Arthur Millspaugh

Arthur Chester Millspaugh, PhD, (1883–1955) was a former adviser at the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Foreign Trade, who was hired to re-organize the Finance Ministry of Iran from 1922–1927 and 1942-1945.

Before World War II the Iranian public viewed the United States as a liberator from British and Russian dominance, as well as the country which would make Iran prosperous and rich.

Millspaugh managed to implement a number of reforms, including a new taxation law that hit the poor hard but financed Reza Shah’s Trans-Iranian Railway project, which got underway in 1927.

The mission’s accomplishments were repeatedly hampered by internal political rivalries in Iran and a widespread system of patronage and graft among many leading Iranian politicians.

Replete with “clinical” metaphors, and speaking from experience from his days working for the Shah's government, Millspaugh this time was more pessimistic and critical of Iranians, portraying them as incapable of self-government: "Persia cannot be left to herself, even if the Russians were to keep their hands off politically.