282 A Short History of the Middle East
concession in North Persia, she jealously sees the abundant
supplies of South Persia and the Persian Gulf region, estimated
to contain 30 per cent, of the total world reserves, in the hands
of British and American interests. Britain, on the other hand, clings
to her Middle East oil as the one source of supply under her own
control; while the U.S.A., with her gigantic domestic consump-
tion of oil and the decreasing reserves of the American continent, is
anxious to acquire new sources of supply in the Middle East. The
relations obtaining between Russia and the other Powers rule out
the possibility of an agreement on the fair allocation between them
of the Middle East oil supplies, which would be acceptable to the
U.S.A. and Britain only as part of a general settlement of all the
points at issue.1
To sum up the present situation, while Russia's interest in
gaining control of the Straits and the oilfields is obviously strategic,
her interest in the rest of the Middle East may be described as
tactical, her object being to exploit its political and social instability
in order to harass the Western Powers and make it more difficult
for them to use the region as a base for the 'capitalist war' which
she dreads.
1 At the 1947 Labour party conference Mr. Bevin, recalling a delegate's sug-
gestion that parts of the Middle East should become the responsibility of an
international organization, said, *I am not going to be a party to voluntarily
putting British interests in a pool, while everybody else sticks to his own/
(Applause.) (Times, 30 May 1947).