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With British warships looming off Abadan and an economic war squeezing Iran, Britain drags the oil dispute before the United Nations, and Mosaddegh crosses the ocean to fight it himself.
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Earlier Chapters of The Oil Dispute:
Episode Summary
In the spring of 1951, Mosaddegh’s oil nationalization law took Iran’s oil industry out of British hands. London’s first instinct was to invade. Military planners drew up schemes to land tens of thousands of troops and seize the Abadan refinery. What stopped them was not Iran but the United States. President Truma, made it clear that America would not support the use of force. And Prime Minister Attlee, never eager for war to begin with, set the plans aside.
So Britain reached for a quieter weapon, and the Abadan Crisis became an economic siege. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company pulled its British staff out of the refinery, and London pressured governments across Europe to keep foreign engineers from going to Iran in their place. It warned the world that anyone buying Iran’s “stolen” oil would face consequences, and it froze Iran’s hard currency in British banks. The British oil embargo was meant to squeeze until Iran’s will gave out. But when American advisers warned Mosaddegh about the collapse ahead, the old man would simply shrug and say, Tant pis pour nous. Too bad for us.
Believing it could win the argument in the court of world opinion, Britain then took Iran to the UN Security Council in October 1951, and Mosaddegh decided to go to New York himself. The Western press had called him a “Fainting Fanatic,” yet in the chamber he dismantled the British case with numbers, telling the council how the company earned sixty-one million pounds in a single year while Iran received nine, and then reading back, word by word, the insults Britain had used against his people. The council set the matter aside, and the British Empire walked away humiliated.
From there, Truman invited Mossadegh to Washington, where he charmed his hosts, embraced Acheson on the train platform, and spent seventy hours in talks with George McGhee, only to reject every compromise put in front of him. He went home empty-handed and saw that as a victory, because he would not have to defend a deal his people never wanted.
That autumn was the high point of the friendship between Iran and America.
But while Mosaddegh was winning over Washington, Churchill returned to power in London with no interest in compromise and only one goal, which was getting rid of Mosaddegh. The one thing standing in his way was the United States, and Churchill was prepared to wait until that changed.
Music
- Dian Shuai – One Step Away
- Max Anson – Where Does It End?
- Jay Varton – Inside Light
- Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen – The Road Less Travelled
- Mozart – Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488: II. Adagio
- Spearfisher, Cicely Parnas – Tombeau de Vivaldi
