Parting Shots

by Matthew Parris

  Saudi Arabia is a political, economic and social oddity, and this has been a fascinating experience I would not have missed. As it recedes, it may seem less like time spent in real life than being shut up in a theatre where the repertoire consisted of extravagantly over-written and over-acted plays constantly repeating themselves. It is a great tragedy that, with all the world’s needs, Providence should have concentrated so much of a vital resource and so much wealth in the hands of people who need it so little and are so socially irresponsible about the use of it. (But the results could be worse for us if the motivation were less crudely selfish, and pointed in the wrong direction.) What they do with the wealth is often comedy and sometimes farce; there are also legal, social and religious dramas, and the theatre of the absurd is never far away. A country where the Head of State has strong personal views about the iniquity of male sideburns and where the barbers are ordered to cut them to levels consistent with morality; where a probable murderess of foreign nationality escapes with a deportation order because the only alternative is decapitation – and is then prevented from leaving until she gets an exit visa; a dry country, where one can find a Minister incoherently drunk in his office before noon – who could fail to be diverted in such a country, or fail to develop claustrophobia from time to time, and want to get out of the theatre into a street of real people outside?

  I have not developed an affection for Saudi Arabia of the kind that I feel for every other country I have served in. I shall remember many things with great pleasure: too infrequent camping expeditions; escaping to Yemen; people, of course – some Saudis among them; and even the exhilaration (amid the exasperation) of exercising one’s ingenuity to do business with people so difficult to do business with. But the Saudi Arabians generally (perhaps especially those from Nejd) share certain personal attributes which make them – shall I say? – less lovable than some other people. I have crossed the land frontiers with Jordan and Yemen at points remote from the Saudi population centres, and even there been struck by the violent contrast between the curt, unsmiling downright rude reception of Saudi guards and officials, and the friendly, welcoming Jordanian or Yemeni faces on the other side.

  I think a number of elements have contributed to the self-centredness and arrogance which mark off the Saudis from the generality of Arabs, who are rightly considered to overdo courtesy and hospitality. There is the freedom from past foreign occupation and relative isolation … There is religion: true piety may be declining fast, but the Calvinistic sense of being God’s elect that is characteristic of Wahhabism continues unabated. Then there is the recent practice of slavery, abolished only in 1962. In other under-developed countries, the presence of foreign experts can arouse feelings of resentment and shame. Not in Saudi Arabia: if you are a Saudi and have money to buy them, it is not more shameful to have Yemenis, Palestinians, Pakistanis, British or Americans to do your work for you than it was to buy black slaves. And this governs your relations with them: it is a superiority, not an inferiority, complex that the Saudis suffer from. Wealth is the last and it may be the most important element in this corruption of character which enables the Saudis to regard the rest of the world as existing for their convenience; to act with unstudied, unconscious indifference to the convenience of others or what others may think of them.

  Officials of a Government working by this philosophy are more infected by the attitude than private citizens; but it is of course in the Royal Family that it is most concentrated. They are a family which includes many of considerable ability, strong personality, and even their own kind of charm: but I doubt if there are any among them, not even King Faisal himself, who have seriously questioned the inherent right of the Saud family to regard Saudi Arabia as a family business, or to regard the promotion of the interests of the family business as taking priority over everything else. The sheer effrontery is breathtaking of a prince who will keep on talking about rights and wrongs, when you know (and he probably knows that you know) that his cut may be 20 per cent of the contract price.

  If Europeans and Americans, who can deal with the Saudis more or less at arm’s length, can react coolly and calculatedly to these attitudes, this is not true of the Arab helots working here, nor of the Arabs outside, who have to listen to the Saudis mouthing sentiments about brotherhood and contrast this with the extent to which they are prepared to limit their own self-indulgence to help their brothers. It is hard to find other Arabs who have good words to say for the Saudis, and no wonder: few disinterested Arab tears will be shed if they get their come-uppance.

  Iran

  ‘I feel desperately sorry for the Shah’

  SIR ANTHONY PARSONS, HM AMBASSADOR TO IRAN, JANUARY 1979

  Parsons served as Britain’s permanent representative at the United Nations during the Falklands conflict where in 1982, against stiff opposition, he managed to rally the votes necessary for a resolution condemning the Argentine invasion. Margaret Thatcher showed her gratitude by inviting Parsons to be her personal adviser on foreign policy. In her autobiography she described him as a man of ‘intelligence, toughness, style and elegance’.

  Historians, however, will probably also remember Parsons for his failure to see, while Ambassador to Tehran, the writing on the wall for the Shah.

  The Iranian revolution began in January 1978 with riots in the holy city of Qom, with religious leaders calling for Ayatollah Khomeini to be allowed to return from exile. Informing London of these events by telegram, Parsons wrote: ‘I do not foresee any serious trouble in the near future. There will be ups and downs, but in the short term I think the Shah will not be forced to make any radical alterations to his policies and will be able to govern, as he is at present, without any genuinely dangerous opposition from any quarter.’

