#how fun to meet fellow Brits overseas

[sunshineandlyrics]

Louis taking pics with some Brits at Coogee Pavilion Restaurant near Coogee Beach in Sydney (9 February 2024) via their IG stories x x

[antoine-roquentin]

some fun quotes i got while researching one of the essays i was doing instead of blogging, from lloyd gardner, three kings

Oilman James Moffett, a personal friend of Roosevelt and board chair of SoCal, had a proposal to offer. Why not see the king through the war with a direct subsidy? The U.S. government could purchase up to $6 million a year in petroleum products from the king and everyone would be happy. Unless Ibn Saud received such financial assistance, warned Moffett, "there is grave danger that this independent Arab Kingdom cannot survive the present emergency." FDR liked the idea, but navy secretary Frank Knox could not imagine what to do with the oil. What was being produced in Saudi Arabia was not yet suitable for use in airplanes or even ordinary purposes.21

Mr. Fix It, Harry Hopkins, had another idea. What about LendLease? Passed originally by Congress in the spring of 1941, LendLease was the administration's answer to the problem of sending economic and material aid to Great Britain without creating a new "war debts" issue, which had plagued American relations with Europe in the interwar era. The plan was then extended to the Soviet Union in the fall of 1941, and later to other nations at war. But Saudi Arabia was not at war with the Axis powers, and, as Hopkins ruefully confessed, "just how we could call that outfit a `democracy' I don't know."" A year and a half later, in February 1943, the president suddenly found "the defense of Saudi Arabia ... vital to the defense of the United States." Lend-Lease aid started to flow into Saudi Arabia. What brought about this landmark change? Saudi Arabia was still not at war, still not a democracy, and a possible Axis threat had receded after the North African campaign. So whence came the threat?

Washington officials now suspected the British-despite their financial plight-of trying to "edge their way into" Saudi Arabia at the expense of the American oil companies. Saudi Arabia was "probably the greatest and richest oil field in all the world," declared Harold Ickes, petroleum administrator for war, and the British "never overlooked any opportunity to get in where there was oil."23 But British ambassador Lord Halifax was so upset over presumed threats to postwar British interests throughout the Middle East that he asked for an audience with Roosevelt to clear the air. When he arrived at the White House, FDR produced a rough map he had drawn of the Middle East: "Persian oil, he told him, is yours. We share the oil of Iraq and Kuwait. As for Saudi Arabian oil, it's ours."...

With the Truman Doctrine in 1947 the Americans repeated the assurances that the Athenian representative Euphemus gave to Sicilians at Camarina in 415 B.c.: "We are forced to intervene in many directions simply because we have to be on our guard in many directions; now, as previously, we have come as allies to those of you here who are being oppressed; our help was asked for, and we have not arrived uninvited." Euphemus added, however, that "it is not for you to constitute yourselves judges of our behaviour or to act like schoolmasters and try to make us change our ways. That is not an easy thing to do now."`...

Mossadeq twitted Sir Richard about his religion. Was he a Catholic, asked the prime minister? Yes, said Stokes. Well, he was probably unsuited for his mission, then, because Catholics did not believe in divorce, and Iran was in the process of divorcing AIOC. Sir Richard was not amused. ...

Acheson reported that the British-with Churchill back in power-were adamant all down the line, through the ranks of the civil service. Allowing Iran to "despoil" the British company would surely destroy confidence in British power and the pound sterling, they told the secretary of state, and within months all British property abroad would disappear, and soon after all Western investments. "In my judgment," summarized Acheson, "the cardinal purpose of British policy is not to prevent Iran from going Commie; the cardinal point is to pre serve what they believe to be the last remaining bulwark of Brit solvency; that is their overseas investment and property position.""...

Mossadeq had stopped off in Philadelphia on his way to Washington, where he visited Independence Hall and linked his nationalization policies with the "ideals that inspired the United States to wrest freedom and liberty from Britain in 1776." ...

Defense secretary Charles Wilson lamented bygone days when other right-wing dictators replaced deteriorating right-wing dictatorships: "Nowadays, however, when a dictatorship of the right was replaced by a dictatorship of the left, a state would presently slide into Communism and was irrevocably lost to us."

stephen kinzer, all the shah’s men:

Iranian agents who came in and out of Roosevelt’s villa knew him only by his pseudonym, James Lockridge. As time passed, they naturally developed a sense of comradeship, and some of the Irani- ans, much to Roosevelt’s amusement, began calling him “Jim.” The only times he came close to blowing his cover were during tennis games that he played regularly at the Turkish embassy and on the campus of the French Institute. When he missed a shot, he would curse himself,shouting,“Oh,Roosevelt! ”Several times he was asked why someone named Lockridge would have developed such a habit. He replied that he was a passionate Republican and considered Franklin D. Roosevelt to have been so evil that he used Roosevelt’s name as a curse....

In those early years,Mossadegh developed more than a political perspective. He also began showing extraordinary emotional quali- ties. His boundless self-assurance led him to fight fiercely for his principles, but when he found others unreceptive, he would storm off for long periods of brooding silence. He did this for the first time in 1909, when Mohammad Ali Shah launched his bloody assault on the Majlis.Rather than stay and fight alongside his fellow democrats,he concluded that Iran was not ready for enlightenment and left the country....

In one cable to Washington, he described Mossadegh as “lacking in stability,”“clearly dominated by emotions and prejudices,” and “not quite sane.” In another, he asserted that the National Front was composed of“the street rabble, the extreme left ...extreme Iranian nationalists,some but not all of the more fanatical religious leaders, [and] intellectual leftists, including many who had been educated abroad and did not realize that Iran was not ready for democracy.”

At a meeting of the National Security Council on March 4, Eisenhower wondered aloud why it wasn’t possible “to get some of the people in these down-trodden coun- tries to like us instead of hating us.”