1939: Iran (Persia)

The most notable event in Iran during 1939 was the marriage of Crown Prince Shahpour to Princess Fawzia of Egypt, sister of King Farouk. This marriage, involving two important Moslem countries, was celebrated with great public festivities in both Cairo and Tehran. The wedding contract was signed in Cairo by Crown Prince Shahpour and King Farouk on March 15, while the bride remained secluded in Abdin Palace. The wedding ceremonies, which were celebrated in Teheran almost a month later, were attended by delegations from Egypt, Turkey, and Afghanistan. Germany sent a delegation by airplane, headed by the German Ambassador to the Soviet Union.

The wedding party traveled from the seacoast to Teheran over a magnificent new railroad, completed early in 1939 at a cost of £30,000,000. The Trans-Iranian railway runs from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea. Scores of tunnels and bridges enable the railway to cross both the Luristan and Elburz mountains at an elevation of 7,000 feet. This ambitious project was built by the Shah without resort to foreign loans, but with the aid of foreign engineers. It will free Iran from complete dependence upon the only previous railroad, which ran northwestward to the Soviet Union.

The regular budget estimates for 1939-40 (fiscal year ending March 21) show a deficit for the first time since 1934-35. The expansion of the regular budget over the 1938-39 estimates is merely nominal, however, since the supplementary estimates are for the first time incorporated almost entirely into the regular budget. No account of actual fiscal operations seems to be available. Early in May the official press attacked the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, charging that the Company's failure to carry out promised developments had cost the Government much potential revenue.

Iran improved its international position considerably during 1939 by restoring normal diplomatic relations with France and the United States. Iran had withdrawn its Minister from Paris Jan. 18, 1937, because of a pun, as French newspapers had published photographs of a Paris cat labelled 'Son Majeste le Chat!' The French Government persuaded the Shah that he was not being ridiculed, and normal relations were reestablished Feb. 21, 1939. The Iranian Minister to the United States, Ghaffar Khan Djalal, had also been withdrawn in 1936, after his arrest in 1935 by an Elkton, Maryland, sheriff for an alleged traffic violation, and alleged slighting remarks in the American newspapers. President Roosevelt on June 23, 1939, nominated Louis G. Dreyfus, then charge at Lima, as United States Minister to Teheran and Iran reopened its Legation in Washington.

Iranian art received world-wide recognition early in 1939 when the Oxford University Press published the first three volumes of an extensive survey, edited by Dr. Arthur Upham Pope, and written by seventy-two scholars. This remarkable project, dedicated to the Shah, was in preparation for over twelve years and cost $265,000.