Abdolhossein Teymourtash

Muzzaffar al-Din Shah became the successor of the throne after the death of his father and the nearing end of the Tobacco Revolt. Muzzaffar al Din Shah was a leader who ignored the plea of his people whom only wanted an improved Iran society. Only upsetting his people, even more, the Shah, later on, gave rights to a London-based financier, William Knox D’arcy, “special and exclusive” privilege to exploit and sell natural gas for sixty years since 1901. (pg 33). After signing the exclusive agreement, D’arcy worked with a petroleum engineer named George Reynolds in order to search and drill for oil. However, when oil was found, the well ran dry which caused D’arcy to sell his rights to the Burmah Oil Company. D’arcy’s hopes eventually slipped away and ordered for Reynolds to stop the exploration for oil. Reynolds still was determined to come out successful and in May 26,1908, oil was successfully acquired. Thus, this caused the British to have an interest in forming an oil organization that would be later called, The Anglo-Persian Oil company. This ultimately took a toll on Iran as British basically claimed Iran’s land that consisted of oil as theirs. By British extracting oil, this immensely benefitted the country’s economy. Iran basically had no control of their land and was angered and thus, began to fight later on in order to be in control of their territory. This sparked the fight for Iran to nationalize the oil company as theirs. The birth of the Anglo-Persian Oil company…