PERSIAN PLOT

Evening Star, Issue 25893, 10 September 1946, Page 8

PERSIAN PLOT

THREAT TO SECURITY ALLEGED LINK WITH BRITISH TEHERAN, September 8. A few people were wounded when clashes occurred, between Democrat and members of the Tudeh Party in Isfahan after the discovery of what was described as a plot against Persia’s security. The Foreign Minister, Prince Firouz, after questioning Jahanshan*Samsam Bakhtiari, the Governor of a town near Isfahan, announced that he had confessed to the plot. He and his brother, Amir Behman Bakhtiari, were imprisoned. The British Ambassador, Mr J. H. le Rougetel, and his family are at present on holiday at Isfahan on their first visit to South Persia. Tudeh Party officials in Teheran linked the alleged plot with the Ambassador’s arrival, as the Bakhtiari brothers are regarded, as extremely pro-British. [lsfahan, formerly known as Ispahan, was once the capital of Persia. It was one of the richest and most populous cities of Asia in the seventeenth century, but in 1722, during the Afghan invasion of Persia, its walls were destroyed, and it was reduced to a state of physical decay from which it has never recovered. It is still, however, the second largest trading centrein Persia.]