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

off against
the other, then it would be bad for the whole British strategy
in the Middle East. Bevin saw the Anglo-American cooperation as the antidote
to an Iranian strategy that would ‘play us one against the other’.24 In the British view the
Iranians were continuously
bidding up, changing the demands, ‘bazaar method of negotiation’,25 Bevin put it. Iran’s line
was, despite the fact
that Iran needed revenues from oil, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company
needed the Iranian’s Government’s cooperation just as much. In the
summer of 1950, the Iranian Prime Minister, Razmara, said, ‘Iran
could give the British plenty of trouble if they [did] not
cooperate’.26

In the late summer of 1950 the
British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, as
part of the effort to use the Americans in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s
crisis, to prevent Iran from playing the Americans off against the British,
came up with the idea of a joint Anglo-American Loan to Iran on the
condition that Iran ratified the Supplemental Agreement. The Americans did
not agree with the scheme. In the American view, ‘the scheme would not serve
the best interests of any of [the] countries involved.’
27 The Americans believed that since the British
Government held the majority ownership in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company,
it should therefore have control the Company.28 Bevin pressed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company
to
make some concessions, to ‘find something to offer’. The Anglo-
Iranian Oil Company refused to accept Bevin’s request on the basis
that, ‘it was difficult to find something the Iranians would
accept’.29

In May 1951, immediately after
the Shah made Musaddiq Prime Minister, Dr.
Musaddiq sent the Governor of the province of Khuzistan to the Anglo-

24 . M.A. HEISS,
The United States, Great Britain, and Iranian Oil, 1950-, Ph.D.
Thesis, The Ohio State University, 1991, p.42.

1. 25. Ibid., p.43.

2. 26. Ibid.

3. 27. Ibid., p.45.

4. 28. Ibid., p.47.

5. 29. Ibid., p.49.

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