Page 59 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

54 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

avowal of hope rather than afait accompli. It was enough, however, to excite the
feelings of the shah of Persia, who was already nervous about suggestions that
had been floating around in the British and American press about a possible
regional security pact between the major local powers, perhaps supported by
Turkey and Pakistan, to preserve the peace of the Gulf after Britain’s depar­
ture. On 27 January the Persian prime minister, Amin Abbas Hoveida, had
declared:

As the most powerful nation in the northern coast of the Persian Gulf, Iran is naturally
very much interested in the security and stability of this area. The Imperial Government
can protect, with the utmost power, its interests and rights in the Persian Gulf and will
not permit any country outside the region to interfere . . . Britain’s exit from one door
must not result in America’s entrance from the other door - or in British re-entry in a
new form.

Much the same view was expressed by the Russian government in a statement
published in Tass on 3 March:

The Soviet Union, loyal to its policy of protecting the national interests of sovereign
countries and peoples against the encroachments of imperialists, and realising that these
plans of neo-colonialism are directed against the security of the southern frontiers of the
USSR as well, comes out resolutely against the new attempts by aggressive circles in
the United States and Britain to interfere in the affairs of the countries in the area of the
Persian Gulf, and to dictate their will to those countries.

Encouraged by this selfless assurance, Muhammad Reza Shah breathed a
measure of fire in the second week of March, on the occasion of the inaugura­
tion of work on a new steel mill at Ispahan which was to be constructed with
Russian assistance: ‘I warn our current friends, the British and Americans,
that if they do not respect all the interests of Iran, especially its interests in the
Persian Gulf, they must expect that we will treat theirs in kind.’ Two months
later he was still complaining about the projected Federation of Arab Emirates,
calling it ‘a colonialist and imperialist manipulation and an attempt by Britain
to come back through the back door after announcing plans to withdraw from
east of Suez by 1971’.
What was really arousing the shah’s ire was the inclusion of Bahrain in the
new federation and the tacit ignoring of Persia’s long-standing claim to
sovereignty over the island. The claim itself had a very dubious foundation,
deriving from Bahrain’s occasional submission to provincial governors in
southern Persia from the seventeenth to the late eighteenth century, and from
the spasmodic attempts of Persian officials in the nineteenth century to make
good the Persian government’s pretensions. The British government had never
recognized the claim as having any validity, and it was repeatedly rejected by
the ruling dynasty of Bahrain, the Al Khalifah, who had conquered the island
in 1783 and ruled it uninterruptedly ever since. Despite their inability to