Preface

Coercive diplomaey is aresort to specific threats or to injurious

actions, otherwise than as an aet 0/ war, in order to seeure advantage

or to avert loss . . .

James Cable

Diplomacy at Sea

This book relates how, in 1951, Britain planned to use force in order

to retain control of the world's largest oil refinery at Abadan. Units

of the British navy, army and air force were deployed, given their

preparatory orders and, at one point, brought to three hours' notice.

After many months and under strong pressure from the President of

the United States, British forces were stood down, British subjects

withdrawn from Abadan and oil-wells, pipelines and refinery abandoned.

It is a story, not previously told in any detail, of international

poker for high stakes.

It is also a case history of coercive diplomacy, a field in which the

analysis of failure is no less instructive than the sparse record of

success. This analysis will not be ethical or legal or ideologie al. The

focus is on technique: political, diplomatie and military. The treatment

aspires to be historieal, issues being presented as they were seen

at the time.

Inevitably the story is told from a British perspective, the main

source being the British documents in the Public Record Office at

Kew. Transeripts of Crown copyright records in the Public Record

Office appear by permission of the Controller of HM Stationery

Office and all otherwise unidentified references in the notes are to the

files in which such documents are classified in the Public Record

Office.

Various participants in the events of 1951 have been kind enough

to assist the author with information and advice, particularly on those

human factors that are often inadequately reftected in official reports.

The author would like to renew his thanks to Captain A.V.M.

Diamond, Mr C.T. Gandy, Mr J. Homersham Golds, Commander

G. Harris, Rear-Admiral R. Hill, Mr N. Hillier-Fry, Rear-Admiral

H. Hollins, Group-Captain K.G. Hubbard, Admiral Sir Rae

McKaig, Sir George Middleton, Group-Captain R. Morris, Captain

A.J. Oglesby, Mr L. Pyman, the Ron. Sir Peter Ramsbotham,

Lieutenant-Commander D. Randall and the late Captain A.R. Wallis

for allowing hirn to draw on their recollections. Unless directly

quoted none of them bears any responsibility for opinions or statements

of fact in this book.

The author's debt to writers of works previously published is

acknowledged in the notes and bibliography, but is throughout great.

Thanks thus too concisely concluded, a word of explanation is

needed about proper names and spelling. When documents are

quoted, as with books, their words and spelling are reproduced.

Officially Persia was already called Iran in 1951, but most Britons

continued to use the name Persia. The practice had political overtones.

Nor was there much uniformity in the transliteration of proper

names. Writers in European languages spelled the name of Mossadegh,

the Persian Prime Minister, in many different ways.

James Cable