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Territorial Claims: Saudi Arabia and Iran 129

as adamantly, for Iran was willing to forego it in exchange for
Tunb. Abu Musa had deposits of red oxide, and a concession
to mine it was first granted in 1898 by the ruler of Sharjah,
to three Arabs. In 1906 two of these transferred their rights to
the German firm of Wonckhaus, without the ruler’s permission,
'fhc following year, at the instigation of the British, the ruler
cancelled the concession and this became a subject of dispute between
the British and German governments, especially after a British warship
forcibly removed the Wonckhaus workers.16 After the war the British
Government decided that Wonckhaus had no claim to a new conces­
sion, and in January 1923 an Englishman by the name of Strick
was granted a five-year concession by the ruler of Sharjah. This
prompted the Iranian authorities in 1925 to send a man from
Lingah to bring back some bags of oxide, after which the Iranian
Government reasserted its claim to Abu Musa. In June 1934, the
Strick concession having expired, Shaykh Sultan bin Saqr asked
the Political Resident for permission to grant a concession to Iranians
from Dubai.17 Since the answer was not immediately forthcoming,
a British firm, Golden Valley Ochre and Oxide Company Ltd,
stepped in and obtained a six-month option,18 which was converted
into a commercial concession late in January 1935. The Iranian
Government saw the concession as a breach of the status quo
pending a final decision on who owned sovereignty over Abu Musa, i!
and in a formal protest to London asked for the concession to
be cancelled. The Foreign Office ignored the protest, and the matter .1
was dropped. :
Britain’s failure to resolve the question of the disputed islands—mili­
tarily, diplomatically or otherwise—was strongly indicative of the i
nature of its policy in the Gulf area. Unlike in other parts of
the world, it did not, in applying its policy, have to pay much
regard to public opinion, whether British or Arab: because of the •!:
strong control it exercised over the area, news of events there
was unlikely to reach any further than the desks of officials in
Delhi or London; the military weakness of the shaykhs made them
irrelevant in terms of power politics; and there was still no sign
of oil on the Coast, and, thus, of the area’s acquiring economic
importance.
Had British interest in the islands been strong enough, action
to establish Ar^ib ownership of them would have been forthcoming.
In the ease of the seizure of the Arab dhow, the Treasury, in
refusing to sanction the payment of compensation (see above, Chapter
5), stated that the British taxpayer should not have to pay for
the actions of the Iranian customs service. When it seemed that
an Anglo-Pcrsian agreement was about to be concluded, Shaykh
Sultan of Ras al-Khaimah was induced by the British (who hoped