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

We should
not put our long-term interests in Persia at serious risk
in return for some short-term protection of our economy, which, if
our estimate of Persia’s probable expenditure of sterling is
correct, may prove quite unjustified,62

Was the view of the Foreign
Office back in 1952.

‘Persia would again become
an important market as soon as there was
a settlement of the oil dispute,’
63 had been the view of the Board of Trade in
1952.

On
welcoming the agreement in the House of Commons Eden said,
‘although the title (of ownership of Abadan refineries and
installation) is transferred, the actual use of the refineries is
the same under the new arrangement as before.’
64 In December 1954 the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company changed its name to the British Petroleum Company Ltd.

The aim
of this chapter was to explain how the Conservative
Government dealt with the nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company by the Iranian Government, and brought the crisis to an end.
The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was the most important British
enterprise overseas, and the major British interest in the Persian
Gulf.

At first,
as this book has shown, conciliation and diplomacy were
the preferred options by the United States Government for a solution
to the Anglo- Iranian Oil Company’s crisis. Both, as has been seen,
the Truman and Eisenhower administrations were concerned about the
communist threat in Iran, where the Western world had vested
economic and political interests. The Truman

62. PRO, London, T236/3664,
Treasury Records, Cabinet, Persia
(Official) Committee, Control of Persia’s use of sterling with all
countries outside the sterling area. Note by the joint Secretaries,
Confidential, 20th May 1952.

63. PRO, London, T236/3664, Treasury
Records, Cabinet, Persia
(Official) Committee, Exports to Persia. Note by the Board of Trade,
Secret, 21st July 1952.

64. Parliamentary Debates,
Commons, in ENAYAT, op. cit., p. 185.

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