IOR/L/PS/12/3544

Correspondence and other papers relating to the efforts of the Soviet Union to sign an oil concession agreement with Persia [Iran] covering northern Iran. The papers cover: the Iranian Prime Minister Ahmad Qavam’s involvement in the carrying of a bill for a joint Iranian-Soviet oil company to the Iranian majlis; details of the negotiations for an oil concession in northern Persia, and the geographic area under consideration, with map (f 156); Prime Minister Qavam’s presentation of his report on the oil concession to the Iranian majlis in October 1947; the Iranian Government’s rejection of Qavam’s bill, as outlined in an official text published in the Iranian press (English translation, f 37); telegraphic correspondence from the British Embassy in Moscow, reporting on articles appearing in the Soviet press (Pravda, Izvestiya) commenting on the oil concession, the Iranian Government’s actions, and a perceived growth in American [United States of America] influence in Iranian Government policy.

The file’s principal correspondents are: the British Ambassador in Tehran, Reader William Bullard, succeeded in 1946 by John Helier Le Rougetel; the British Chargé d’Affaires in Moscow, Frank Kenyon Roberts; the British Ambassador in Moscow, Maurice Drummond Peterson; and the Foreign Office.

The file includes a divider, which gives a list of correspondence references contained in the file by year. This is placed at the back of the correspondence.