In the
previous blog, we looked at the Arab-Israeli conflicts, a struggle rooted one
hundred years ago that continues to bleed the Middle East today. Now we
turn to the subject that has been behind the greatest imperial interventions
and coups of the 20th century: black gold. Oil.
From the
early 1900s, the right to extract and process Iranian oil had been held by a
massive British monopoly, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC),
the predecessor of the oil giant now known as BP (British
Petroleum). This arrangement was renewed through a new agreement in
1933.
After the Second World War, as Britain lost much of its global empire and its power began to fade, the Iranian people were receiving almost nothing from the enormous wealth flowing out of their own land. The Iranian government initially asked for a revision of the agreement, a modest increase in the share being paid to Iran by the company.
But Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh, the visionary leader of the nationalist front in the Iranian parliament, firmly rejected these surface-level compromises. His vision was far more radical: the immediate nationalisation of Iranian oil and the complete removal of foreign monopoly control. Backed by overwhelming public support, Mosaddegh was appointed Prime Minister of Iran on 28 April 1951, and his very first act was to announce to the world the official nationalisation of Iranian oil. For Britain, this was nothing less than the cutting of its economic lifeline in the Middle East.
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| 25 July 1952 issue of the Tehran Mosavvar: "Iran has won", featuring Mosaddegh and Churchill. |
The Suez Crisis
Before we get into the Suez Crisis, I want to share a small personal note. During my undergraduate studies, I read a play about the British Empire and its then Prime Minister Anthony Eden. The Suez Canal crisis and Gamal Abdel Nasser both appeared in that text. At the time, I only had a surface-level understanding of the events. Now, we are about to see the full picture.
On 23
July 1952, a military coup carried out by the Free Officers Movement
brought Lieutenant Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser to power in Egypt. Once in
office, Nasser worked toward two ambitious goals: the creation of a collective
security pact among Arab states, an Arab Union, and the building of a broader
solidarity under the umbrella of Islam.
But
Nasser’s larger vision went even further. He wanted to form a Third Bloc
a new power block positioned between the Eastern and Western blocs of the Cold
War. However, the establishment of the Baghdad Pact disrupted his plans
entirely.
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| Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at the foundation ceremony of the Aswan High Dam. |
When the US and the World Bank refused to fund the
Aswan Dam project, Nasser responded by nationalising the Suez Canal. In 1956, Nasser announced the
nationalization of the Suez Canal, which was under British-French joint
ownership. Following this, America, Britain, and France made numerous attempts
to remove Suez from Egyptian control but were unsuccessful.
Upon Nasser's rejection of the
proposal to leave the canal under international control, Britain, France, and
Israel came together and prepared a plan to seize the canal. (This is the event
that was the subject of the theatrical play I mentioned earlier; the play drew
its reference from here.) According to this plan, Israel would attack Egypt;
Britain and France would then deploy troops to the region under the pretext of
ending the war, and subsequently take over the canal. In accordance with this
plan, Israel launched an attack against Egypt on October 29, 1956.
Following their ultimatum to the
parties to “end the conflict,” Britain and France began deploying troops to the
region via the Mediterranean. USSR Premier Nikolai Bulganin sent a message to
US President Eisenhower, requesting that the US and the USSR send a joint
force to Egypt to stop the war, stating that otherwise, this could lead to
World War III. However, the US strongly opposed the joint force proposal and
declared that it would take the necessary measures if the Soviets sent troops
to Egypt.
The US Government and public did not accept this attack initiated by Britain and France. Indeed, the US reaction was harsh; it issued a stern warning to Britain, France, and Israel, demanding their withdrawal from Egyptian territory. These states were forced to withdraw from Egypt. The Suez Canal was subsequently cleared and reopened to global maritime traffic in March 1957. The most important consequence of the 1956 Suez Crisis was that while the aim was to eliminate Soviet Russia's prestige and influence in the Middle East, it actually increased them even further.
