History of Iran–United Kingdom relations

Iran–United Kingdom relations were historically preceded by Iran's (which was called Persia by the West before 1935) political relations with England since the late Ilkhanate period (13th century) when King Edward I of England sent Geoffrey of Langley to the Ilkhanid court to seek an alliance.^[1]

Until the early nineteenth century, Iran was a remote and legendary country for Britain, so much so that the European country never seriously established a diplomatic center, such as a consulate or embassy. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Iran grew in importance as a buffer state to the United Kingdom's dominion over India. Britain fostered conflict between Iran and Afghanistan as a means of forestalling an Afghan invasion of India.^[2]

In the year 1553, King Edward VI of England hired the wealthy merchant and explorer, Sebastian Cabot to develop a semi-profitable trading company. He was given two ships that sailed towards the port city of Arkhangelsk. The captain of one of those ships was Cpt. Richard Chancellor, who successfully reached the northern city. From there, Sebastian Cabot and his envoy traveled towards the Russian city of Moscow with a business proposition for the Grand Duke Ivan IV the Terrible. When it was accepted, the Moscow Trading Company came into existence. South of the Moscow Trading Company Headquarters was the wealthy realm of the Safavid Empire. The company started sending envoys during the reign of Shah Tahmasp I during the first years in business. Anthony Jenkinson was one of the first leaders of these envoys. In total, there were six visits and the last one was in June 1579 during the reign of Shah Mohammad Khodabandeh led by Arthur Edwards. But at the time the company's envoys reached the royal court in Qazvin, the Shah was busy protecting his borders from his arch rival, the Ottoman Empire. In order to attain the wealth of the country, the company penetrated successfully into the bazaars and dispatched more envoys.^[3]

In 1597, as Abbas I of Safavid sought to establish an alliance against his arch rival, the Ottomans, he received Robert Shirley, Anthony Shirley, and a group of 26 English envoys in Qazvin. The English delegation, also well aware of the Ottoman threat, were more than glad to have Persia as an ally against the Ottoman threat. Shah Abbas warmly received the delegation and took them as his guests with him to Isfahan, his new capital.

Soon, the Shirley brothers were appointed by the Shah to organize and modernize the royal cavalry and train the army (most notably the elite "Ghulam" slave soldiers, consisting of en masse deported and imported Circassians, Georgians, and Armenians and other Caucasians by the Shahs). The effects of these modernizations proved to be highly successful, as from then on the Safavids proved to be an equal force against their arch rival, immediately crushing them in the first war to come (Ottoman–Safavid War (1603–1618)) and all other Safavid wars to come. Many more events followed, including the debut of the British East India Company into Persia, and the establishment of trade routes for silk through Jask in the Strait of Hormuz in 1616. It was from here where the likes of Sir John Malcolm later gained influence into the Qajarid throne.

Anglo-Persian relations picked up momentum as a weakened Safavid empire, after the short-lived revival by the military genius Nader Shah (r. 1736-1747), eventually gave way to the Qajarid dynasty, which was quickly absorbed into domestic turmoil and rivalry, while competing colonial powers rapidly sought a stable foothold in the region. While the Portuguese, British, and Dutch, competed for the south and southeast of Persia in the Persian Gulf, Imperial Russia was largely left unchallenged in the north as it plunged southward to establish dominance in Persia's northern territories.^[4]

Plagued with internal politics and incompetence, the Qajarid government found itself fast after their ascendancy incapable of rising to the numerous complex foreign political challenges at the doorsteps of Persia.

During the monarchy of Fath Ali Shah, Sir John Malcolm, Sir Harford Jones-Brydges, 1st Baronet, Allen Lindsay, Henry Pottinger, Charles Christie, Sir Henry Rawlinson, Harold Nicolson, Sir John McNeill, Edmund Ironside, and James Morier were some of the British elite closely involved with Persian politics. Allen Lindsay was even appointed as a general in Abbas Mirza's army.

