One of his major achievements was the Algiers Agreement signed on March 6, 1975 with the then Iraqi Vice-President, Saddam Hussein, settling the various territorial and fluvial conflicts between the two countries. The Agreement enabled free navigation on Arvand Rood (Shatt-el-Arab for the Arabs) a natural frontier between Iran and Iraq. The accord was to be denounced by Saddam in 1980 in the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war, to be rehabilitated after the war, for Saddam Hussein had given up on his pre-war territorial claims in 1990.

The Agreement conceived by the Shah had very important geopolitical projections : It also anticipated that the region should protect itself from any foreign interference. This signified that Iran should take distance from the United States and that Iraq should do the same regarding the Soviet Union.

In a certain manner, the Shah had already started taking distance from the United States by turning towards Europe for industrial equipments that his American ally refused him.

The Americans, however, did not refuse to supply Iran with arms when they consistently refused to help the Shah build a steel works. For example, the US sold Iran in 1971 250 F-4Ds at $5 million a piece, in 1974 80 F-14s at $30 million a piece, and in 1976 160 F-16s for a total of $3.8 billion dollars, hoping that it would generate a war with Iraq and not build a dissuasive conventional force that would establish a long lasting truce between the two nations.

Our American friends certainly did not wish the industrialization of a nation that to them should have remained, very much like its Arab neighbours, a simple supplier of cheap raw materials. After the US refusal, Iran purchased its first steel mill from the Soviet Union and was about to start the construction of a second one with Italian technical aid in Badar Abbas. In 1975, Iran’s Prime Minister, Amir-Abbas Hoveyda had projected that in 1985, Iran would produce 20 million tons of steel, one million tons of aluminium, one million tons of paper, one million automobiles, 3 million television sets etc…

Today nothing remains of the factories purchased by the Shah : 5 French nuclear reactors, 2 German nuclear reactors, the second biggest copper refinery in the world built in Sarcheshmeh (supplied by Belgium), and the biggest chemical factory in the world built by Japan in Badar Shahpur. They vanished following the war with Iraq and 30 years of Mullacracy. Iran is once again a nation that only depends on its oil exports. Iraq the other founder of OPEC has been crushed and has become a mere ghost in the organisation, for Kurdish puppets of Washington, are selling off large oil concessions to US companies and their allies. With the annulment of the Algiers Agreement, one of the last traces of an evolved glorious epoch for Iran and its neighbour disappear.

Obviously, The Mullahs protest and self attribute the benefits of the accord, but they are the instigators of the problem : 33 years after the signature of this historic Agreement, if Iraq has not chosen to be occupied by the US, Iran is voluntarily sliding day by day into Russia’s arms.

© WWW.IRAN-RESIST.ORG
The french version of this article :
 Iran : Le rêve brisé de l’Accord d’Alger
 (27 DÉCEMBRE 2007)