British Diplomatic Oil Crisis: Contemporary Anglo-Saxon Geopolitical Rivalries in the Persian Gulf: Drawing a Lesson? Or Sir Anthony Eden‘s Delusion of Grandeur.
The oil
refinery at Abadan represented not only wealth but also that
intangible in Britain’s presence in the Middle East, ‘prestige’. In
the words of the British Resident in Kuwait. Francis Pelly, ‘Abadan
stood for something… huge, a symbol which not even the most
sceptical Arab could deny of British energy, British wealth, British
efficiency and British industrial might.’ 32
The oil
refinery at Abadan was the largest in the world. Equally
crucial, the nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was
also an embarrassment the British Government due to the following
reasons. There was, of course, the perceived centrality of the
Persian Gulf, as Britain’s ‘life line’ in the Commonwealth strategic
defence system. This was reaffirmed by the Chiefs of Staff Committee
on 30th March1951, which emphasised again the vital aspects of
British defence considerations in the Persian Gulf in terms of the
air and sea communication links in the area; the treaty of
obligations Britain had towards Iraq, Jordan and other Arab states;
the need to preserve North Africa from communism or Russian
aggression; and the role of the Persian Gulf (air) bases as a
springboard for offensive and strategic air action in the event of
global war. This premise remained as unshakeable in the minds of the
Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence as it had been in
1945.33
The nationalisation of
Iranian oil confronted the Labour Cabinet of
1951,
headed by
Clement Attlee, with a dilemma. They had themselves
nationalised more industries than any previous government in British
history, including the entire coal mining industry, which like
Iranian oil, was then the country’s main
- LOUIS,
Musaddiq, Iranian Nationalism and Oil, (London: I.B.
Tauris and Co. Ltd., Publishers, 1988), pp. 229 -230. -
J. CABLE, Intervention at Abadan: Plan
Buccaneer,
(London: Macmillan, 1992), Chapters 5, 6,7.Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177
