British Diplomatic Oil Crisis: Contemporary Anglo-Saxon Geopolitical Rivalries in the Persian Gulf: Drawing a Lesson? Or Sir Anthony Eden‘s Delusion of Grandeur.

said that
it was meeting with seven other large oil companies with
interests in the Middle East to discuss ways of resolving the
difficulties which prevented Iranian oil from returning to the world
markets.

Later in
the month, a mission of twenty technical experts headed by
a one- time Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Fields Manager, representing
the eight interested companies, flew to Iran to inspect the refinery
at Abadan. This was described as a fact-finding visit, to estimate
the cost of putting the refinery into full working order again.49

In the
beginning of March 1954, after a positive report by the
mission which went to Iran in February, the oil cartel heads met in
London, the oil consortium was financially established, a plan was
drawn up, and a representative mission left on 10th April for
Teheran to conduct negotiations. The mission’s members were J.H.
Loudon of Shell, H.E. Snow of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and
Orville Harden of Standard of New Jersey, respectively Dutch,
British and American. When Anthony Eden on 12th April was announcing
in the House of Commons the news of the mission to Teheran, Herbert
Morrison, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the Labour
administration, took the opportunity to declare,

It is
better that these things be settled in due course by friendly
discussion than that they should have been sought to be settled by
means of war and force. If we had sought to settle them by force the
statement would not have been possible today.50