A Whitewash of the Crime and a Travesty of Justice

Murray & Mudarres Dialogue is a part of the book by Professor Mohammad Gholi Majd under the title of Oil and the Killing of the American Consul in Tehran published by University Press of America in 2006 in 358 pages. The story of murdering Robert Whitney Imbrie, American Vice-Consul in Tehran and Sinclair Oil Corporation broker on July 18th 1924 during the riot at Agha Sheik Hadi’s Saqqā-ḵāna (public water dispenser) in Tehran is one of the main events during Reza khan’s dictatorship and also one of the preliminary steps taken before abdicating Qajars and asserting Pahlavids to the Persian throne in October 1925. The story of this secretful murder is the main subject of Murray and Ayatollah Mudarres. In this part Mudarres welcomes this chance and represents a review on the Iranian condition before assigning the first American financial mission headed by Morgan Shuster in Iran in 1911. Mudarres narrates how the two predatory powers of Tsarist Russia and Britain long time before the arrival of Shuster mission had captured two main Iranian independence sources of financial administration and the military in their own hands. Mudarres also strongly says that all the story around the murder of major Imbrie have been directed by the British. In giving reasons for his claim, Mudarres notes to the British jealousy toward increasing American prestige in Persia and the danger that the British were feeling about the American missioners, despite it was clear from the early beginning that the Americans would not get any success, although they had survived till then. Considering Persians were not able to speak freely in the oppressive government of Sardar Sepah, and the fact that he was a British puppet, Mudarres wishes that America might not insist on the execution of the convicted people because it meant following the British policies that would finally be harmful to the Persian and American interests both.