Oil Nationalism And British Policy In Iran

As new nations were formed from the declining British Empire, a murky world of diplomats, oil executives and spies were determined to maintain London's grip on Iran and its strategic oil reserves. Directed from Whitehall by successive governments, this book explores the complexities and ambiguities of British policy in Iran and demonstrates its centrality to post-war imperial reorientation. Situating Iran within Britain's 'informal empire,' Jack Taylor demonstrates that Clement Attlee's Labour Government saw Iranian oil as critical to the construction of a domestic New Jerusalem, and used coercion, propaganda, and espionage to preserve their control over it. In doing so, they were forced to confront not only the emerging Cold War, but local resistance expressed through diverse forms including trade unionism, Soviet-inspired Marxism, and popular nationalism. Oil, Nationalism and British Policy in Iran offers new insight into the scale of British interference in Iran and its ultimate failure. It reveals that as London's policy floundered the United States independently took steps to safeguard their own regional economic and security interests. Although British actors were critical in the operation to depose Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh following his government's nationalisation of the oil industry, they were ultimately unable to sustain their informal empire in Iran.

In 1951 prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh seized British oil holdings in Iran. The move set in motion four years of bitter political and strategic battles between a United Kingdom desperate for an economic rebound and an increasingly anti-Western regime in Teheran. The Eisenhower administration tried to broker a settlement, but Mossadegh was overthrown by an Anglo-American operation and replaced by the Shah. In this book, Mary Ann Heiss provides a detailed account of this turning point in cold war history. Drawing on a range of British and American documents, she provides an incisive political, economic, and cultural analysis of the first British and American effort to contain communism and radical Third World nationalism; the first American effort to bolster a crumbling British Empire; and the first effort by the CIA to overthrow a popular nationalist regime. This book is the full story not only of the shift from British to American dominance in the oil economies of the Middle East but also of the rise of nationalism in the context of the cold war.

Muhammad Musaddiq was the first of the great charismatic anti-colonial campaigners of the post-war world. As Prime Minister of Iran between 1951 and 1953 he nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, led the nation's defiant attempt to run its oil industry independently during an economic blockade and attempted to run its oil industry independently during an economic blockade and attempted to strengthen the role of parliament in Iran. Musaddiq's crusade led to conflict with powerful foreign interests and in 1953 the CIA, at British instigation, removed him in a coup d'etat which restored the Shah's absolute powers. This book is a full-scale biography of Musaddiq which also charts the history of the Popular Movement from Musaddiq's downfall in 1953 to his death in 1967. Based on all the new material that has emerged from Iran since the revolution, Homa Katouzian's lively study is essential for all students of modern Iran, the Middle East and the politics of the Third World.

Illuminates the influence of the US in internal Iranian politics long before the 1953 coup by examining recently declassified CIA and US State Department documents.

This work deals with the oil crises of the 1950s, precipitated by Iran's decision to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The roots of the revolt against British imperialism are explored here, along with the long-term consequences of instability in the Middle East.

This book is a story about Iran's oil. It is also the story of The Great Games in the 19 century whereby the British Empire took control of the Middle East, known "World Cross Road." While until first World War all the Middle East; except Iran was part of Ottoman empire. At the same time, Iran lost all its North Western territories to Russia and Eastern to the British, becoming, a puppet of the British empire politics. That get concessions for all Iran mineral and commercial resources including the oil fields. Later these developments lead to the nationalization of Iran oil, the 1953 coup arranged by UK/US, President Nixon doctrine, planned 1973 war, increase price of oil, Iran's revolution and present destruction of the Middle East.

The emergence of the international oil corporation as a political actor in the twentieth century, seen in BP's infrastructure and information arrangements in Iran. In the early twentieth century, international oil corporations emerged as a new kind of political actor. The development of the world oil industry, argues Katayoun Shafiee, was one of the era's largest political projects of techno-economic development. In this book, Shafiee maps the machinery of oil operations in the Anglo-Iranian oil industry between 1901 and 1954, tracking the organizational work involved in moving oil through a variety of technical, legal, scientific, and administrative networks. She shows that, in a series of disagreements, the British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC, which later became BP) relied on various forms of information management to transform political disputes into techno-economic calculation, guaranteeing the company complete control over profits, labor, and production regimes. She argues that the building of alliances and connections that constituted Anglo-Iranian oil's infrastructure reconfigured local politics of oil regions and examines how these arrangements in turn shaped the emergence of both nation-state and transnational oil corporation. Drawing on her extensive archival and field research in Iran, Shafiee investigates the surprising ways in which nature, technology, and politics came together in battles over mineral rights; standardizing petroleum expertise; formulas for calculating profits, production rates, and labor; the “Persianization” of employees; nationalism and oil nationalization; and the long-distance machinery of an international corporation. Her account shows that the politics of oil cannot be understood in isolation from its technical dimensions. The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding from Knowledge Unlatched.

Oil Revolution chronicles the rise and fall of anti-colonial oil elites who forged a new international culture of economic dissent from the 1950s to the 1970s.