Page 60 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The Retreat from the Gulf 55

substantiate the claim on legal or historical grounds, and their even greater
inability to enforce it, the Persians had persisted with it as a matter of amour
propre. Appearance being all in such matters, Muhammad Reza Shah had kept
up the performance since he came to the throne during the Second World War.
Bahrain was regularly listed in official publications as a province of the Persian
empire, legislation purporting to apply to it was solemnly enacted by the
Persian parliament, or majlis, and diplomatic protests were frequently voiced
against supposed violations, especially by Britain, of Persia’s sovereign rights
in Bahrain. Thus it hardly came as a surprise when, less than a fortnight after
the shah’s speech at Ispahan, the Persian claim to Bahrain was formally
reasserted in a note to the British government.
Over the next two years a series of exchanges over Bahrain took place
between the two governments which it would be tedious as well as unrewarding
to describe here. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain all at one time or another
joined in the diplomatic manoeuvring without exerting any decisive influence
upon its outcome. The shah was playing for advantage, knowing full well that
he could not make good his claim in law, still less by force of arms. What he was
really seeking was a way to disencumber himself gracefully of the claim and at
the same time to reap some reward for doing so. In his pursuit of this aim he
was greatly abetted by the British government, which was equally bent upon
making an untroubled exit from the Gulf and did not want to be impeded in the
attainment of this goal by any awkward obligation to defend the territorial
integrity of Bahrain against the Persians. A number of meetings in Geneva,
that city of murky compromises, led at the close of 1969 to the devising of a
formula which would save face on both sides. The Bahrain question would be
referred to the secretary-general of the United Nations, who would in turn
appoint a mission of inquiry to determine the ‘true wishes’ of the people of
Bahrain regarding the future status of the shaikhdom.
Thus far the shah’s reassertion of the Persian claim to Bahrain had been
more or less successful in its object, which was to impede any progress that
might be made by the Gulf shaikhdoms towards federation. While the claim
hung in the air the rulers of Qatar and the Trucial Shaikhdoms were loath to
enter into any form of association with Bahrain that might require them to
support the shaikhdom against the shah. They were also extremely wary of the
possibility that Bahrain’s more advanced economy, her longer mercantile
experience, her more sophisticated society and her much larger population
would combine to give her a preponderant position in the projected federation.
At first the Bahrainis did what they could to stifle these apprehensions on the
part of their prospective partners, whose moral backing, at least, they were
anxious to secure in their resistance to the shah. As time went by, however,
their efforts slackened, as they came to acknowledge the fruitlessness of
continuing to deny the obvious. Bahrain, with a population of well over
200,000, greater than that of the seven Trucial Shaikhdoms combined, and a