military courts,” the alternative being, in Chargé Murray’s words, fanaticism led by the “senile old man” Hassan Modarres. In this, Murray echoed British Chargé Esmond Ovey who regarded Modarres as “a bigoted and unwashed Sayyid, the Diogenes of the Majlis, who lives in a hovel and ostentatiously refuses money for himself.” This description of Modarres entirely ignores the cultural context, in which living modestly is both a sign of piety and the Iranian political equivalent of corporate lawyer Abraham Lincoln campaigning as a “rail-splitter born in a log cabin.” Not to mention that Modarres’s ostentatious refusal to accept bribes was an implicit criticism of those who accepted foreign subsidies. The episode moved American policy into line with that of Britain. Before the murder, the British legation regarded the Americans as hostile, writing that Murray “hardly takes the trouble to conceal his Anglophobia,” and worrying that inde- pendent American policy might give Iran “another fatal chance of playing off one Great Power against another.” British Minister Percy Loraine feared that “Anglo-American rivalry destroys [the] last hope of salvation.” After Imbrie’s death, America approved Reza’s “desire to create a disciplined armed force ... and not to be the commander of a horde of tribesmen.” In London, the Foreign Office crowed: “America is being educated in Eastern matters— which is to the good—especially as regards ourselves.” The result of all this was Reza’s ability, with the support of foreign legations, to make himself the Shah of Iran. In parlia- ment, Mossadegh—who had served Reza as minister of finance and as a provincial governor—argued that while Reza had done brilliant service to the nation as war minister and prime minister, if he were king, he would no longer be responsible to the Majlis. Only three other parliamentarians joined him to vote no. Unchecked henceforth by the Majlis, Reza Shah proceeded forcibly to create the modern Iranian state, eliminating opposi- tion—real or imagined—by violence. Ayatollah Sayyid Hassan Modarres was among Reza’s many victims. Surviving a 1926 assassination attempt, he was arrested in 1928 and exiled to a small town in Khorasan where in 1937 he was strangled while at prayer. By the late 1930s, the British Foreign Office came to view Reza Shah as “a dull savage of the sergeant-major type,” pro-German and a “bloodthirsty lunatic.” The U.S. legation concurred, Min- ister WilliamHornibrook fearing that Reza Shah’s “wholesale introduction of European customs, his hostility to the clergy, his ruthless methods and his success in inculcating ... ultra-national- istic feelings may possibly result in a bitter anti-foreign feeling in the event of his demise.” Ironies happen. “Modarres” means “teacher,” and Sayyid Hassan was dubbed Modarres long before he achieved the clerical rank of ayatollah. Among the students influenced by his personal modesty and outspoken political views was Ayatollah Hairi’s student, young Ruhollah Khomeini. The Islamic Republic regards Modarres as a shahid (martyr), and his image was placed on Iranian currency where the shahs’ faces had once loomed. My high school, formerly the hospital where Imbrie’s autopsy was conducted, is now Shahid Modarres High School. So it goes. n Widow of Robert W. Imbrie, Katherine Imbrie, at the U.S. Capitol. She would appear before the House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee, asking for an additional allowance for his death. U.S.LIBRARYOFCONGRESS