Broken Promises in Persia

Lord Jowitt then turned to the topic of United Nations and Persia. He believed that the fundamental difference between the solutions to world problems of today and those of the past was that we must now rely more and more on International Law, and that reliance on the Rule of force as in the old days was not now possible. Under Clause 32 of the Treaty between the Persian Government and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (to which incidentally the U.K. Government was not a party) the Persian Government agreed not to interfere with the operations of the company. Now, any Government, he said, is perfectly entitled to nationalise what is its country's own property, but it was not entitled to break its pledged word—and that's what Persia was doing. Nationalisation, he said, is like a drug and goes to the head if not controlled. He added that he was wanted as mediator in the Persian crisis, but was already committed to go to Australia for the Legal Convention; when he got to Sydney, however, it was so cold he would almost have preferred to be sweltering in Abadan.