Page 115 - The Origins of the United Arab Emirates_Neat

Saudi Arabia and Iran: Outside Pressures 9*

A few weeks later, the family of Shaykh Sa‘id of Dubai made
their first attempt to remove him from power. The Senior Naval
Officer named as one of the reasons for this the rulers failure
to obtain any compensation from Britain for the victims o t ic
captured jalbut. He urged that some way to appease the Arabs
be found, and admitted that he could not understand ‘why compensa­
tion to Arabs [of] Dubai molested on high seas should be further
delayed owing to possibility of settlement with Persia concerning
an island belonging to Ras al-Khaimah \75 The Foreign Office,
on the other hand, refused to press the Treasury for payment:
From the purely financial point of view . . . the proposal that
the British tax-payer should be asked to pay for the misdemeanours
of the Persian Customs Service is quite indefensible; and the
only question at issue therefore is whether such payment could
be justified on the grounds of overwhelming political necessity.
. . . We have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the relation­
ship of these Arabs towards us is not such as to justify them
in expecting compensation from us. . . ,76

While these discussions were taking place in London, Shaykh Sa‘id’s
position was becoming increasingly difficult. His people relied on
him for protection against Iranian attacks, and he in turn was
bound by his treaty relations to rely on the British Government
for the same protection. No such protection appeared, and Sa‘id
obviously regarded the British preoccupation with hopes of concluding
an Anglo-Persian treaty as irrelevant to his predicament, especially
as he had already that year faced an attempt to dislodge him
because of his acquiescence to British treatment. The Government
of India alone was conscious of the situation, and in November
1929 it decided that it would itself pay out, in full, the 5000
rupees compensation.77 This was eventually done in the presence
of Shaykh Sa‘id early in 1930.