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

As a
result, an official British mission headed by Richard Stokes,
Lord Privy Seal, and Minister of Materials left for Iran on 3rd
August 1951. Harriman prepared the way for the Lord Privy Seal’s
mission.

Richard Stockes was a
wealthy businessman whose family industrial
firm, Ransome and Rapier, had extensive and long- standing
connections with the Middle East. During the 1930s he had offered to
have his company’s rearmament work done at cost price. In the
circumstances of post-war England, he was probably one of the few
Labour politicians who came within range of the American idea of a
‘millionaire’. Within Labour circles he was regarded as somewhat of
an expert on the region.18

Accompanying Stokes were Sir Donald Fergusson, Permanent Secretary
of the Ministry of Fuel and Power, a Treasury official, technical
advisor on oil and an official from the Economic Relations
Department of the Foreign Office. Shepherd, British Ambassador to
Iran, joined the party, which was joined in Teheran by a counsellor
at the British Embassy and an expert on Iranian affairs. Five
representatives of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company also travelled with
them, but did not sit at the conference table.

Richard Stokes, Lord Privy
Seal, put forward proposals which were
designed to ensure ‘(a) efficient production of the oil, (b) a large
off take of oil, and (c) availability of a large quantity of oil to
those British interests which have developed it ‘
19, while offering the Iranian nationalisation
and the withdrawal of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, as such,
from Iran. For (a) it was necessary to