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Middle East


Jul 1, 2010


BP
in the Gulf - the Persian Gulf

By Stephen Kinzer


To frustrated Americans who have begun boycotting BP: Welcome to the
club. It's great not to be the only member any more!


Does boycotting BP really make sense? Perhaps not. After all, many BP
filling stations are actually owned by local people, not the
corporation itself. Besides, when you're filling up at a Shell or
ExxonMobil station, it's hard to feel much sense of moral triumph.
Nonetheless, I reserve my right to drive by BP stations. I started
doing it long before this year's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.


My decision not to give this company my business came after I learned
about its role in another kind of "spill" entirely - the
destruction of Iran's democracy more than half a century ago.


The history of the company we now call BP has, over the past


100 years, traced the arc of transnational capitalism. Its roots lie
in the early years of the 20th century when a wealthy bon vivant
named William Knox D'Arcy decided, with encouragement from the
British government, to begin looking for oil in Iran. He struck a
concession agreement with the dissolute Iranian monarchy, using the
proven expedient of bribing the three Iranians negotiating with him.


Under this contract, which he designed, D'Arcy was to own whatever
oil he found in Iran and pay the government just 16% of any profits
he made - never allowing any Iranian to review his accounting. After
his first strike in 1908, he became sole owner of the entire ocean of
oil that lies beneath Iran's soil. No one else was allowed to drill
for, refine, extract or sell "Iranian" oil.


"Fortune brought us a prize from fairyland beyond our wildest
dreams," Winston Churchill, who became First Lord of the
Admiralty in 1911, wrote later. "Mastery itself was the prize of
the venture."


Soon afterward, the British government bought the D'Arcy concession,
which it named the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. It then built the
world's biggest refinery at the port of Abadan on the Persian Gulf.
From the 1920s into the 1940s, Britain's standard of living was
supported by oil from Iran. British cars, trucks and buses ran on
cheap Iranian oil. Factories throughout Britain were fueled by oil
from Iran. The Royal Navy, which projected British power all over the
world, powered its ships with Iranian oil.


After World War II, the winds of nationalism and anti-colonialism
blew through the developing world.


In Iran, nationalism meant one thing: we’ve got to take back our oil.
Driven by this passion, parliament voted on April 28, 1951, to choose
its most passionate champion of oil nationalization, Mohammad
Mossadegh, as prime minister. Days later, it unanimously approved his
bill nationalizing the oil company. Mossadegh promised that,
henceforth, oil profits would be used to develop Iran, not enrich
Britain.


This oil company was the most lucrative British enterprise anywhere
on the planet. To the British, nationalization seemed, at first, like
some kind of immense joke, a step so absurdly contrary to the unwritten
rules of the world that it could hardly be real. Early in this
confrontation, the directors of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and
their partners in Britain's government settled on their strategy: no
mediation, no compromise, no acceptance of nationalization in any
form.


The British took a series of steps meant to push Mossadegh off his
nationalist path. They withdrew their technicians from Abadan,
blockaded the port, cut off exports of vital goods to Iran, froze the
country’s hard-currency accounts in British banks, and tried to win
anti-Iran resolutions from the United Nations and the World Court.
This campaign only intensified Iranian determination. Finally, the
British turned to Washington and asked for a favor: please overthrow
this madman for us so we can have our oil company back.


American president Dwight D Eisenhower, encouraged by his secretary
of state John Foster Dulles, a lifelong defender of transnational
corporate power, agreed to send the Central Intelligence Agency in to
depose Mossadegh. The operation took less than a month in the summer
of 1953. It was the first time the Central Intelligence Agency had
ever overthrown a government.


At first, this seemed like a remarkably successful covert operation.
The West had deposed a leader it didn't like, and replaced him with
someone who would perform as bidden - Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.


From the perspective of history, though, it is clear that Operation
Ajax, as the operation was code-named, had devastating effects. It
not only brought down Mossadegh's government, but ended democracy in
Iran. It returned the Shah to his Peacock Throne. His increasing
repression set off the explosion of the late 1970s, which brought to
power Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the bitterly anti-Western regime
that has been in control ever since.


The oil company rebranded itself as British Petroleum, BP Amoco, and
then, in 2000, BP. During its decades in Iran, it had operated as it
pleased, with little regard for the interests of local people. This
corporate tradition has evidently remained strong.


Many Americans are outraged by the relentless images of oil gushing
into Gulf waters from the Deepwater Horizon well, and by the
corporate recklessness that allowed this spill to happen. Those who
know Iranian history have been less surprised.


Stephen Kinzer is a veteran foreign correspondent
and the author of Bitter Fruit and Overthrow, among other
works. His newest book is Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's
Future.


(Copyright 2010 Stephen Kinzer.)


(Used by permission Tomdispatch)


Kick
ass - or buy gas (Jun 19, '10)


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