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The Ambassador in Iran (Wiley) to the Secretary of State
Dear Dean: You may have got the impression from some of my telegrams that I am a bit concerned about Iran and its relations with its great neighbor to the north. I am.
I think that I would give odds of about one to three that the Sovs (curiously enough, according to the best philological research, “v” is practically identical with “b”) will jump the gun on Azerbaijan this year. That the USSR might nip off all or a part of the northern provinces without provoking war is accentuated by the fact that most of the world is completely unaware whether Azerbaijan is a river, a [Page 497] mountain, or merely a new religion. A carefully engineered coup in the north of Iran might go even more smoothly than the business of the Sudeten Germans.
As you know much better than I, the Russian eye has leered at the Persian Gulf for lo, these many decades. The Russian appetite has been constantly whetted by new “apéritifs”. Of course, Iran has always been a land bridge that outflanks many areas of great importance to Russia. Now, however, there are new considerations. The Caspian, on the Persian side, presumably represents vast wealth in sub-sea oil. Then, alas, Iran is particularly vulnerable in the north. The two northern provinces have probably more than ⅓ of the population of the country and provide better than 50 percent of Iran’s food and essential raw materials. In other words, the elimination of the two northern provinces from the Iranian structure would decapitate the country. One of the greatest oil deposits in the world is in the hands of the British, with American participation in the oil, in the south of Iran. The greatest oil refinery in the world is at Abadan. To deny the western world the petroleum products of the AIOC would be an important Soviet objective. Finally, the Russians now, as in the past, desire to reach the warm waters of the Persian Gulf.
The presence of American military missions in Iran, the Arms Credit Program, and the probable initiation of direct military aid constitute to the Russians something which they consider to be “intolerable”. They have the idea that the presence of Americans in Iran makes Baku particularly vulnerable. Razin, the Soviet Military Attaché in Iran, makes it more than clear that Baku is admittedly the Soviet solar plexus.
I am very pleased indeed that you made your statement to the press on the subject of Soviet charges regarding our activities in Iran. It was forthright and good. However, we must keep up the good work. I shall continue here to encourage the idea of an Iranian initiative along the lines of the Ala-Entezam proposal. If the Iranian Government goes ahead on this we should, I think, be prepared to follow along, along the lines I discussed when recently in Washington with the Department.1 And then on every possible occasion we should wheel into action again. In other words we should permit nothing to go by default.
[Here follow two brief paragraphs on personal matters.]
Sincerely yours,
- The editors have been unable to find any record of such discussions.↩