Page 316 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin 313

was a disposition on the part of the Western powers to indulge his fancies in this
respect, and to accede to his claims to stand sentinel over the Straits of
Hormuz. The dangers of retreating from the firm ground of international law
in determining the Western position on the status of the straits have become all
too apparent with the change of regime in Persia.
To turn the Gulf into a Persian sea, to make it once again thesinas Persicus of
antiquity, the shah expended considerable efforts, and even more considerable
sums of money, to create a Persian navy. On paper the results looked im­
pressive: three destroyers, four frigates, four corvettes, twenty patrol boats, a
dozen or so hovercraft, and an assortment of minesweepers, landing craft and
support ships. There was also a naval air wing of three squadrons of aircraft and
two dozen or more helicopters. On order in 1978 were six more frigates, nine
submarines and fourSprwance-class destroyers, the most modern and powerful
warships of their kind, the first of which was only then entering into service
with the United States Navy. There could have been only one intention behind
the projected acquisition of the submarines and Spruance-class destroyers, and
this was to extend the range of Persia’s naval capability beyond her own
territorial waters into the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. To carry this plan
into effect would have required more extensive facilities than those available at
the existing naval base at Bandar Abbas, where a dockyard had already been

built at a cost of £60 million. So the shah ordered the construction of a huge
naval, military and air base at Chah Bahar on the Makran coast outside the Gulf
proper, where, so report had it, he envisaged the possible use of the base by
American nuclear submarines, a possibility which, if it had ever existed,
became exceedingly remote as time went by. When the initial contracts for
Chah Bahar were signed in November 1975 the estimated cost of the base was
$2,500 million. The figure kept rising over the next couple of years, in roughly
the same proportion as Persia’s oil revenues declined; so that by 1978 only the
air base was anywhere near completion, while work on the naval station had
barely begun.
While the shah plainly regarded his fledgling navy as a glittering instrument
of his will, the reality was somewhat different. The sea has never been the
Persians’ natural element. Persia has no indigenous naval or maritime tra­
dition, and seamen cannot be conjured from the waves by royal command.
Though the shah spent a great deal of money in buying ships, creating naval
facilities and recruiting naval advisers from Britain and the United States, the
legacy of the past could not be overcome. While he posed as the guardian of the
maritime peace of the Gulf, he had to rely upon the ships of the Royal Navy to

carry out a hydrographic survey of its waters. His admirals proved themselves
more adept at lining their pockets than at mastering the arts of seamanship. In
February 1976 the commander-in-chief of the navy, Rear-Admiral Ramzi
Abbas Atai, was tried on charges of corruption, fined £3.7 million and sen­
tenced to five years’ imprisonment. Ten other naval officers were tried with