  The ambassador had become friends with Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (the Shah) during his five years in Tehran. Britain had more than just goodwill invested in the relationship: by 1978 Iran had become a key Western ally in the Middle East, and a market for some £600 million of British exports. Were the Shah to be ousted from the Peacock Throne all this would be lost. Perhaps the weight of all that hung on the outcome clouded Parsons’s perspective.

  Yet in May, when the riots had reached Tehran, the ambassador was still optimistic for the regime, writing in a despatch: ‘My honest opinion is that the Pahlavis, father and son, have a good chance and my guess is that they will make it.’ In October, Parsons counselled continued support for the Shah, for fear that were Britain to be seen ‘re-insuring’ with the opposition, support for the regime might crumble. A week after this advice reached Downing Street, a mob torched the British Embassy in Tehran.

  Few observers expected the Shah, with his mighty army, to be toppled by the ragbag and disparate opposition that took to the streets in 1978. Nevertheless, the embassy’s failure to see which way the wind was blowing was a grave and enduring embarrassment for the Foreign Office, and one which exerted a powerful hold on the memory of subsequent generations of diplomats sent to represent Britain in the Middle East (see, for instance, Sir Andrew Green’s valedictory on p. 135).

  In a book published in 1984 entitled The Pride and the Fall Parsons was to pick at this failure in detail, drawing on T. S. Eliot: ‘We had the experience, but missed the meaning.’ This mea culpa went too far according to David Owen, who reviewed the book for The Times. Parsons, wrote the former Foreign Secretary, ‘takes too much blame on his own shoulders … The worst public servants are those who never risk a judgment, who always hedge their bets. The best pose the right questions but are also ready to give the wrong answers.’ Owen himself had been criticized for attaching British foreign policy too strongly and for too long to our continuing good relations with the Pahlavi regime. Our allowing ourselves to gain a reputation within Iran of having opposed the revolution and propped up the Shah was one of the era’s more serious foreign policy blunders, whose consequences are still with us: it left us with no lines of sympathy or communication with his successors (a criticism
Parsons half tries to answer here) – and is one of the reasons some Iranians continue to see us as perfidious and ill-disposed.

  Parsons’s valedictory – written two days after the Shah fled Iran, never to return – was declassified for the first time in 2010.

  BRITISH EMBASSY

  TEHRAN

  18 January 1979

  The Rt Hon Dr David Owen MP

  Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs

  London sw1

  Sir,

  IRAN – VALEDICTORY DESPATCH

  Since the middle of the Second World War I have been fortunate enough to have been the eye-witness of many historic events in the Middle East. The two occurrences which will I believe remain most vividly in my memory are the occasions on which powerful regimes, backed by loyal and united Armed Forces, have been brought low by purely civilian action. The first occasion was the downfall of General Abboud’s military regime in the Sudan in 1964 when many disparate elements of civilian opposition combined to bring about a national strike. A week later, the military government resigned in bewilderment. They were able to control the streets but they were unable to force people to work. The second occasion is of course that which I have lived through during recent months in Tehran. Again, disparate elements of opposition have combined and, through street violence and, even more effective, a nation wide series of strikes including the oil fields, have brought the proud and arrogant Pahlavi regime, that ‘bastion of stability’ in this area to its knees and beyond …

  There is of course no such thing as stability as we understand it in the Middle East. In this region, there is no clear distinction between regimes and governments. If the people want to change the government, they have to change the regime and there is only one way to do this – force. Hence the continuation in power of a Middle Eastern regime/government depends largely on two factors, namely the loyalty of the Armed Forces combined with a certain level of acquiescence (popularity is too strong a word) on the part of the population, principally those who live in the capital and the main urban areas.

  In the case of Iran, I was always convinced, rightly as events have proved, that the Shah had secured the former imperative, the loyalty of the Armed Forces. I was also inclined to believe that, despite obvious areas of discontent, he had a reasonable chance of retaining the acquiescence of the people to the extent that he could with some safety press ahead with the fulfilment of his modernising vision … In this respect I and, with no wish to extenuate, most other close observers of the Iranian scene, have been proved wrong. Why?

  The short answer is that, although we rightly identified the areas of opposition, we underestimated the capacity and will of the various elements to unite and we underestimated the weight and volume of hatred and resentment which had been welling up over the years during which the Shah had kept the country under that repressive political discipline which he regarded as essential if he were to have his hands free to make the decisions and to implement the policies which would make his Great Civilisation attainable during his lifetime …

  I always thought and still do that, thanks mainly to the loyalty of the Armed Forces, the Shah could have survived until the chosen moment of handover to his son, say in the mid 1980s, provided that he maintained his dictatorial political system while at the same time delivering a reasonable amount of the goods to his people. I even thought that he had a sporting chance of liberalising the political system without losing his throne in the process, although the dangers were always recognisable. If he had not unrealistically accelerated the pace of development beyond all reasonable limits in 1974, if he had timed his liberalisation move better, and if his personal relationship with his people had been different, the forces of opposition to him might well have proved unable to bring him down. To take the last point first, the Shah was in an important sense in an oriental society the wrong man for the job. He is intelligent, dynamic, efficient and formidable. He would have made a first class senior civil servant or head of a public corporation in a western country. But he is fundamentally a rather awkward, withdrawn person, at his best with technocrats, westerners or cronies, at his worst with people en masse. His shyness and introversion inclined him, as his power grew, to withdraw into grandeur, to isolate himself from the cut and thrust of genuine discussion, to rely on second-hand information coming from people who, as he became more remote and autocratic, were increasingly inclined to tell him what he wanted to hear rather than unpalatable truths. His security screen, necessary enough in view of the many attempts on his life during his long reign, helped to consolidate this isolation from his people …

