Anglo-Russian Entente
The British in practice preferred inaction, although it enabled Russian expansionism until the Anglo-Russian Convention (Anglo-Russian Entente) of 1907. The Russian sphere ran from Meshed in the east to Tabriz in the west and as far south as Teheran and the British sphere ran west of the North-West Frontier of India and the Afghan border, west to the vicinity of Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf. Only the Ottoman Empire remained as a possible field for German diplomatic and economic influence. Traditional Ottoman hostility to Iran on religious grounds meant that the Pan-Islamism of Sultan Abdul Hamid II of the Ottoman Empire failed to gain much of a following in Iran, until the Young Persians took it up as a political tool. The Young Turks in the Ottoman Empire evolved into Pan-Turanists, seeking to renew the Ottoman Empire by expanding into Trans-Caucasia, Turkestan and at least the north-west of Iran. By 1914 little attention had been paid to the Pan-Turanists, mainly due to the power of the Russian Empire; Ottoman encroachments on Iran were seen as defensive moves against Russia.