Iran and Britain: The Politics of Oil and Coup D’état before the Fall of Reza Shah

Summary, in English

British strategy in the Middle East consolidated around a sustained effort to prevent any adversarial penetration into the Persian Gulf, defending its position athwart the principal lines of communication and supply between Northern Europe and British India, and to protect the newly discovered Persian oil that was used to power the Royal Navy. Since the discovery of oil in 1908 by D’Arcy’s oil exploration company, and especially after the end of World War One in 1918, until the start of Mosaddeq premiership in 1951, the bulk of British imperial struggle in Iran was orientated by ‘oil politics’; a concerted effort to secure as large a share of the petroleum output as possible through a vast range of conciliatory and coercive mechanisms from extracting concessions and deploying military forces to mounting coups and helping to install puppet/proxy governments.

• Author: Maysam Behravesh
• Publishing year: 2010-11-10
• Language: English
• Publication/Series: e-International Relations (e-IR)
• Full text: - 69 kB; Download statistics
• Links: http://www.e-ir.info/2010/11/09/iran-and-britain-the-politics-of-oil-and-coup-d%E2%80%99etat-before-the-fall-of-reza-shah/
• Document type: Journal article
• Topic: Political Science
• Keywords: Iran; Britain; relations; oil; politics
• Status: Published
• Research group: Internationell politik