The year 1971 marked the last of the Gulf states’ emergence from British protection to full independence. The Trucial States had preserved their special treaty relationship to Great Britain through all the turmoil of decolonization and Arab nationalism. Independence for Bahrain and Qatar and the establishment of the United Arab Emirates represented the end of the British Empire in the Middle East, which had begun in the Persian Gulf in 1820, finally coming to an end in the same region a century and a half later. The Gulf shaykhdoms were not technically British colonies, but independent ministates whose relations to Britain were governed by nineteenth-century treaties. The external relations of the shaykhdoms had remained under British control in return for British protection from external threats—primarily from the Ottoman Empire, which sought to extend its influence over the Arab Gulf states at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1968 there remained nine Gulf states under the British protectorate: Bahrain, which since 1946 had served as the seat of the British Political Residency for the Gulf, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ras al-Khaima, Um al-Qaiwain, Fujayra, and ’Ajman. Britain had exploited its privileged position in the Gulf to secure valuable oil concessions for British companies, particularly in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and continued to exercise influence in that region transcending its reduced global status. The rulers of the Gulf states were perfectly happy with the arrangement, which enabled them to survive as ministates against the menace of powerful neighbors like Saudi Arabia and Iran with ambitions on their oil-rich lands. It was the British rather than the ruling shaykhs of the Trucial States who initiated the process of decolonization in the Gulf. In January 1968, Harold Wilson’s Labour government caught the Gulf rulers completely by surprise when they announced their intention to withdraw from Britain’s commitments East of Suez by the end of 1971. Britain’s decision to withdraw from the Gulf was prompted by domestic economic troubles. In November 1967 Wilson had been forced to devalue the pound to address trade and balance-of-payment deficits. Against such austerity measures, the government could not justify the cost of maintaining British military bases in the Persian Gulf. These economic concerns were compounded by the culture of the ruling Labour Party, which was openly hostile to the practice of Empire twenty years after the withdrawal from India. The shaykhs’ first reaction was to refuse to allow the British to go—or more precisely, they refused to discharge Britain from its treaty commitments to protect the region from outside aggression. They had good grounds for concern. Saudi Arabia laid claim to most of oil-rich Abu Dhabi, and Iran declared sovereignty over the island state Bahrain and a number of smaller islands straddling major offshore oil fields. Over the next three years Britain applied all its diplomatic acumen to resolve the different claims on Gulf territories and to encourage a union of the Trucial States that would give them the critical mass to survive the treacherous waters of the Persian Gulf. In 1970 the Shah of Iran relinquished his claim over Bahrain. Shaykh ’Isa bin Salman, the ruler of Bahrain, withdrew from union discussions with the other Trucial States and declared his country?s independence on August 14, 1971. Bahrain?s neighbor and long-time rival, the peninsular state of Qatar, quickly followed suit on September 3, 1971. The differences between the remaining seven states were significant but not insurmountable, and as the deadline for the British withdrawal approached, six of the states came to an agreement to form a Union of Arab Emirates (later the United Arab Emirates) on November 25, 1971. The odd country out was Ras al-Khaima, which refused to join the union in protest against Iranian claims to two of its islands, the Greater and Lesser Tunbs. Ras al-Khaima did not want to release Britain from its duty to preserve what it held to be its sovereign territory in the disputed islands. Britain, in contrast, was convinced that it needed Iranian goodwill to preserve the territorial integrity of the Gulf states and was willing to sacrifice two of Ras al-Khaima’s smaller islands in the interest of preserving the independence of the union as a whole. The British had brokered an agreement between Sharjah and Iran to divide another disputed island, Abu Musa, between them and saw such concessions as a necessary evil to keep the shah from doing worse. In the end, Ras al-Khaima joined the United Arab Emirates, which was admitted to the Arab League on December 6 and to the United Nations on December 9, 1971. Ironically, Britain’s withdrawal from the Gulf strained relations with two of the states most committed to the ideals of Arab nationalism and anti-imperialism. Iraq severed relations with Britain in protest against British complicity in the Iranian occupation of Arab territory—Abu Musa and the Tunbs. Libya went a step further and nationalized Britain’s oil interests on December 7, to punish the British for delivering Arab lands to Iranian rule. The West’s growing dependence on Arab oil made it vulnerable to such punitive action, and the Arabs began to view their oil as a weapon to attain their political objectives. It was not long before the Arab world began to consider ways to deploy the oil weapon in its conflict with Israel and its Western allies.

Colonel Qadhafi’s oil advisor, Abdullah al-Turayqi, saw early on how useful oil could be in reshaping geopolitics. Months after the June 1967 War, he published an essay with the PLO research center in Beirut in which he described Arab petroleum as “a weapon in the battle.” Setting out the just grounds for deploying oil strategically against Israel’s allies, al-Turayqi argued, “It is generally agreed that every state has the right to use all available means to apply pressure on its enemies. And the Arab states possess one of the most powerful economic weapons that might be used against its enemies.” The Arabs, he claimed, held no less than 58.5 percent of the world?s known petroleum resources, and the industrial world was increasingly dependent on the Arab world for its energy supplies. Why should the Arabs continue to supply the West while the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands supported their enemy, Israel? ?The Arab peoples call for the use of the oil weapon and it is the responsibility of each government to satisfy the will of its people,? al-Turayqi concluded.¹¹ Using oil as a weapon was easier said than done. Al-Turayqi knew better than most how ineffectual the oil weapon had proven in the June 1967 War. Arab oil ministers had met on June 6, the day war broke out, and agreed to ban shipments to the United States, Britain, and West Germany for their support of Israel. Within forty-eight hours both Saudi Arabia and Libya had closed down their production entirely. Arab output was reduced by 60 percent, putting tremendous pressure on Western markets. Yet the industrial world withstood this first use of the oil weapon. It is nearly impossible to track oil once it has entered the international market, allowing embargoed states to circumvent the ban on direct sales by purchasing oil through intermediaries not affected by the embargo. The United States and other non-Arab oil producers expanded production to make up the difference, and the Japanese deployed fleets of massive new “supertankers” to transport oil to global markets. Within a month, the industrial states were back to full supply, demonstrating the futility of a gesture that had in the meantime deprived the Arab oil producers of vital revenues. By the end of August 1967, the defeated Arab states—Egypt, Syria, and Jordan—called on their oil-producing brethren to resume production to help them meet the terrible burden of postwar reconstruction. Not only had the oil weapon proven ineffectual in the 1967 War, but it harmed Arab economies long after the guns fell silent. The return of Arab oil to international markets produced a glut that drove prices down. The oil weapon had backfired and hurt the Arab states far more than Israel and its Western supporters. Yet such was the lack of confidence in Arab armies, in the aftermath of the 1967 defeat, that many policymakers still believed the Arab world more likely to achieve its objectives against Israel by economic than by military means.