  Many people have expressed surprise at the degree of cohesion and organisation shown by the opposition in mobilising such massive popular hostility to the Shah throughout the country, even in remote villages. This factor has surprised me less than the sheer volume of opposition which had built up. Iranians, like all Middle Easterners, are wonderful last minute improvisers. They need far less prior planning and staff work than we do in order to get things right on the night. It has always been a source of amazement to me how they can sit back and do nothing about, say, the arrangements for a State Visit until about 48 hours before it takes place and then produce a perfectly organised programme of events. To a great extent I believe that the opposition elements have been improvising in this way as events have developed, probably as surprised as any of us at the response to their campaign. Furthermore, Iranians are very ‘clubby’ people. There is a long tradition in the country of anjumans (clubs or societies), some secret some open, and every Iranian is a member of a ‘dowreh’ or circle which often transcends social class or function. This kind of social structure tends to produce a pretty effective national grapevine. Moreover, for centuries the mosque and the bazaar have possessed a superb country-wide network and have played a far greater part in the lives of all sectors of the population than has any government administration. The mosques and the bazaars run schools, hospitals, religious processions and ceremonies, charities, industries, farms etc., in fact almost the full range of state activity. There are mosques even in the smallest villages and bazaars even in the smallest towns. Their communications leave nothing to be desired, particularly in these modern times …

  … The Shah and the Empress left Iran on 16 January, ostensibly for a rest. But, having experienced the climate of massive hostility to the Shah of the past months and having witnessed the wild jubilation which persisted in the streets for hours after the news of his departure was broadcast, it is extremely difficult to imagine him ever being able to return. For the moment the Government has no authority. Khomeini rules the streets and the strikers … The economy is in ruins, all business and industrial activity has ceased, governmental administration and financial activity are paralysed, oil production is still below domestic demand and shortages of important commodities continue. The country is in short at a standstill and in a condition of near anarchy …

  Having said all this, there may be some compensations in terms of the conduct of our relations, so long as the present relatively free atmosphere prevails. The Shah’s regime may have been beneficial to our interests but dealing with it at close quarters was often distasteful and exacting. Arrogance, meretricious glitter, touchiness and pretentiousness were all characteristics of the regime which western diplomats found hard to stomach. Nor did we enjoy the spectacle of repression and corruption, of the ostentation of the nouveaux riches, of the yawning gap between glowing promise and inadequate performance. We were also hampered by the intense jealousy and suspicion, particularly towards the British, of the regime, which restricted to the minimum what would in other countries have been perfectly normal contacts with its moderate opponents. I always hated this strait-jacket but knew that I and my staff had to wear it. If we had broadened our contacts beyond a certain very discreet limit, the Shah would have known immediately, suspected British intrigue against him and our interests would have suffered. I hope very much that my successor w
ill have a reasonably long period in which the Embassy can take full advantage of the present ‘Prague Spring’ to widen its contacts against the day when Iran may again be subjected to a dictatorial regime and the old restrictions be reimposed.

  I leave Tehran with very mixed feelings. It is sad to leave a house where I have lived for a longer continuous period than anywhere since I was born, and a country, however repulsive its capital, perhaps more beautiful, more varied and more interesting than any other in which I have served. I would not have missed the dramatic and historic events of the past few months for anything, although I feel desperately sorry for the Shah. With all his faults, I have grown fond of him, particularly in his time of adversity. In spite of his fatal vacillations as the hour of crisis struck, he tried to the end to find a moderate political solution; he restrained his generals and did his best to minimise bloodshed, perhaps at the cost of his throne. For this he must be admired and the humiliation he must be suffering now after so many years of power and glory, immodestly flaunted, would excite sympathy in the hardest heart. I also feel deep anxiety for some of my friends of the past regime who are now in prison and may well suffer a cruel fate to make a Persian holiday.

  Egypt

  ‘When the average Egyptian speaks of Arabs he does not include himself, rather like the average Englishman speaking of Europeans’

  SIR MICHAEL WEIR, HM AMBASSADOR TO EGYPT, JANUARY 1985

  Weir, a Scot, spent most of his diplomatic career in the Middle East. He began in the 1950s as a political agent to the Trucial States of the Persian Gulf, a diplomatic title which ceased to exist once Britain withdrew from empire. In the 1950s, however, the political agent had sweeping, if ambiguous, powers over societies which were in many ways more medieval than modern; in Qatar, Weir’s objectives included pushing the Sheikh into outlawing slavery. (See also James Craig’s remarkable telegram from Dubai on p. 325 for more in this line.)