How an oil company helped to destroy democracy in Iran.
by Stephen Kinzer
by Stephen Kinzer
William Knox D'Arcy decided, with the encouragement of the British Government to begin looking for oil in Iran. He struck a concession agreement with the corrupt 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 deposits he made - never allowing any Iranian to review his accounting. After his first strike in 1908 he became the 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 1920's into the 1940's, 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.
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