When the First World War erupted in 1914, Qajar Iran declared neutrality. The declaration meant nothing to the powers that surrounded it. The Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1907 had already carved the country into spheres of influence: Russia claimed the north, Britain the south, with a buffer zone in between. Iran sat at the intersection of British India, Imperial Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Afghanistan. Its oil reserves, first discovered in 1908, added economic incentive to what was already a strategic obsession. German agents operated freely, attempting to draw Iran toward the Central Powers and stir revolt against the Entente. The British and Russians, despite their alliance, cooperated primarily in ensuring that neither Germany nor the Ottomans gained a foothold. Iran's sovereignty existed on paper. On the ground, foreign armies moved across its territory without invitation.

General Nikolai Baratov commanded Russian forces in the Persian campaign. After receiving intelligence that German agents were inciting Iranians to revolt, he dispatched a detachment of 668 soldiers with two artillery pieces toward Tehran. Their pretext was protecting the Russian embassy during the month of Muharram. The real purpose was broader: to secure Russian influence over the Iranian capital and deny it to the Central Powers. The detachment marched seventy miles from its base. Along the route, Iranian resistance was coalescing. Under the command of Heydar Latifiyan, approximately two thousand fighters assembled near Robat Karim, positioned along the road the Russians would have to take.

The Iranians ambushed the Russian column near Robat Karim. For a time, the irregular fighters held their positions against a professional military force. But the Russians regrouped, took cover, and brought their artillery to bear, encircling the Iranian positions. When the Russian commander Belomestnov ordered a decisive cavalry charge, part of the Iranian force broke and fled. The Cossacks cut down the retreating fighters. Two hundred forty-five Iranians died. Russian casualties were minimal. The battle ended in complete military victory for the Entente. Ahmad Matin-Daftari, who later became Prime Minister of Iran, recorded the tragic fate of the resistance fighters in his memoirs. Abdul Hossein Farmanfarma, a prominent statesman, sent a telegram expressing his grief and warning that Isfahan could be next.

The battle's significance lies not in its outcome but in what it prevented. Had the Russian army captured Tehran without opposition, Iran risked becoming a permanent colony of Tsarist Russia. The resistance at Robat Karim, though militarily futile, consumed time. That time allowed Iranian leaders to separate the functions of the capital of state from the royal capital, preserving the mechanisms of governance even as foreign troops advanced. The popular resistance also demonstrated that occupying Iran would carry costs. After their victory, the Russians achieved their immediate strategic objectives, but the Central Powers never again succeeded in provoking a large-scale Iranian uprising against the Entente. Iran endured the First World War battered, its territory violated, its people caught between empires. It emerged diminished but sovereign, never becoming the colony that its neighbors' ambitions might have demanded.