Iraq's external relations 1921–26

Abstract

From the beginning of the mandate in Iraq the shaping of Iraq's external relations with her Middle Eastern neighbours and, after the Lausanne Conference, with the international world at large as well, was a delicate matter for British policy-making. Its delicacy sprang from a variety of reasons. They can briefly be classified. First Iraq's own endeavours to establish diplomatic links with her brethren in dar al-Islam, and her claim of international status or, at least, the satisfaction of amour propre; second the necessity for the British to solve problems arising from external situations that affected Iraq such as the (anti-Hashimite) caliphate movement among Indian Moslems, the Turkish menace to Mosul, the French suspicion about the motives of Britain's Middle Eastern policy and, finally, the disturbance of the Middle East by the Wahabi movement led by Ibn Sa'ud; third Britain's strong imperial interests in safeguarding the acquired strategic and economic assets against any future interference, be it by the Arabs or her imperial rivals at large. Owing to this last overriding British concern the shaping of Iraq's external relations, i.e. the partial transfer of external sovereignty to indigenous institutions in the sphere of diplomatic negotiations and international law such as diplomatic recognition, tended, on the whole, to be judged more by imperial calculation than by the provisions of the mandate concept. For instance, in 1925, when peace was concluded with Turkey (over Mosul), the Middle East department at the colonial office happened to discuss the recognition of the Iraq Government by the United States.' In accordance with British imperial interests the department deemed it an indispensable American duty to acknowledge the Palestine mandate first before recognising Iraq as a state. On the surface such conditions imposed on Iraq's diplomatic recognition by foreign powers implied the logical stipulation that whoever recognised a product of the mandate concept should also approve of the concept wherever it was worked. But, logic apart, politically, such conditions stemmed from the imperial notion that Iraq was an inextricable part of the strategic whole of the British Middle East. In other words, in an imperial context, the purpose of making U.S. recognition of Iraq conditional upon prior acknowledgement of the British mandate in Palestine was to consolidate the political security of the strategically important trans-desert motor and air route from the Mediterranean via Amman to Baghdad and the Persian Gulf. Complementary to the British conception of the Middle East as a strategic whole, there emerged from the concessions made to Faisal's plea for international status the concept of a British-controlled Middle East as a diplomatic unity. Thus, at the Cairo Conference in March 1921, Faisal was given the right to establish diplomatic relations with the ruler of the Pusht-Ikuh and Ibn Sa'ud of Nejd,2 whose foreign relations with the outside world were solely conducted by Britain. Further, from 1922 onwards, officials of the Middle East department began to ventilate the idea of diplomatically modelling Iraq after the dominions3 which, as is known, constituted a pluralism within the diplomatic unity of the British Empire.4 However, the concept of Iraq as