A History of the World From the 20th to the 21st Century

(Jacob Rumans) #1

most backward Middle Eastern nations and the
peasant masses were sunk in poverty. Urban
development, especially the growth of Teheran,
expanded the number of artisans and shopkeep-
ers at the bottom of the social scale, who formed,
with a burgeoning bureaucracy, a disparate lower-
middle class. But it was students who became the
spearhead of revolutionary and nationalist senti-
ment, aided by a backlash of Islamic fundamen-
talism against modern Western ways and their
accompanying corruption and secularism.


In the spring of 1951 the Shah’s political control
was loosened when opposition pressure forced
him to appoint as prime minister a veteran, radical
politician called Mohammed Mossadeq. With the
struggle focusing on foreign influence – of which
the most potent symbol was the Anglo-Iranian
Oil Company – Mossadeq put himself at the head
of the nationalist movement. Control of oil sup-
plies had become the vital new factor in the
region’s politics. In the five years following the
war the production of crude oil was doubled from
250 million tons to 500 million; by 1960 pro-
duction reached 1,000 million tons. The West’s
demand for oil seemed insatiable, output reach-
ing 2,000 million tons in 1968. By far the largest
producer was Saudi Arabia, which also had the
largest reserves.
Britain’s position in the Middle East seemed
seriously threatened when in May 1951 the
largest oil refinery in the world, at Abadan, and
all other installations of the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company were peremptorily expropriated and
nationalised by Mossadeq. Anti-British rioting
heightened the tension. The British Labour gov-
ernment considered using force to protect the
valuable British investment, but the prime
minister, Clement Attlee, wisely chose to work
with the Americans and the United Nations to
achieve a peaceful settlement. A nation could not
be prevented from taking charge of its resources;
the oil companies, moreover, had not paid a fair
price for the oil that they had been extracting.
Pressure to settle was put on the Iranians by
Britain and the US, with British technicians with-
drawing from Abadan and bringing the refinery
to a halt.


But the most important lesson learnt by the oil-
producing countries was that possession of the
resources and installations did not give them com-
plete control. Since the oil-producers had to
export the bulk of the oil to the West, the inter-
national companies continued, through their mar-
keting facilities and outlets, to exert great influ-
ence. Thus in 1951 the Americans cooperated with
Britain to block the sale of oil produced by the
national Iranian oil company. Mossadeq’s moves,
at first applauded, plunged Iran into economic dif-
ficulties and his political supporters began to fight
each other. In August 1953, the Shah staged a
coup to recover the powers he had lost, with
strong support from America’s Central Intelli-
gence Agency and Britain’s intelligence services.
In the following year, the oil dispute was settled.
For the next twenty-five years, until 1979, the
Shah’s authoritarian rule, with American support,
appeared to provide the West with a secure ally.

Far-reaching in its consequences for the whole of
the Middle East was the Egyptian revolution of
1952, which produced the dominant Arab leader
of the 1950s and 1960s, Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Defeat in Palestine had not immediately brought
about the fall of King Farouk: there were plenty
of other fuses besides Palestine that led to revo-
lution. The inequitable distribution of land, made
worse by a rapidly increasing peasant population,
meant that living standards for the mass of under-
privileged Egyptians were falling, not rising. The
luxury and corruption of the Palace came to be
symbolised by the figure of the gross King
Farouk. Worse, the politicians and the king had
failed to remove the British troops from the Suez
Canal Zone. The last Palestine war was seen as
the latest indication of the inability of Egyptian
rulers to stand up to foreign, imperialist influence.
The Wafd Party had also, by this time, become
identified with weakness and corruption. A Wafd
government in 1951 tried to deprive the British
of any right to remain in the Suez bases by uni-
laterally abrogating the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of


  1. All that this gesture demonstrated was the
    continued helplessness of the Egyptians.
    Guerrilla attacks were launched on the British
    in their bases and were answered by British


440 THE ENDING OF EUROPEAN DOMINANCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST, 1919–80
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