A History of the Middle East (35 page)

In 1931, after ten years’ experience in Iraq, Captain John Bagot Glubb (or Glubb Pasha, as he was later known) arrived to found the Desert Patrol as a special branch of the Transjordanian army (the Arab Legion) entrusted with the task of keeping order in the desert. Its novel aspect was that it used tribesmen to maintain security among their fellow-beduin. Glubb had remarkable success in gaining the confidence of the beduin and persuading them of the advantages of stability and order. In this way they became loyal to the Transjordanian state and many of them came to serve in the regular armed forces.

Faced with the problem of Palestine, Britain was happy to allow Abdullah increasing independence as the undisputed leader of Transjordan. Although his claim to rule was based on his Hashemite family’s version of pan-Arabism, his remarkable political skills enabled him to secure the fierce loyalty of most of the local tribal leaders to himself and his family. In 1934 Britain agreed that the emir could appoint consular representatives in other Arab states, and in 1939 it approved the formation of a council of ministers in charge of government departments and responsible to the emir. In 1946 Transjordan became formally independent, although still relying heavily on British subsidy and support. Emir Abdullah took the title of king.

Although Transjordan was developing separately and differently, it was far from insulated from events in Palestine west of the River
Jordan. There were many ties of blood between the people of the two banks, and the higher levels of education among Palestinians resulted in some of them being recruited as officials for the fledgeling administration in Amman. Transjordanians felt emotionally involved in the unfolding tragedy of Palestine. However, an element of territorial nationalism was growing up in Transjordan as it did elsewhere in the former Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. (Here it was given some historical validity by the feeling that the Transjordanians were descended from the Nabataeans of Petra.) A feeling of ‘Transjordan for the Transjordanians’ was eventually translated into a law confining government posts to Transjordanians. This was opposed by Arab nationalists, who maintained that nothing should intensify the artificially imposed divisions between the Arabs, but in practical terms the separate development of Transjordan had the support of the great majority of the country.

Abdullah concentrated on building up his power base in Transjordan, which, though smaller and poorer than Palestine or Syria, had the advantage that he could rule it through his personal authority. But this did not mean that he had abandoned his Hashemite pan-Arab aspirations. These did not include Egypt or the Arabian peninsula, which by 1925 had been lost by the Hashemites to Ibn Saud, but he had never abandoned his family’s claims in Greater Syria. He had little chance in French-ruled Syria, but Palestine was different. At the beginning of the British mandate he made a shrewd and realistic assessment of the Zionists’ power and aspirations and was quite prepared to negotiate with them. He foresaw a time when the Palestinian Arabs might seek his protection and be prepared to accept his rule. It was for this reason that he urged acceptance of the 1937 Peel commission’s proposal for partition and the joining of Arab Palestine to Transjordan.

Inevitably Abdullah’s stand gave him many enemies among Arab nationalists who opposed the Hashemites, ranging from Hajj Amin’s Husseini family in Palestine to republicans in Syria. He had his supporters in both these countries, but they did not predominate. His Hashemite cousins in Iraq were more friendlily disposed but
were not prepared to accept his leadership. He was prepared to await events in Palestine.

Persia/Iran

Although Persia declared its neutrality at the outbreak of the First World War, it did not escape involvement. Turkey’s violation of Persian territory in order to attack Russia and the Turkish threat to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s oilfield and refinery in the south of the country led to the occupation of large areas of Persian territory by Russian and British troops. This increased sympathy among the Persian people for the German and Turkish side in the war. At the end of the war, Persia joined the League of Nations as an independent state, but the country was in chaos. Its armed forces were divided and the treasury was empty.

The defeat of Russia in the war and the subsequent Bolshevik Revolution helped to relieve Persia from Russian pressure for a time. This tempted Britain to bring Persia into its sphere of influence. The foreign secretary, Lord Curzon, wrote in 1919,

Curzon instigated the Anglo-Persian agreement of 1919 which, while reaffirming Persia’s independence and territorial integrity, provided for the appointment of British military and civil advisers, co-operation in the development of transport and a loan of £2,000,000. The agreement would have ensured British ascendancy
in Persia and was strongly criticized by the United States. However, in consequence of the strength of feeling aroused in the country, the Majlis refused to ratify the agreement and the British advisers who had taken up their posts were sent home.