A weakened and bankrupted royal court under Fath Ali Shah was forced to sign the Treaty of Gulistan in 1813, followed by the Treaty of Turkmenchay after efforts by Abbas Mirza failed to secure Persia's northern front against Imperial Russia. The treaties were prepared by the Sir Gore Ouseley with the aid of the British Foreign Office in London. Sir Gore Ouseley was the younger brother of the British orientalist William Ouseley, who served as secretary to the British ambassador in Persia.

In fact, Iran's current southern and eastern boundaries were determined by none other than the British during the Anglo-Persian War (1856 to 1857). After repelling Nasereddin Shah's attack in Herat in 1857, the British government assigned Frederic John Goldsmid of the Indo-European Telegraph Department to determine the borders between Persia and India during the 1860s.^[5]

In 1872, the Shah signed an agreement with Baron Julius de Reuter, which George Nathaniel Curzon called "The most complete and extraordinary surrender of the entire industrial resources of a kingdom into foreign hands that has ever been dreamed of".^[6]

The Reuter Concession was immediately denounced by all ranks of businessmen, clergy, and nationalists of Persia, and the concession was quickly forced into cancellation.^[7]

Similarly, the "Tobacco fatwa", decreed by Grand Ayatollah Mirza Hassan Shirazi was an incident which raised popular resentment against the British presence in Persia in lieu of a diplomatically decapitated and apathetic Qajar throne. Concessions such as this and the 70-year contract of Persian railways to be operated by British businessmen such as Baron de Reuter became increasingly visible. The visibility became particularly pronounced after the discovery of oil in Masjed Soleiman in 1909 and the establishment of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and the "D'Arcy Concession".

By the end of the 19th century, Britain's dominance became so pronounced that Khuzestan, Bushehr, and a host of other cities in southern Persia were occupied by Great Britain, and the central government in Tehran was left with no power to even select its own ministers without the approval of the Anglo-Russian consulates. Morgan Shuster, for example, had to resign under tremendous British and Russian pressure on the royal court. Shuster's book The Strangling of Persia is a recount of the details of these events, a harsh criticism of Britain and Imperial Russia.

Of the public outcry against the inability of the Persian throne to maintain its political and economic independence from Great Britain and Imperial Russia in the face of events such as the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 and "the 1919 treaty", one result was the Persian Constitutional Revolution, which eventually resulted in the fall of the Qajar dynasty.

The great tremor of the Persian political landscape occurred when the involvement of General Edmund Ironside eventually led to the rise of Reza Shah Pahlavi in the 1920s. The popular view that the British were involved in the 1921 coup was noted as early as March 1921 by the American embassy and relayed to the Iran desk at the Foreign Office.^[8] A British Embassy report from 1932 concedes that the British put Reza Shah "on the throne".^[9]

After his establishing of power and strengthening of the central government, Rezā Khan quickly put an end to the autonomous activities of the British-backed Sheikh Khazal in the south. London withdrew its support of Khaz'al in favor of Rezā Shāh.

A novel chapter in Anglo-Iranian relations had begun when Iran canceled its capitulation agreements with foreign powers in 1928. Iran's success in revoking the capitulation treaties, and the failure of the Anglo-Iranian Agreement of 1919 earlier, led to intense diplomatic efforts by the British government to regularize relations between the two countries on a treaty basis. On the Iranian side negotiations on the widest range of issues were conducted by Abdolhossein Teymourtash, the Minister of Court from 1925 to 1932, and Iran's nominal Minister of Foreign Affairs during the period.

The ire of the British Government was raised, however, by Persian diplomatic claims to the oil-rich regions of the Greater and Lesser Tunbs islands, Abu Musa and Bahrain in the Persian Gulf region. On the economic front, on the other hand, Iran's pressures to rescind the monopoly rights of the British-owned Imperial Bank of Persia to issue banknotes in Iran, the Iranian Trade Monopoly Law of 1928, and prohibitions whereby the British Government and Anglo-Persian Oil Company ("APOC") were no longer permitted to enter into direct agreements with their client tribes, as had been the case in the past, did little to satisfy British expectations. The cumulative impact of these demands on the British Government was well expressed by Sir Robert Clive, Britain's Minister to Tehran, who in 1931 noted in a report to the Foreign Office "There are indications, indeed that their present policy is to see how far they can push us in the way of concessions, and I feel we shall never re-establish our waning prestige or even be able to treat the Persian government on equal terms, until we are in a position to call a halt".

