Iraq Archives - Hamell.net

Iranian Oil Industry Nationalized

Copied from: Matt’s Today in History Podcast. This is here only for my own edification to look more into this event and it’s consequences.

“Tonight’s transcript was written by Amir Mans of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Thanks, Amir, for your hard work in putting this show together.

On this day in 1951, nationalist members of the Iranian parliament led by Dr. Mohammed Mosaddeq nationalized Iran’s petroleum industry. This historic event inspired a lot of other movements in the Middle East region and has had consequences which have continued up to the present day.

The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) had been founded in 1908 following the discovery of a large oil field in south west of Iran and on May 26th of that same year, the first oil well in the region was drilled. It was the first company to use the oil reserves of the Middle East and eventually became the British Petroleum Company (BP) in 1954. High volume production of Iranian oil products eventually started in 1913 from a refinery built at Abadan, for its first 50 years the largest oil refinery in the world. Also in 1913, shortly before World War I, AIOC managers negotiated with a new customer, Winston Churchill, who was then First Lord of the Admiralty. At Churchill’s suggestion, and in exchange for secure oil supplies for its ships, the British government injected new capital into the company and, in doing so, acquired a controlling interest in the oil company and as a result, the British government became the de facto hidden power behind the AIOC.

From 1949 on, sentiment for nationalization of Iran’s oil industry grew. Grievances included the small fraction of revenues Iran received. In 1947, for example, AIOC reported after-tax profits of $112 million and gave Iran just $19.6 million. In late December 1950 word reached Tehran that the American-owned Arabian American Oil Company had agreed to share profits with Saudis on a 50-50 basis. The British Foreign Office rejected the idea of any similar agreement with AIOC.

On 20th March 1951, the Iranian parliament voted to nationalize the AIOC and its holdings, and shortly thereafter elected a widely respected statesman and champion of nationalization, Mohammed Mosaddeq, as Prime Minister. Iran had gained its democratic parliamentary system after its 1906 constitution revolution which was the first event of its kind in Southwest Asia.

This led to a virtual standstill of oil production as British technicians left the country and Britain imposed a worldwide embargo on the purchase of Iranian oil and increased output from its other reserves in the Persian Gulf. In September 1951, Britain froze Iran’s sterling assets and banned export of goods to Iran. The British ratcheted up the pressure on the Iranian government and explored the possibility of an invasion to occupy the oil area. It challenged the legality of the oil nationalization and took its case against Iran to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The court found in Iran’s favor, but the dispute between Iran and the AIOC remained unsettled.

In the following months, the crisis became acute. By mid-1952, an attempt by the Shah to replace Mosaddeq backfired and led to riots nationwide; Mosaddeq returned with even greater power. At the same time however, his coalition was fraying, as Britain’s boycott of Iranian oil eliminated a major source of government revenue, and made Iranians poorer and unhappier by the day.

The administration of President Truman initially had been sympathetic to Iran’s nationalist aspirations. By 1953 both the US and the UK had new, more anti-communist and more interventionist administrations. Britain was unable to subvert Mosaddeq as its embassy and officials had been evicted from Iran in October 1952, but successfully appealed in the U.S. to anti-communist sentiments, depicting both Mosaddeq and Iran as unstable and likely to fall to communism in their weakened state. If Iran fell, it was theorized that the enormous assets of Iranian oil production and reserves would fall into communist control, as would other areas of the Middle East.

In June 1953, President Eisenhower’s administration approved a British proposal for a joint Anglo-American operation, code-named Operation Ajax, to overthrow Prime Minister Mosaddeq and committed the CIA to execute this assignment. This plan became reality in August 1953 when the democratically elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mosaddeq was overthrown by the CIA with support from the British government and the Shah was reinstated on the throne. He remained an authoritarian monarch for more than 25 years. Mosaddeq, whose efforts to nationalize the oil industry and democratize Iran had already earned him Time Magazine’s Man of the Year award for 1951 was sentenced to three years imprisonment for trying to overthrow the monarchy, but he was subsequently allowed to remain under house arrest in his village outside Tehran until his death in 1967.

This event inspired a lot of other movements in the Middle East region. Many believe that the fall of the two British allied kingdoms of Egypt and Iraq in the 1950s and the nationalization of Suez Canal in 1958 all were inspired by the movement of Iranian nationalists.

The 1953 coup was the first time the US had openly overthrown an elected, civil government. In the US, Operation Ajax was considered a success, with immediate and far-reaching effect. Overnight, the CIA became a central part of the American foreign policy apparatus, and covert action came to be regarded as a cheap and effective way to shape the course of world events, but the coup caused long-lasting damage to the United States’ reputation.

