Despite ominous outbreaks of violence in Tehran, the capital of Persia (now Iran), in recent weeks, American Vice Consul Robert Imbrie approached the crowd gathered at a sacred fountain in the city on the morning of July 18, 1924. His status as a diplomat did little to shield him when a member of the throng accused him of poisoning the water source. Incensed, the mob attacked Imbrie and pursued him through the streets. Four hours later, Imbrie died of his injuries, becoming the first United States Foreign Service officer to be assassinated abroad.
Imbrie’s killing angered the U.S. and inadvertently fueled the rise of an autocratic Iranian ruler who benefited from his death. The vice consul’s story also intersects with two flashpoints in Iranian-American relations: a 1953 coup backed by the CIA and the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. On a more personal level, Imbrie bore the grim distinction of being the victim of “the most atrocious assault upon an official of the United States government in the history of this republic,” as one member of Congress put it in 1927.
Imbrie was not only a diplomat but also a lawyer, a wartime volunteer and a spy. Born in Washington, D.C. on April 23, 1883, he was taken in by relatives upon the deaths of his parents. After graduating from Yale Law School, he worked as an attorney in between travels to Europe and a 1911 expedition to Congo, which piqued his sense of adventure.
During World War I, Imbrie volunteered as an ambulance driver in Europe, bolstered by his belief in the Allied cause. (The U.S. had not yet entered the war when he arrived in France in late 1915.) The conflict proved to be the most consequential event of Imbrie’s youth. As he later recounted in his 1918 book, Behind the Wheel of a War Ambulance, he found himself alongside the likes of cowboys, mercenaries, a prospector and a football player.
“At the outbreak of the war, the restless ones of the earth flocked to France, drawn there by [the] prospect of adventure and a desire to sit in the game,” Imbrie wrote of his comrades and, by extension, of himself. Volunteering offered an opportunity to test his mettle: Hearing the rumble of gunfire for the first time, he “wondered whether my nerve would hold when confronted with the conditions I had come to seek.”
Imbrie didn’t hesitate when next offered a stint on the Eastern Front, which took him to Greece and Albania. His lengthy service earned him distinction.
“His curiosity, his interest in people and his adventuresomeness [are] just part of his personality,” says Susan M. Stein, author of On Distant Service, a 2020 biography of Imrie.