IOR/R/15/2/640

The file contains papers relating to press and parliamentary demands in Iraq, emerging during June 1945, for a renegotiation of the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of Alliance of 1930. These papers are as follows:

• a printed copy of the ‘Treaty of Alliance between the United Kingdom and ‘Iraq, with Exchanges of Notes’, signed in Baghdad on 30 June 1930 (ff 3-11);
• a white paper (ff 13-16) entitled ‘Parliamentary and Press Campaign for the Revision of the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of Alliance of 1930’, prepared by the Combined Intelligence Centre Iraq (CICI) and dated 5 July 1945, outlining: recent agitation in the Iraqi press for a change to the status quo in relations between Britain and Iraq; recent parliamentary debate in Iraq regarding the treaty; the start of an ‘anti-imperialist’ campaign in Iraq, in response to British intervention in Syria; news reports of Iraqi demands for a revision of the Treaty, and the subsequent response in the Iraqi press; a list of points of issue in the Treaty, as defined by Nur ud-Din Dawud of the an-Nida newspaper. A distribution list for the paper (f 12) is included in the file;
• an appendix to the above CICI paper, also dated 5 July 1945 (f 18), stating that American dissatisfaction with Britain’s ambassadorial arrangements with Iraq – in comparison to the United States’ own, inferior diplomatic status – is a reason for the need to amend the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty. The distribution list for the appendix (f 17) is much smaller than that for the main paper (f 12), indicating its secret, rather than confidential nature.