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Iran: Mossadegh Forces the Oil Companies to Hand Over the Baton

Arrigo Cervetto (15 January 1953)
L’Impulso

The publicity machine is getting under way again to draw attention, in the direction desired by the parties concerned, to the still unresolved problem of Persian oil. After the almost total silence of the Press in recent weeks—a silence that has not prevented the continuation of covert action—the American and British governments have submitted a new offer («a strong warning») to the Tehran government. This consists in entrusting the charge of looking after oil sales, as well as extraction and refining, to an American oil consortium. Stripped of all such convoluted propaganda as the communist threat, the need to improve Persia’s catastrophic economic situation, British rights, etc., this is the tone and content of the proposal: the blackmailing of a crisis-wracked nation, a veiled threat of more drastic measures.

It is worth noting how the new proposal insists on the almost total lack of interest that the deal represents for the British and Americans, given increased production in other places: this is to divert people’s attention from the heart of the problem. «The British and Americans want to help Persia selflessly, the British and Americans are truly democratic»: in truth, oil strategy is much more complex than this propagandistic rehashing of humanism and liberalism belied by the facts.

And the facts speak much more clearly than this false propaganda.

One need only think of the appalling decline in American oil reserves (4 billion tons—enough for 10–12 years at the most) that have to be kept for «emergency» situations, of the steady decline in American production (down from 60% to 40% of the world total in 12 years), and of the high prices of its oil in comparison with the Iranian (a US well produces 11 barrels, and an Iranian well 4–5,000 per day). If this was not enough to belie this «disinterest», there are the huge profits that the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and the British government derived in taxes from Persian oil: the workers were paid 50 cents a day, the full amount of the interest due to the Persian government was not paid (only 33 of the 57 million tons produced were denounced), and the AOIC increased its capital from 4 to 200 million pounds from 1914 until the present. And then there is also the fact that only one-third of the production (1,600,000 barrels) of the seven biggest oil companies with mainly Anglo-American capital occurs in the US. This makes it necessary to hang on to the wells of subject countries, including Iran’s, at all costs.

The joint Anglo-American communiqué formalises the planned division of interests, not only among the big companies, but also between the two states, and demonstrates yet again how much truth there is in the formula «The state is the guard dog of the bourgeoisie».

Together with the interests of Anglo-Iranian, the big US companies that offer to sell Persian oil know how to defend their own interests, i.e. the general interests of the seven big companies (Standard, Shell, AIOC, Gulf Oil, Standard California, Socony and Vacuum) that form an international “state”, a complex network of interests that links the companies together: AOIC and Gulf Oil have joint control of Kuwait Oil; Socony and AIOC control Iraqi oil (Iraq Petroleum); Standard (NJ), Standard (California), the Texas Company and Socony control Arabian American Oil, etc. … just to give a few examples that certainly speak more clearly than Anglo-American «disinterests».

This thousand-tentacled octopus that dominates almost all of the world’s oil production, refineries, pipelines, tankers, etc. is now seeking to present itself to Persia under the paternalistic aspect of democracy. Yesterday this was the UK’s trademark, while today it is America’s … so long as it doesn’t harm the interests of the AIOC shareholders (whether English, American, or even Chinese) in any way.

It may well be that, behind this smokescreen, Mossadegh will accept the new proposals in order to break away from his dangerous method of using the proletariat to defend the interests of the bourgeoisie. We doubt, however, that the Abadan workers and the millions of starving peasants will make do with a simple change of flag after having fought and shed their blood.

(“L’Impulso”, 15 January 1953)

Source: Unitary Imperialism, Volume I, pp. 209-210.

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