Page 97 - The Origins of the United Arab Emirates_Neat

Saudi Arabia and Iran: Outside Pressures 73

interest in the Gulf shaykhdoms was with their inland regions;
Iran’s with their littoral. Third, and most important, Saudi Arabia
is an Arab country, with close links with the Gulf shaykhdoms;
and Iran, though a Muslim country is non-Arab. I his last fact
is essential to any understanding of Gulf politics, particularly where
they concern territorial disputes.
Iran’s and Saudi Arabia’s eflorts to extend their respective spheres
of influence to the Trucial Coast, as well as to other Arab shaykhdoms
in the Gulf region, were made relatively easy by the fact that
all the rulers were bound by treaty to defer from dealing directly
with any government other than Britain. The result was that the
shaykhdoms, apart from being woefully inadequate at resisting any
form of onslaught, had to rely on British mediation for the solution
of their problems with their neighbours. Technically, therefore, no
relations between the Trucial States and Iran or Saudi Arabia
existed; Anglo-Iranian and Anglo-Saudi diplomacy had to serve
instead. This placed the rulers of the Coast on a particularly weak
footing, since any appeal they made to Britain had to be subjected
to various interdepartmental meetings and discussions in London
before agreement could be reached on what action should be taken;
as often as not, the policy of non-interference would be invoked.
In consequence of this, many a ruler found that, rather than wait
for help to reach him from Bushire, it was more expedient to
bypass his treaty obligations and enter secretly into independent
agreements with Iran or Saudi Arabia. This chapter seeks to analyse
the various relationships between the Trucial shaykhdoms and these
two powerful neighbours of theirs, but first it is necessary briefly
to consider internal developments in Iran and Saudi Arabia during
the period of their consolidation as modern states.
The renaissance of the Wahhabi movement, which had lain dor­
mant since the Ottoman occupation of Hasa in 1871, began in
1902, when Ibn Sa‘ud captured Riyadh.1 As, in an impressive
show of si nglcmi tided ness, he began to build his forces, organise
his strategy, and form the Ik/iwan, (a paramilitary Wahhabi bedouin
movement), other events in the Arabian peninsula, particularly the
Arab Revolt and the rise of the Sharifian dynasty, were of greater
concern to Great Britain.2 In 1913, however, Ibn Sa‘ud captured
Hasa, the fertile area stretching between Kuwait and Qatar, on
the western coast of the Gulf, and appointed his cousin ‘Abdallah
ibn Jaluwi governor of the province; in this way Wahhabi authority
was extended to the eastern coast of Arabia and became a force
to be reckoned with by the British in the management of their
interests in the Gulf region. Thus began a relationship that, although
never outwardly hostile, was of a strangely nebulous quality. Based
at first on an assumption of the superiority of Great Britain, it