Word: abadan
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...that it seemed as if a gust of wind could blow it over; his face was sallow and flabby, his eyes were watery, his hands trembled. Yet in this fragile frame is a will tougher than the rock of the Elburz Mountains and more inflammable than the oil of Abadan. A month ago, scarcely anyone in the West had ever heard of Mohammed Mossadeq; by last week, what he said and did could powerfully affect the free world's security...
...none. Beyond the capital, Iran's brown and barren face was peaceful. The skeletons of Persepolis, Susa, Pasargadae, the great dead imperial cities, were bleaching in the sun. Eastward the silent desert reached toward Asia. In the southwest, Iran's black treasure still gushed into the Abadan refinery from beneath the baked flats east of the Tigris. The people, moving herds across the plains and raising cotton in the steaming Caspian littoral, lived in poverty, as they had for centuries; as far as they thought about large issues at all, they were ready to follow Mohammed Mossadeq wherever...
Pressure from Washington. U.S. policy is to calm everyone down, "wait for the air to clear," and later get the British and Iranians together around a conference table. Washington and London still hope that the British can keep part control of Iranian oil by running the huge Abadan refinery as well as the distribution machinery, i.e., 1,718 miles of British-built pipeline and 147 British-owned tankers. The crucial issue: Mossadeq wants British technical assistance to run the fields, without strings attached; the British are willing to offer technical assistance, but only in exchange for certain concessions e.g. continued...
Coolness & Conciliation? London, meanwhile, had done a little more saber-rattling, announced that a crack British parachute brigade would be sent from England to Cyprus, 900 miles from Abadan. At the same time, London assured Washington-which believes that British military intervention in Iran would be a disastrous mistake-that troops would not be sent in unless it became necessary to protect British lives and property. The British also announced that they would refer the nationalization dispute to the World Court at The Hague...
Importance. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., Ltd. in 1950 was the largest oil-producing company in the world. Its wells spouted 700,000 barrels of oil a day, or more than a third of the total Middle East production, 10% of world production. Its refinery at Abadan, with a capacity of 500,000 barrels a day, is the world's largest. (All of Texas produces 2,000,000 barrels daily; Russia and her satellites...