مدیریت در دوره رضاشاه

He instructed the cabinet to conduct formal negotiations with the company: and the chief negotiator was the most powerful man in the country after the Shah himself: 'Abdulhusain Taimür-Tash, the almighty Minister of the Imperial Court. Taimür-Täsh was in fact more radical in his view of the situation; he even believed that the government should make friendly overtures to the Soviet Union, in order both to frighten Britain and improve IranoSoviet relations. The negotiations dragged, and the Shah lost control of his nerves: one day he stormed into the cabinet room while the cabinet was in session, threw the oil file into the heater, and ordered his ministers 'not to leave' until they had prepared the draft of the (unilateral) abrogation the D'Arcy concession. This was the typically rash behaviour of a despot who was getting more and more used to imposing his own will in all situations. This time, however, he had overreached himself: in this case, the Shah's will could not be imposed absolutely, and by his usual methods, if he still wanted to survive on his throne. The D'Arcy concession was duly abrogated, but the Shah realised and/or was made to realise that he had to enter a new agreement: the Iranians lost the initiative, and the 1933 Agreement was concluded. This was inevitably hailed as a great triumph; but it was an abysmal failure.
The area covered by the new agreement was only a quarter of the D'Arcy concession; but it included all the areas under exploitation, and most of the proven reserves. It also extended the concessionary period from twenty-seven to sixty years. The basis of revenue payment was changed from the previous 16 per cent of the company's annual net profits to 4 shillings per barrel produced: it was by no means certain that this would improve Iran's share over the concession period; but it ensured that changes in the market price, and/or the company's tax obligations to the British government, could not be used as reason for dramatic declines in the revenues paid to the Iranian government. There were also some changes in the minor provisions of the former concession. Finally, to sweeten the pill, the company agreed to pay an extra £1 million for 1931, and a further £1 million for the conclusion of the treaty. Yet it is significant that no firm procedures were laid down for future revisions and renegotiations of the Agreement: the Iranians were expected to be bound by the letter of this unfair agreement for sixty years.
It was a fiasco; but it is both simplistic and tautological to blame it all on the British imperialist power. This power was real enough. But there can be no doubt that, if the negotiations had been conducted with the care, delicacy and diplomacy which they demanded, the Iranians would have got considerably better results. To the extent that this was not achieved, Reža Shah's despotic, arrogant and ignorant methods of conducting anything and everything must be held responsible. It was in this sense that the Finance Minister, Sayyed Hasan Taqizadeh, who officially signed the agreement (shortly before going into voluntary exile because of his unhappiness with the Shah's growing despotism and megalomania), declared, fourteen years later, that in signing the 1933 Agreement he had been merely 'an instrument'."
The episode did not end without claiming an important casualty, although, with or without the oil crisis, the trend of events had made this inevitable: the fall, trial, conviction, imprisonment and subsequent murder in prison of TaimürTash, the demigod of the new régime. The Shah had suspected him of double-dealing during the negotiations; he had also become nervous of his contacts with Russians, thinking though this is very unlikely that TaimürTash was preparing the ground for his own succession. It is also possible that the APOC and/or the British government, which must have been weary of TaimürTash's toughness in the negotiations, and his overtures to the Russians, indirectly helped, or quickened, his downfall. He was both a cause and a product of the new despotic régime. And he perished by the same sword by which he had lived, and let others die.
The fall of TaimürTäsh was symbolic of Reza Shah's assumption of total and arbitrary power. For, from that moment until his own day of reckoning. the Shah became the undisputed arbiter over the lives, freedoms, rights and properties of the Iranian people.

Homa katouzian