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

was
informed on 8th November 1951 that the basis for a settlement
had not been agreed.

At the same time in London,
the Secretary of State for co-ordination
of Transport, Fuel and Power, announced:

At the Prime Minister’s
request the latest American proposals for a
settlement of the Anglo-Persian oil dispute, which the United States
Secretary of State put to the Foreign Secretary in Paris has been
examined. These had been formulated after discussions with the
Persian Prime Minister in Washington. They would provide a wholly
inadequate financial return on the capital which we had invested in
Persia, and they contained no assurance that the refinery at Abadan
would be operated by British technicians. Alternative proposals had
therefore been formulated for discussion with Mr. Acheson in Paris.
These were based on the principle that the US oil companies should
join with us in operating the refinery at Abadan and should, in
return, give us some share in the operation of their oil concessions
in Saudi Arabia. The American proposals could not be accepted as a
basis for renewed negotiations with the Persian Government.26

On 13th
November the State Department declared that its efforts to
mediate in the oil dispute had failed and no new basis for a
settlement had been reached during Dr. Musaddiq’s visit to the
United States.

Anthony Eden, the
Conservative Foreign Secretary, was an old Iran
hand. At the University of Oxford Anthony Eden studied Persian,
‘which he continued