In contrast, on 26 February 1921 a Soviet–Persian treaty was signed by which the Soviet government renounced ‘the tyrannical policy’ of tsarist Russia, remitted all Persian debts and abandoned extraterritorial privileges for Russian nationals. The treaty also gave up all concessions then held by the Russian government or nationals, although the Soviet government secured under pressure the valuable concession of the Caspian fisheries, which had previously belonged to Russian nationals but had lapsed. This treaty was promptly ratified by the Majlis. Little attention was paid to a clause authorizing Russia to send troops into Persia if it judged that it had become a base for military action against Russia.

With a weak and corrupt government and an incompetent young shah, the internal situation further deteriorated. At this point the forceful and outstanding commander of the Persian Cossack brigade, Colonel Reza Khan, was persuaded by a group of reformers to march with his men on Tehran. He entered the capital on 21 February 1921. The cabinet resigned and a new government was formed with Reza Khan as minister of war and commander-in-chief. Shortly afterwards he took full control of the government as prime minister.

Reza Khan’s first task was to reunite and build up the armed forces. He commandeered state funds to ensure that the troops were regularly paid. In this way he gradually created a relatively efficient and disciplined army of 40,000, through which he aimed to establish the authority of the central government throughout the country. In 1924 he suppressed a rebellion by the autonomous shaikh of Mohammereh (renamed Khorramshahr), in whose territory the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s concession lay. To help reorganize the country’s disastrous finances he invited in a US financial expert, A. C. Millspaugh, who with a small group of advisers made considerable progress. In the inter-war years Persia became a major oil producer. Production rose from 12 million barrels in 1920 to 46
million in 1930, making Persia the fourth largest producer in the world, after the USA, Russia and Venezuela.

Because of public disillusion with the long experience of corrupt and incompetent monarchy, there was widespread support for a republic. The religious leaders, who feared the consequences of Kemal Atatürk’s abolition of the caliphate and institution of a secular republic, opposed such a change, however. Reza Khan therefore decided to retain the monarchy and make himself shah. On 31 October 1925, by a large majority, the Majlis declared the end of the Qajar dynasty. A new constituent assembly then vested the crown in Reza Shah, with the right of succession to his heirs. He took the name of Pahlavi for his dynasty. In 1935 he officially changed the name of the country from Persia to Iran.

Although it was the mullahs who had helped to make him shah, he regarded most of them as backward and reactionary. In fact in many respects he modelled his regime on that of Atatürk as he embarked on a policy of westernization. He introduced a French judicial system which challenged the competence of the religious courts. Civil offices were opened for marriage, education was reorganized on Western lines and literacy steadily increased. The University of Tehran was established in 1935, with a number of Europeans on the staff. In 1936 women were compelled to discard the veil and European costume was made obligatory for both sexes. Reza Shah pursued his policy of pacifying and unifying the country – a task which had been beyond the competence of the Qajar shahs – by subduing the semi-independent tribes. The Bakhtiaris and Kashgars were placed under the rule of military officers.

Improved communications were vital for the unification of the empire’s extensive territories. The German Junkers company organized an internal air service. Postal services and telecommunications were vastly improved. American and European engineers helped to build roads and railways. The construction of a Trans-Iranian Railway from the Caspian Sea to the Gulf was a project for which the shah aroused the enthusiasm of the whole nation.

Progress meant industrialization, and a range of new textile, steel, cement and
other factories were established. Some of them were profitable.

Reza Shah’s firm rule and national assertiveness raised Iran’s international standing and increased its bargaining power. He denounced all treaties which conferred extraterritorial rights on the subjects of foreign powers. In a dispute with the Soviet government over the Caspian fisheries, he secured a compromise in the formation of a Persian-Russian company to exploit the fisheries. To achieve his aim of improving the meagre revenues from the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, he was prepared to take the risk of cancelling the concession in 1932. Britain referred the matter to the League of Nations, and the dispute ended in 1933 with a compromise under which Persia received substantially better terms.

