Muhamad Mahdi Rahimi, journalist and researcher
“Thank you very much for your assurances about no sheep’s eyes on our oilfields in Iran and Iraq.”
This sentence comes from a letter written by Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister during the World War II, to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the President of the United States, a few months before America launched its European campaign in 1944. These words, composed at the height of Britain’s dependence on American financial and military support, reveal the immeasurable value these resources held for Britain. But what was the story of this oil?
In 1901, William Knox D’Arcy, through a concession agreement lasting sixty years, acquired the rights to extract oil from vast regions of Iran stretching from the northeast to the southwest. He undertook to provide an initial cash payment and, in addition, to pay Iran sixteen percent of the company’s annual profits. Eight years later, in April 1909, one year after oil gushed forth from wells in western and southwestern Iran, a major corporation was established in London under the name of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, with a capital of two million pounds and the British government as a shareholder. This company, which underwent several name changes, ultimately laid the foundation for one of the world’s largest oil corporations, British Petroleum (BP).
This company grew so vast that, with the end of the World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, when Britain and France carved up West Asia as if it were a cake, Britain seized control of the oil of Iraq’s richest provinces, such as Baghdad, Basra, and later part of Mosul, through the facilities and power of this very company. Yet after the World War II, the British Empire began to decline, gradually ceding its place to the United States.
It is time to claim the inheritance
From the moment the United States resolved to enter the World War II, it prepared itself to shape a global order built upon domination. With the war’s end and the exhaustion of the European powers, it was America that began to establish control over the security and economic order of the entire world, expanding its military bases and founding international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank. This legal facade, however, concealed a sea of illicit schemes, coups, aggressive wars, and crimes. Every independence movement was forced either to align itself with the Eastern Bloc or to comply with America’s hegemonic policies. A third path was inconceivable. Iran was among the nations that, in the aftermath of the World War II, embarked on a struggle for independence and for reclaiming the rights that had been trampled during Britain’s dominance. It soon confronted the new global reality: The old colonial power had been weakened, and the young colonial power was now eager to collect the inheritance.
The Iran case
Shortly after the end of the World War II, the people of Iran, led by the Muslim clergy and nationalist movements, rose to nationalize the oil industry and wrest it from British control. Persistent pressure on the young Shah of Iran resulted in Mohammad Mossadegh’s appointment as prime minister, and in Esfand 1329 (March 1951) Iran passed a law that revoked all rights of the British company to explore, extract, and exploit Iranian oil. Immediately after this legislation was passed, Britain filed a lawsuit against Iran at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Yet because the British oil company was privately owned, the court refused to issue a ruling, and Iran was not condemned. Britain, with the support of other Western nations, then imposed a range of sanctions against Iran’s oil industry. This created the perfect opening for the young colonial power to enter.
The nationalization of Iran’s oil industry demonstrated to the United States that the Iranian people were prepared to resist and sacrifice in pursuit of independence and liberation from foreign domination. This spirit and this vision had to be suppressed, and America saw the moment as opportune.
The nationalization of Iran’s oil industry by a democratic government considerably strengthened the Iranian statesmen. Tensions with the Shah escalated, and anti-monarchist parties and newspapers and periodicals became increasingly prominent.
The existence of Soviet-leaning factions within these movements and publications provided the United States with a convenient pretext to intervene and further solidify its influence in the region.
The conflict between the Shah and Mossadegh, and the Shah’s subsequent escape from Iran, paved the way for American intelligence services to invest in monarchist generals and topple Mossadegh’s government. On 28 Mordad 1332 (August 19, 1953), Operation Ajax was carried out in Iran. During this coup, many were killed, Mossadegh was arrested and exiled, and the Shah returned to Iran to inaugurate a twenty-five-year reign of despotism. This dictatorship, which he owed to the United States, was marked from the outset by gratitude to Washington, as he allocated a forty percent share of Iran’s oil industry to American companies in return for their favor.
A stooge, a gendarme, and the Island of Stability for the hegemon
The twenty-five years between the coup and the victory of the Islamic Revolution made Iran as precious in America’s eyes as it had once been in Churchill’s. Amid the Cold War, with Soviet influence spreading across the Arab world, the United States now held both Iran and Saudi Arabia, the two major regional players, firmly within its grip.
Pahlavi Iran had been reduced to a mere stooge, executing America’s regional and transregional plans. When the tightening siege by Arab states threatened to suffocate the Zionist regime in its wars with neighboring countries, it was the Pahlavi monarchy that kept the oil lifeline open, averting Israel’s collapse. As the Ba’athist regime in Iraq cemented its alliance with the Soviet Union, the Shah’s government armed Kurdish groups along the border to undermine Baghdad. When the United States struggled to sustain the logistics of its brutal war in Vietnam, it was Iranian fighter jets and pilots, trained on American soil, who were dispatched to rain bombs on the Vietnamese people. Meanwhile, a network of bases was established across Iran to surveil Soviet activity, and more than twenty-five thousand American military personnel, under the title of “advisers,” began their operations in the country.
All these concessions granted by the Shah of Iran to the United States, combined with Iran’s extensive military purchases, investments in Western industries and markets, and efforts to eradicate religious culture from Iranian society, had transformed Iran into an “Island of Stability” in the region, a bastion designed to secure America’s dominance over West Asia.
That ship has sailed
The Islamic Revolution of 1979 dealt a complete shock to the United States. Beyond the enormous economic interests it lost, America was stripped of a vital regional instrument. With Iran’s help, the United States had managed to deflect grave threats from the Zionist regime, and after the Camp David Accords, the vanguard of Arab nations in the struggle against the Zionist regime had withdrawn from that fight entirely. Now, however, it was the Islamic Revolution in Iran that breathed new life into the cause of Palestine. Not only did Iran’s regional trajectory reverse in fundamental matters, the Revolution also opened a third path before Muslim nations and freedom-seeking peoples. Independence was now conceivable, and the dual blades of the Western and Eastern blocs no longer appeared as an inescapable destiny. It was this third path and its guiding vision that gave rise to the Resistance Front in the region, confronting America’s designs for West Asia with an existential challenge. This new horizon delayed Washington for more than four decades before it could once again bring certain regional governments back onto the path of normalizing relations with the Zionist regime. Yet today, the fury of the region’s peoples toward these normalizing states is far greater than ever before, for before them stands the enduring model of the Islamic Revolution and the Resistance Front.
It is perhaps easier now to understand why, from the very first day of the Islamic Revolution, America has sought either to divert it or to destroy it. As Imam Khamenei stated on January 8, 2025, “The US had claimed ownership here, and that was pulled away from its grip and clutches. Thus, their resentment toward the country and the Revolution is like that of a camel [that holds a grudge]! They won't give up that easily. The US has been defeated in Iran and is seeking to retaliate for that defeat.”
Iran, the treasure that Winston Churchill sought to shield from the United States in the darkest days of his life, the treasure that remained in American hands for twenty-five years, now rests in the possession of the Iranian people themselves. This, perhaps more than anything else, explains America’s enduring hostility toward the nation of Iran, both before and after the Islamic Revolution. Iran was the colonial inheritance of Britain, and its people pulled it away from America’s grip.
(The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Khamenei.ir.)
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