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 US
Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, argued that on the
contrary the British should settle with Musaddiq.’
16 On the other hand, however, the American
Government was much more worried by the possibility of Communist
takeover. This fear, in international as well as national
politics, justified to Americans the over- riding of principles,

that in ‘normal’ times
would never have been questioned. Russia must
be ‘contained’, so went the argument. The nations on her periphery
are mostly backward and cannot be left to work out their own
history,for this will be disintegration and economic chaos,
culminating in communism.17

So the
American view was that she should develop an active policy of
incorporating these small nations into a firm US-controlled
cordon sanitaireisolating the Soviet Union from the rest of
the world. This could be done to a limited extent according to the
American view, by military aid, but much more effectively by
economic and financial aid, in effect leading to domination and
control.

At this point American
political and economic interests interlocked.
In March 1951 the US Assistant Secretary of State for New Eastern
Affairs,

George McGhee, expressed the view that

the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was not giving Iran her legitimate
dues, and was therefore responsible for much of the current unrest
over oil and the economic instability in the oil country.18

Until
just before the Second World War, the US position in the
Middle East had not been very strong. As far as oil was concerned,
only 13% of Middle