British Diplomatic Oil Crisis: Contemporary Anglo-Saxon Geopolitical Rivalries in the Persian Gulf: Drawing a Lesson? Or Sir Anthony Eden‘s Delusion of Grandeur.
programme of
‘nationalisation’ would only lead to economic suicide on a
national scale.26
Berthoud, in
the concluding part of one of his minutes, wrote, ‘what Miss
Lambton was proposing was in effect a public relations and education
programme which she lamented that the Company itself had not
implemented’.27 Again, according to Berthoud’s minute, ‘Miss Lambton
suggested that Robin Zaehner, lecturer in Persian (and later Professor
of Eastern Religions) at Oxford, would be the “ideal man” to conduct the
covert pro-British campaign.’
28
As well as
being respected by scholars, and regarded as an authority on
Iranian politics, as was said before, Ann Lambton views were highly valued
by the Foreign Office.
Similar to
Ann Lambton, Robin Zaehner believed that the British Embassy in
Teheran could become instrumental in slowly changing the public mood against
the Iranian Prime Minister, Dr. Musaddiq. Zaehner had been successfully
involved in covert operations and propaganda in Iran. In 1944, when there
was a serious threat from the Soviet Union that they might occupy the
Azerbaijan province of Iran, he mobilised public opinion in Iran against the
Soviet influence. Robin Zaehner knew nearly everybody in Teheran who was
significant. He believed that the British Embassy in Teheran should align
itself with influential Iranians who saw their own interest and the interest
of the United Kingdom as one. The influential and wealthy Rashidian family
were considered by Zaehner as the ideal allies of that type. The Rashidian
family, the brothers Sayfullah, Qudratullah and Assadullah, had close
contacts with Britain. They were regular
-
PRO, London, FO371/98701,
The General Political Correspondence of, Minute by Berthoud,
13th October 1952 in J.A. BILL andW.R. LOUIS, Musaddiq, Iranian Nationalism and
Oil, (London:
I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. Publishers, 1988), p. 233. -
FO 371/91548/EP1531/674
in W.R. LOUIS, op. cit., p. 660. -
Ibid.
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