Reza Khan’s vigorous assertion of Persian national rights forced Britain to remove the seat of its authority in the Gulf to Bahrain on the western coast. Two British coaling stations on Persian territory were removed, and the Royal Air Force switched its route for flights to India from the Persian to the Arab shore. However, friction continued as Reza Khan periodically reasserted Persia’s claim to Bahrain.

Reza Khan’s successes had negative aspects. His lavish and authoritarian military rule left little room for personal freedom or initiative. The Majlis was preserved but became little more than a façade. Some of the economic policies were misconceived and wasteful. Agriculture was seriously neglected, and the policy of settling the nomads was an outright failure because no adequate provision was made for them to maintain their flocks in the areas of their settlement. Most seriously for Reza Khan’s reputation, he acquired huge areas of the best land for himself either by confiscation on political charges or by methods of purchase which amounted in effect to expropriation.

Oil and the Middle East

The first oil to be discovered in the Middle East was in Persia, and for the first three decades of the twentieth century Persia remained
the only oil-producing country in the region. Lord Curzon may have slightly exaggerated when he declared that ‘the Allies floated to victory on a wave of oil’ in the First World War, but nevertheless for Britain, with its controlling interest in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, Persian oil was the major strategic and economic interest in the region alongside the Suez Canal.

However, even before the First World War there was little doubt that northern Mesopotamia was another potentially oil-rich area. Oil from surface seepages was taken by donkey to provide domestic fuel in Turkey. In 1904 Calouste Gulbenkian, a wealthy Armenian financier, wrote a report on the commercial possibilities of the oil of northern Mesopotamia which caused Sultan Abdul Hamid to transfer these state lands to his own privy purse. On the eve of the First World War, the Ottoman government granted a concession to the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) in which the Anglo-Persian Oil Company had a half interest together with Royal Dutch Shell and the German Deutsche Bank. The participants in TPC pledged themselves not to be interested directly or indirectly in the production or manufacture of oil in the Ottoman Empire in Europe and Asia except through the TPC with the exclusion of certain areas delimited on a map by a red line. This became known as ‘the Red Line agreement’. Hence at the end of the war, Britain, with its troops occupying Mosul and having expropriated the German interest in TPC, was in a commanding position to control Mesopotamian oil. However, Britain had obligations to France under the secret 1916 Sykes–Picot agreement, which, in its original form, included Mosul in the French zone of influence. In 1919 Britain persuaded France to transfer Mosul to the British zone, in return for a guaranteed role in the development of Mosul oil.

France also agreed to the construction of two separate pipelines for the transport of oil from Mesopotamia and Persia through the French spheres of influence to the Mediterranean.

It was at this point that the United States government intervened. Although the USA was retreating into the political isolation which lasted until the Second World War, it was determined that, while
accepting the Anglo-French mandates, an ‘open-door’ policy should be maintained in commercial matters in the mandated territories. This meant equal treatment ‘in law and in fact to the commerce of all nations’, but oil was the chief concern. The British government, on the other hand, felt that the USA already had enough oil of its own in Texas. A prolonged and sometimes acrimonious correspondence between the US State Department and the British Foreign Office ensued. The final upshot was that Iraq’s oil industry became a monopoly of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), the successor of the TPC, which was owned jointly in 23.75 per cent shares by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later BP); Royal Dutch Shell; an American group which was ultimately reduced to Standard Oil of New Jersey and Socony-Vacuum (later Mobil); and the Compagnie Française des Pétroles (CFP), with Calouste Gulbenkian holding the remaining 5 per cent. The US State Department had achieved an entrée for American companies into the Middle Eastern oil arena, but in doing so it was in fact accepting the provisions of the Red Line agreement which Britain considered to be still in force, excluding all other than IPC participants.