Page 98 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The Retreat from the Gulf 95

Shaikh Khalid of Sharjah providing for the establishment of a Persian military
post on Abu Musa in return for the payment to the shaikh of an annual subsidy

of $3.5 million for a period of nine years, or until such time as any revenues the
shaikh might derive from oil discovered in his territories reached the sum of $7
million annually - after which, presumably, they were to be shared. At the
same time the British government informed the Persians that the treaties with
the Trucial Shaikhdoms would be terminated on 1 December, and that the
UAE would be formally inaugurated the following day, when a treaty of

friendship would be signed between Britain and the federation. Only the
question of Ras al-Khaimah and the Tunbs remained, and on this, after some
delicate manoeuvring at Tehran, a tacit understanding emerged that the
British, for their part, would nor oppose a Persian occupation of the islets,
while the shah, on his side, would take no step to effect an occupation until

after the abrogation of the British treaties with Ras al-Khaimah on 1
December, when the British government would be under no requirement
whatever to assist the shaikhdom. Moreover, since Ras al-Khaimah was not a
member of the UAE, the federal rulers would have no legal obligation to
support Shaikh Saqr in resisting any Persian move to occupy the Tunbs.
Everything was now settled, with all parties satisfied - except, of course,
Shaikh Saqr, but then he was a notoriously awkward character - and Britain

could now retire smoothly and gracefully from the Gulf. The Middle-East
correspondent of the Financial Times, who was watching approvingly from the
sidelines in Kuwait, extended his congratulations on 30 November, both to
Luce on his ‘considerable triumph’ at Tehran and to the shah ‘who has acted in

a very statesmanlike manner’. The congratulations were a little premature.
That same day Persian troops went ashore on both Abu Musa and the Tunbs,
inflicting several casualties upon a police detachment from Ras al-Khaimah
stationed on the Greater Tunb which opposed the Persian landing. What had
gone wrong? Had the shah failed to keep his word? Or had an excess of
cleverness in the scheme concocted at Tehran simply caused confusion? What­
ever it was, the shah achieved a propaganda triumph with his coup de theatre,

which he vauntingly represented to his people as a humiliating defeat for the
power which had held sway in the Gulf for 150 years. There appeared to be no
conscious realization of any humiliation on Home’s part when he rose in the
House of Commons on 6 December to announce the termination of Britain’s

guardianship of the Gulf and to explain the circumstances in which it had
occuired. Perhaps it was because he was simply unaware of how such events
are viewed in the Middle East, just as he seemed to be uncertain whether or not
sovereignty over Abu Musa and the Tunbs had actually been transferred to
. e.r^a' As f°r Tunbs and Abu Musa,’ he told the House, ‘their sovereignty
is left open.’ When questioned on the point he repeated what he had said: ‘The
w of the government of Iran, as I understand it, is that the sovereignty issue

has not been raised by either side.’ How Home could make this statement is