Despite the enormous volume of correspondence and protracted negotiations that took place between the two countries on the widest array of issues, on the Iranian side, Teymourtash conducted these negotiations single-handedly “without so much as a secretary to keep his papers in order”, according to one scholar. Resolution of all outstanding differences eluded a speedy resolution, however, given the reality that on the British side progress proved tedious due to the need to consult many government departments with differing interests and jurisdictions.

The most intractable challenge, however, proved to be Iran's assiduous efforts to revise the terms whereby the APOC retained near monopoly control over the oil industry in Iran as a result of the concession granted to William Knox D'Arcy in 1901 by the Qajar King of the period. "What Persians felt", Teymourtash would explain to his British counterparts in 1928, "was that an industry had been developed on their own soil in which they had no real share".

Complicating matters further, and ensuring that such demands would in due course set Iran on a collision course with the British Government was the reality that pursuant to a 1914 Act of the British Parliament, an initiative championed by Winston Churchill in his capacity as First Lord of the Admiralty, led the British Government to be granted a majority fifty-three percent ownership of the shares of APOC. The decision was adopted during World War I to ensure the British Government would gain a critical foothold in Iranian affairs so as to protect the flow of oil from Iran due to its critical importance to the operation of the Royal Navy during the war effort. By the 1920s APOC's extensive installations and pipelines in Khuzestan and its refinery in Abadan meant that the company's operations in Iran had led to the creation of the greatest industrial complex in the Middle East.

The attempt to revise the terms of the oil concession on a more favorable basis for Iran led to protracted negotiations that took place in Tehran, Lausanne, London and Paris between Teymourtash and the Chairman of APOC, Sir John Cadman, spanning the years from 1928 to 1932. The overarching argument for revisiting the terms of the D'Arcy Agreement on the Iranian side was that its national wealth was being squandered by a concession that was granted in 1901 by a previous non-constitutional government forced to agree to inequitable terms under duress.

However, despite much progress, Rezā Shāh Pahlavi was soon to assert his authority by dramatically inserting himself into the negotiations. The Monarch attended a meeting of the Council of Ministers in November 1932, and after publicly rebuking Teymourtash for his failure to secure an agreement, dictated a letter to cabinet canceling the D'Arcy Agreement. The Iranian Government notified APOC that it would cease further negotiations and demanded cancellation of the D'Arcy concession. Rejecting the cancellation, the British government espoused the claim on behalf of APOC and brought the dispute before the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague, asserting that it regarded itself "as entitled to take all such measures as the situation may demand for the Company's protection." At this point, Hassan Taqizadeh, the new Iranian minister to have been entrusted the task of assuming responsibility for the oil dossier, was to intimate to the British that the cancellation was simply meant to expedite negotiations and that it would constitute political suicide for Iran to withdraw from negotiations.

Rezā Shāh was removed from power abruptly during the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran during World War II. The new Shah, Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, signed a Tripartite Treaty Alliance with Britain and the Soviet Union in January 1942, to aid in the allied war effort in a non-military way.

In 1951, the Iranians nationalized the oil through a parliamentary bill on 21 March 1951. This caused a lot of tension between Iran and the UK.

According to the book All the Shah's Men, the British tried to convince Harry S. Truman to join their campaign against Iran. However, it was only when Dwight Eisenhower became the president that British succeeded in convincing U.S. to join their plot. In order to convince the Eisenhower administration Woodhouse shaped his appeal around the rhetoric of anti-communism. They pointed out the Tudeh party could take control of Iran.

