846B.6363/38

The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Great Britain ( Bingham )

No. 436

Sir: The Department has received from the Legation at Teheran a telegram dated May 23, 1934, transmitting, at the request of the Persian Government, the text of a note relating to the Bahrein oil concession of the Standard Oil Company of California. A copy of this telegram is enclosed herewith.8

[Page 893]

At a suitable opportunity you should call at the Foreign Office and deliver a copy of the Persian note in question for the information of the British Government and for such consideration as it may care to give to the matter. You may discuss informally with the appropriate officials the contents of the note, reporting to the Department by mail any comments which may be made by them with respect thereto. The Department has been informed in this connection that the substance of the note was made public by the Persian Foreign Minister in the Persian Parliament on May 24, 1934, and that the League of Nations had been requested to circularize its contents to member states.

For your information, the Department has decided, as a result of its study of the conditions under which the concession was obtained and of the political status of the Shaikhdom of Bahrein, to make no reply to the protest of the Persian Government, and it has instructed the American Minister at Teheran to refrain from discussing the subject with any Persian official. No objection is perceived to your mentioning these facts should inquiry be made of you in any conversation which you may have with the British authorities in this matter.

For the Embassy’s further information there is enclosed a copy of a memorandum9 prepared in the Division of Near Eastern Affairs respecting the Persian claim to sovereignty over the Bahrein Islands.

Very truly yours,

For the Secretary of State:
R. Walton Moore
  1. Ante, p. 890.
  2. Not printed.