GERMANY AND IRAN
Commonwealth and Foreign
By W. V. EMANUEL TuE recent visit of Dr. Schacht to Teheran, following imme- diately on his stay at Angora, may well set us wondering how far the German tentacles are spreading again in the Middle East. Dr. Schacht never visits a foreign capital for nothing, and German trade and influence in Iran are pre- sumably going to benefit by his excursion. How strong is that influence already ? In Tabriz, the second largest city of Iran, situated only 80 miles from the Russian frontier, about 90 per cent, of the 50 or 60 European residents are Germans, the English being represented by only three families. All the new industrial concerns which have sprung up there in the last decade, the silk factory, the tannery, the glass works, the tile works, the carpet factory, have German managers and machinery. Even the rather light beer which H.M.'s Consul surprisingly produced for us was the product of a local brewery set up and managed by Germans. It is the same in other towns. In Yezd, the burnt-up city of the Zoroastrians on the edge of the Great Salt Desert, two of the five Europeans who contrive to live there are Germans. At Teheran, in the Rue Stamboul, is a shop devoted almost exclusively to the sale of German books and newspapers. No other nation has such a shop. There is also a German barber and a German clothes store. The latter is managed by a refugee, it is true, but is none the less a favourite meeting- place for the large German, Austrian and Swiss colony. (Even so, it seems a trifle tactless of the Legation to have ordered their large Swastika flag from this shop.) In the fifteen new textile factories of Isfahan—Allah preserve that green city of loveliness from becoming an industrial centre—most of the management and machinery is German. On board the Baku steamer I met a delightful Berliner, who was an accountant in one of them. He liked the Iranians, accepted their different standards, and had done his best to get to know them. In this he represented one school of thought among Europeans living in Iran. His compatriot on boatd, who had some mysterious job at Kasvin, connected, I believe, with carpets, represented the opposite attitude, which .is unfortunately common. He could not bear the Iranians and their slipshod ways, and spent the voyage grumbling about conditions. He was like the German road-engineer whom I met in Afghanistan. After two years in the country he still knew next to nothing of the language, had never taken his wife into the bazaars, and had no interests beyond his immediate job, which he worked at with Teutonic thoroughness. His room, like his head, was swept bare. The only decorations were a Nazi sword and a photograph of Hitler.
In the rapid development of Iranian transport Germans have played an important part. In the air Junkers secured a monopoly in 1927, and ran extensive services to all the larger towns. On the Teheran-Meshed route their up-to-date version of the Magic Carpet carried hundreds of pilgrims, who for centuries have toiled to Meshed on foot or donkey. In 1932 this contract expired, and the Iranian Government, for a variety of reasons, mainly financial, refused to renew it. The new air service, which the Government has started this autumn, is being carried on by Iranian pilots in de Havilland machines. The great new Trans-Iranian railway, which, when it is completed in 1939, will have cost no leas than £30,000,000, is now in the hands of a Scandinavian combine, which is leasing it out to a number of firms of different nationalities. German firms have secured two of the most important sections.
On the road one sees few signs of German enterprise, because all the lorries and 'buses, and nearly all the motor- cars, are American ; but German engineers are being employed on construction work all over the country, as in Afghanistan and Turkey. Not that all these engineers are supporters of the present German regime. I found two doctors, both non- Aryan refugees, and one of them a Berlin professor, managing the magnificent, up-to-date hospital at Meshed, the fanatical capital of Khorassan. In Mazanderan, the swampy jungle province which lies between the Caspian and the Elburz range, I found a German road-engineer who was an avowed Socialist. Still wearing the black velvet coat of the ancient guild of the Hamburger Zimmerleute, he and a Swedish colleague were labouring to restore a bridge which 18 days' continuous rain had sent tumbling down to the sea. But such exiles have no official status with their Legation, and their position must be a terribly isolated one.
Armaments, the sphere in which one would naturally expect German influence to be paramount, is precisely the subject about which it is hardest to obtain information. Certainly the military lorries and some of the artillery are made in Germany. But the air force uses Hawker and de Havilland machines ; the small modern navy is being built exclusively in Italy ; and the army, trained originally by Belgian, Swedish and Russian officers, is now an entirely national force and the greatest bulwark of the present regime. Yet many of its officers have had technical training in Europe, the majority in Germany. And the powder factory 12 miles outside Teheran, which produces the only chemicals manu- factured in Iran, is equipped with plant brought from Germany in 1930. An increase in the amount of munitions bought in Germany may be expected from Dr. Schacht's visit.
The most obvious link between the two countries is a common fear of Russia and her propaganda. Communism, which had established a Soviet Republic in the two northern provinces of Iran in 1921, has been stamped out as ruthlessly by the Iranian dictator as by the German. But Russia, in spite of the resumption of normal relations which took place after the Trade Agreement of 1933, seems still to be regarded as somewhat of a bogey. It is natural enough that intelligent Iranians, remembering the notorious Anglo- Russian agreement of 1907, and the subsequent violation of their national rights, should be apprehensive of the two great empires which border their territory. One 'object • of the new Trans-Iranian railway is to check the predominance, economic if not political, which Russia has hitherto enjoyed in the Caspian provinces. As soon as the railway makes transport costs feasible, Russian goods, especially petrol, will be displaced by native products from the rest of the country, cut off as it is by a 15,000-ft. mountain range. This process of reversing the adverse trade balance with Russia has already begun, and Germany has been among the com- petitors to benefit.
Yet on the whole it is British traders who have gained the most, which is perhaps one of the reasons why Dr. Schacht visited Teheran. In the last few years Britain has taken Russia's place as the largest importer into Iran, at the same time heading the list of exports. But Germany also has, increased her trade very rapidly in recent years. In 1933-34 she succeeded in occupying the third place after Britain' and Russia in the list of importing countries, and in the same year the value of Iranian goods exported to Germany increased by 29,000 rials, so that she now takes more from, Iran than Russia or indeed any country except Britain • and France. The same period has witnessed a phenomenal increase in the activities of the new National Bank, founded in 1928 under German management as a rival to the British-owned Imperial Bank of Persia.
Iran's relations with such a good customer would naturally be friendly ; and considering the tendency of dictators to support each other, it is not surprising that there are Germans in so many responsible positions, and that such a large pro- portion of Iranian students complete their technical training in Germany. It is true that French is still the first foreign language, and that the English continue to hold that trade supremacy which their . fortunate ownership of the oilfields alone provides. Yet there are 1,200 Germans in Iran, and as the might of a rearmed Germany increases, so corre- spondingly will her influence grow among the militarist States of the Middle East, where armed strength is valued more highly than it is—or used to be—in Europe. Iran, which is being westernised at it breakneck rate, and is also a vital link between Europe and Asia, offers a rich opportunity for Germany in any new Drang stash Sud-Osten which she may wish to undertake.
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