Oil and Diplomacy
The Persian Government's reply to the British Note on the oil position says rather brusquely what any Persian Government was obliged to say in the circumstances ; that the question of nationalisation is still under consideration by the oil committee of the Mejlis, although the principle of nationalisation has been 'agreed to by both Houses of the Persian Parliament. In theory the oil committee is supposed to be thinking out ways and means of making nationalisation work, but there is no evidence that its members are qualified for this highly specialised task. Their main practical function at the moment is to procrastinate, and this they will doubtless do with aplomb until the course of their two months' deliberation is up. Meanwhile the Persians have been watching with a certain amount of trepidation the discus- sions on oil which are proceeding between American and British diplomats in Washington. The Persians have so often in the past been the victim of some arrangement between the great Powers that they cannot envisage any discussion of this sort acting on benevolent lines. They will probably be unjustly sceptical of the assurances and goodwill emanating from Washington. Probably the Foreign.Office and the State Depart- ment have been trying to do the Persian Government's work for it—that is to say, have been trying to work out a formula ' which will reconcile Persian pride with the West's need for Persian oil. It is not an easy formula to find. The examples of the oil concessions in Saudi Arabia, which are often quoted in • America as models for the rest of the world to follow, have little bearing on the Persian position. In Saudi Arabia the Americans are dealing with an autocrat ; in Persia the British are dealing with suspicious nationalists. All the same, American help in solving the present crisis is likely to prove invaluable.
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