After the events of 1953, scores of Iranian political activists from the National and Communist parties were jailed or killed. This coup only added to the deep mistrust towards the British in Iran. It has since been very common in Iranian culture to mistrust British government; a good example is the character of Uncle in the television show My Uncle Napoleon.

The end of World War II brought the start of American dominance in Iran's political arena, and with an anti-Soviet Cold War brewing, the United States quickly moved to convert Iran into an anti-communist bloc, thus considerably diminishing Britain's influence on Iran for years to come. Operation Ajax and the fall of Prime Minister Mosaddegh was perhaps the last of the large British involvements in Iranian politics in the Pahlavi era. The Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi paid a state visit to the United Kingdom in May 1959.^[10] Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom paid a state visit to Iran in March 1961.^[11]

The British forces began to withdraw from Persian Gulf in 1968.^[12] This was done out of economic considerations as the British simply could not continue to afford the costs of administration. (See also East of Suez). As part of this policy, in 1971, the then British government decided not to support the Shah and eventually, the patronage of the United Kingdom ended, and consequently, this role was filled by the US.^[13]

On 30 April 1980, the Iranian Embassy in London was taken over by a six-man terrorist team holding the building for six days until the hostages were rescued by a raid by the SAS. After the Revolution of Iran in 1979, Britain suspended all diplomatic relations with Iran. Britain did not have an embassy until it was reopened in 1988.^[14]

During the Iran–Iraq War, Saddam Hussein acquired metal tubes from firms in the United Kingdom, intended for the Project Babylon supergun. All were intercepted by customs and excise and none ever reached Iraq. The suppliers were under the impression that their tubes would have been used in a pipeline project.

A year after the re-establishment of the British embassy in Tehran, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering Muslims across the world to kill British author Salman Rushdie. Diplomatic ties with London were broken off only to be resumed at a chargé d'affaires level in 1990.

• British foreign policy in the Middle East
• 1979 Iranian Revolution conspiracy theory
• Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907
• Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran
• Imperial Bank of Persia, a British-owned bank established in 1889.
• Bushire Under British Occupation

• Bonakdarian, Mansour. Britain and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution 1906–1911. Syracuse University Press in association with the Iran Heritage Foundation. 2006. ISBN 0-8156-3042-5
• Bullard, Reader. Britain and the Middle East: From Earliest Times to 1963 (1964) popular history by a diplomat
• Galbraith, John S. "British policy on railways in Persia, 1870–1900." Middle Eastern Studies 25.4 (1989): 480-505 covers "Reuter Concession"; online
• Galbraith, John S. "Britain and American Railway Promoters in Late Nineteenth Century Persia." Albion 21.2 (1989): 248-262. online
• Greaves, Rose Louise. "British Policy in Persia, 1892-1903--I" Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 28#1 (1965), pp. 34–60 online
• Ingram, Edward. Britain’s Persian Connection 1798–1828: Prelude to the Great Game in Asia. 1993. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-820243-1
• Kazemzadeh Firuz, Russia and Britain in Persia 1864–1914, A Study in Imperialism, 1968, Yale University Press.
• Sabahi, Houshang. British policy in Persia, 1918-1925 (Routledge, 2005).
• Shahnavaz, Shahbaz. Britain and South-West Persia 1880-1914: A Study in Imperialism and Economic Dependence (Routledge, 2005).
• Shuster, Morgan, The Strangling of Persia: Story of the European Diplomacy and Oriental Intrigue That Resulted in the Denationalization of Twelve Million Mohammedans. ISBN 0-934211-06-X
• Sykes, Christopher. "The Persian Crisis: Historical Background." History Today (July 1951) 1#7 pp 19–24 covers 1880 to 1944.
• Thornton, A. P. "British Policy in Persia, 1858-1890." part I English Historical Review (1954) 70#274: 554-579 online. part III 70#274 (1955), pp. 55–71 online
• Wilson, K. "Creative accounting: the place of loans to Persia in the commencement of the negotiation of the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907." Middle Eastern Studies 38.2 (2002): 35-82.

• BRITISH POLICY IN PERSIA, 1885-1892