Page 97 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

94 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

on 18 July. Much to the relief of his fellow shaikhs, Saqr ibn Muhammad
elected that week to play Achilles rather than Bonaparte and remained sulking
in his tent up in distant Ras al-Khaimah.
Bahrain declared her independence on 14 August when the existing treaties
with Britain were abrogated and replaced by a treaty of friendship to run for
fifteen years. Qatar followed suit on 1 September and concluded a similar

treaty. The Foreign Office’s attention could now be concentrated upon pacify­
ing the shah, whose complaints were daily growing shrilier. ‘Those islands,
Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunb, are ours!’ he cried in the last week of
September. ‘We need them. We shall have them. No power on earth will stop

us. . . . I have a war fleet, Phantom aircraft and brigades of paratroopers. I
could defy Britain and occupy the islands militarily.’ He had no need to distress
himself so. The British government had no intention of standing in his way,
nor was public opinion in Britain, at least in so far as it was articulated by the
press, opposed in the slightest to gratifying his wishes. Almost without excep­
tion, British newspaper opinion had been in favour of Britain’s withdrawal

from the Gulf from the moment that the Conservatives returned to office.
Now, in the autumn of 1971, it was equally in favour of appeasing the shah, so
as to facilitate Britain’s escape from the tiresome responsibilities which she had
so inconveniently inherited from her imperial past.
An editorial in the Sunday Times argued plausibly on 11 July,

If die Shah is willing to compensate the Shaikhs handsomely for the loss of their islands,
they will almost certainly be willing to agree. In that case, the Arabs must be provided
with a scape-goat. What better one than Britain, if we can find the formula before
December for the transfer to Iran of these miniscule seeds of discord? It would surely
not be beyond Britain’s capacity to bear the probably short-lived Arab odium that

would result.

The diplomatic correspondent of the Guardian, a newspaper much given to
moralizing about international affairs, commented on 3 November:

Given the military predominance in the area of the forces of Iran, and the very
considerable British financial interest in the Iranian oil industry, the path of realism
would appear to be to accept the inevitable and recognise the determination of the
Shah’s Government to occupy Abu Musa as soon as the British forces are gone.

The Guardian delivered a further sermon on the theme of ‘might is right on 20
November, in which it earnestly counselled satisfaction of the shah s claim to
the islands - which, it went on to observe (with a certainty which no dou t
proceeded from expert knowledge of the subject), ‘has some historic as wei as
strategic merit’. Sentiments of a similar kind were voiced by The Times,w ose

diplomatic correspondent airily observed in late November, If Iran carries ou
its threat to seize the Tumbs, Shaikh Sakr has only himself to blame.
The Foreign Office’s efforts to conciliate the shah finally bore rut
mid-November. A written understanding was concluded between the s a an