Muhammad Reza Pahlavi and the Bahrain Question, 1968–1970

This paper examines the role of Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, the late Shah of Iran, in the secret Anglo-Iranian negotiations over Bahrain from January 1968 to March 1970. Despite a clear strategic imperative for abandoning Iran's claim to Bahrain in the wake of the British withdrawal from the Persian Gulf, the Shah feared that such an act would be seen by the Iranian public as collusion with the British to surrender Iranian territory, thereby further eroding the Pahlavi monarchy's precarious legitimacy. Drawing on British official papers and Iranian oral histories and memoirs, this paper explores for the first time the story of these secret negotiations and the extent to which the Shah's diplomacy was constrained by domestic considerations.