The joint US-British operation ended Iran’s drive to assert sovereign control over its own resources and helped put an end to a vibrant chapter in the history of the country’s nationalist and democratic movements. The coup was a critical event that destroyed Iran’s secular parliamentary democracy, by re-installing the monarchy of the Shah. These consequences resonated with dramatic effect in later years as it has been widely believed to have significantly contributed to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which deposed the pro-Western Shah and replaced the monarchy with an anti-Western Islamic Republic that brought to power a group of fanatically anti-Western clerics who turned Iran into a center for anti-Americanism. The Islamic regime in Iran also inspired religious fanatics in many other countries including those who give refuge to terrorists who eventually have gone on to attack the US.

Some Middle East observers have claimed that the anger against the US that flooded out of Iran following the 1979 revolution has its roots in the American role in crushing Iranian democracy in 1953. While this remains just a theory, the reality is that this coup left the most open-minded and civilized people of the Middle East under 25 years of dictatorship and 30+ years of tyranny and brutality at the hands of the Islamic Republic.”

The failure of Modern Combined Force Tactics

I am by no means a tactician or even taken a class on Tactics. I have played plenty of war games, both table top and computer based, studied history (and thus war,) quite extensively, and able to apply a healthy dose of common sense.

Every military unit from the pikeman to the modern Unmanned Aerial Vehicles both has it’s strengths and it’s weaknesses on the battlefield. As such one unit may have advantages over another, especially in certain situations. For instance Knights on horseback can easily win against a superior number of swordsmen due to their speed and weight.

But pikemen with the long reach of their weapons can easily blunt a calvary charge, removing the Knights advantage. In turn, without the advantage of shields, Pikemen are extremely vulnerable to the various types of bowmen, especially those wielding the English Longbow.

In Combined Force Tactics, each element lends it’s strengths while it’s weaknesses are covered by the other elements. In the example above a typical army would consist of one of each of the elements. The Knights on horseback would be used as flanking force instead of initial charges. Pikemen on the front would have either swordsmen or bows directly behind them depending on the terrain and the forces available to the enemy.

Basically the swordsmen with their shields would be at the front of the battle. The brunt of any bow attacks would (mostly) bounce off their shields. As the armies closed, the swordsmen would pass through the front lines behind the pikemen and then counter attack from the side. In the meantime the Knights would be circling around to the rear or the other side to encircle the enemy and hopefully defeat them.

During World War I, troops with machine guns faced each other across open land and dug themselves into trenches. Artillery that had been so useful in previous wars did little when the infantry was dug in. The introduction of airplanes added little to the battle itself, but quickly became an important component as commanders were able to better see where the enemy troops were. The introduction of the tank changed trench warfare again as the tracked vehicles simply went through and over defenses designed to stop humans.

In the modern Military there are many more elements, but the essence is the still same. Soldiers on the ground can only carry so much firepower and see so far. Tanks can carry vastly more firepower, but are limited by the terrain. Airplanes carry less firepower, but have the ability to provide an extremely fast response to threats, and provide superior suppression fire with their speed and height above the ground. There are many more elements in a modern Military force, but for now these three remain the main ones.

The UAV or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is both one of the most hated and most loved weapons currently in use. It’s a great weapon to keep soldiers and pilots out of direct harms. The UAVs original purpose was to be an intelligence gathering mechanism only. With the added ability to carry missiles and coupled with a lack of proper tactics, we now see failure and tragedy.

The current over reliance on UAVs the US Military is failing to properly utilize Combined Force Tactics in Afghanistan, Iraq, and especially Pakistan. They are being used to gather intelligence correctly, but then attack targets with. This often leads to devastating results and loss in innocent lives.

While the terrain in such areas makes tanks and wheeled vehicles extremely impractical, the lack of a human component on the ground leads to mistakes that have effects far beyond the initial consequences. Instead of changing tactics, more technology is thrown at the problem.

Now, the loss of one UAV doesn’t even compare to the loss of one human life. But the UAV’s indiscriminate ability to kill, and worse, misjudge a situation that is only viewable from the air above, seems like it leads to just as much innocent life lost.

On a normal battlefield between two armies, UAVs would probably stand out fairly well as extremely useful weapons, especially combined with other elements such as Infantry, Tanks, Missiles, and other Aircraft. But with an enemy that uses the terrain, innocent people, misdirection and local knowledge to hide, they become fairly useless in their secondary role as weapon platforms. Doubly so when they’re the only weapon deployed.