761.91/12–1944
Memorandum by the Director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs (Murray) to the Secretary of State
Mr. Secretary: On December 8, 1944 the President said, in a memorandum to you, that he thought Harriman should talk with Stalin regarding an international trusteeship to operate the Iranian railways and a port on the Persian Gulf. In your memorandum of December 18, you informed the President that you would like to talk with him regarding the trusteeship plan.
In any conversation you may have with the President on the subject, you may wish to have in mind the following considerations: The high motives which prompted the President’s suggestion are obvious. An honest international trusteeship for the railway and port could serve both Iran and Russia profitably, and might conceivably aid in preventing Soviet aggression against Iran.
However, those of us in the Department who have considered the idea are unanimous in our view that it would be impossible to make the trusteeship plan attractive to the Iranians at this time. No matter how it might be drawn up, it would look to Iran, and I am confident to the rest of the world, like power politics and old-world-imperialism. The Iranians made the most strenuous efforts, with much self-denial, to build the railroad themselves, at a cost of some $150,000,000, without foreign borrowings, and their ownership of it, is a matter of the most intense patriotic pride.
Our experts on Soviet Russia are most dubious that Russia would be interested, at least for the present, in an international trusteeship or would participate in it in the genuine manner intended by the President.
The British, moreover, would doubtless raise strenuous objections. Britain’s policy for a hundred years has been to prevent Russia or any [Page 486] other great power from establishing itself on the Persian Gulf, and there is no indication that British policy has changed in this respect. There is, in fact, sound reason for the continuation of this policy. If we proceed on the assumption that the continuance of the British Empire in some reasonable strength is in the strategic interests of the United States (and I understand the strategists of the War Department proceed on this assumption), it is necessary to protect the vital communications of the Empire between Europe and the Far East. Britain has always tried desperately to keep Russians, whether of the Czarist or Soviet variety, away from the Persian Gulf, and will doubtless continue to do so.
The foregoing considerations might possibly be brushed aside if there were any reason for confidence that the Soviets would participate in an international trusteeship on the high principles the President has in mind. We would be deluding ourselves, however, if we built our plans on such hopes.