Coll 17/15(2) 'Relations with Persia: Persia-Iraq frontier; Persia's claim in the Shatt-el-Arab' [‎494v] (997/1010)

Copy No. 182
(166/8/28.)
British Embassy,
Angora.
April 8th, 1928.
With regard to the Turco-Persian frontier negotiations which formed the
subieet of my despatch No. 178 of 2 nd instant, the Under Secretary of the Ministry
for Foreion Affairs told me on the next day that practically complete agreement
had been reached. There was, he said, no question of a new treaty but of a
protocole d apphcation ” of the relevant clauses of the existing Tuico-Persian
treaty of 22nd April, 1926. Furthermore, there was no question of frontier modi
fication. The boundary was to be left as settled in 1913.
2 In order to check this statement I caused Feroughi Khan to be sounded
in Constantinople. What he said was confirmatory. ^ The Turks were concerned
to make the frontier safe, the Persians to have it fixed. The two parties were
therefore now engaged in working out an amplification of certain articles (evidently
5 and 6 ) in the 1926 treaty. They also had to provide for marking out the frontier,
as on the outbreak of the war the work of delimitation had been left incomplete and
subsequently the Turks had deliberately knocked down the pillars on other sections
of the boundary. Without saying so explicitly, he implied that the boundary to be
followed was the old one of 1913.
3 Feroughi Khan hopes to conclude the negotiations as soon as Tewfik
Rushdi Bey returns to Angora, but he has enough knowledge of diplomatic dealings
here to be afraid of a hitch at the eleventh hour.
4. I am sending copies of this despatch to the British High Commissioner
nt Baghdad and to His Majesty’s Minister at Teheran.
I have the honour to be, with the highest respect,
Sir,
Your most obedient humble servant,
(Sd) C. G. Knox.
The Bight Hon’ble, Sir Austen Chamberlain, K.G., M.P., etc., etc., etc.
Extract from Private & Confidential D.O. No. S.O. 904 dated the 14th
of April, 1928, from Sir Henry B.C. Hobbs, K.C.S.I., K.C.M.G., K.C.I.E.,
I.C.S., His Majesty’s High Commissioner for ‘ Iraq, Baghdad, to Sir
B.H. Clive/ K.C.M.G., His Britannic Majesty’s Minister, Teheran.
There is one point in the Persian arguments which I think it important to
combat every time that it is put forward and that is the question of the frontier
along the Shatt-al-Arab. Whatever may have been the case with the land
frontier north of Mohammerah, there is no doubt whatever that both the de facto
and de jure frontier south of that point has, ever since the Treaty of Erzerum
signed in 1847, been the eastern or left bank of the Shatt and not the “ Thalweg or
centre of the stream, as Persia would like it to be. It was so defined in Article ^
of that Treaty and, a bank not being in need of delimitation, there was no
difficulty about its recognition from the day of signature of the Treaty. So far as
I know, it was never called in question before the war either by the Turks or the
Persians. The Frontier Commission of 1913-14 made no change in this direction
except to define the eastern bank as the low water line; so that, with regard to the
line of the Shatt, Teymourtache’s argument that Persia under the Frontier
Commission’s decisions lost something in the south which should now be restored
to her, because Turkey won’t recognise her gains under the same decisions in the
north, falls completely to the ground. I imagine that, because of the projected
railway from Mohammerah, Persia considers this Shatt frontier question far more
urgent than that of any other portion of the frontier; so it is most necessary, it
seems to me, to rub into her the fact that she has no grievance and not a leg to
stand on in this respect.