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- Part of Dean Acheson Papers, Princeton Seminars Files
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OCR Page 1 of 1512/13/53 - Reel 7, Track 2, page 1
MR. ACHESON:
Now what we were trying to do, as Attlee had been reassured, he was
reassured; and understood the military situation and that was all
to the good. In the course of these meetings, we had separate meetings
on Iran and Egypt. The first Sunday night that they were in Washington
there was a dinner at the British Embassy at which Bob Lovett, General
Bradley and I were asked to have dinner with Mr. Churchill, Eden, Franks
tosibaroundandtalh
and Charwell (1). This was just a supper/
In the course of that we
got into Iran and I said some things which injured Anthony's feelings.
It was just a temporary snag which I think was gotten over and led to
some letters which I was going to read in a moment. Eden was taking
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the position that the State Department and the Foreign Office should
concern themselves only with what he called the foreign relations aspect
and that all this talk that we were continually getting into about the
oil business was quite aside from the point and he wasn't concerned with
that and why did we talk about figures and business arrangements and
all that kind of thing. I pressed him pretty hard on the idea that this
was the heart of the matter, that there was no use talking about the
broad foreign affuirs relations because we all were agreed about that :
there weren't any two ways about it.
TRUMA.
but the point was how were you going to do anything as a practical
matter. This led to various rather sharp observations in which I said
I RECORDS ADMIY 3
the COVERAN
that I thought the business of Foreign Minister today was very different
from what it was when Larl Palmerston was handling things like this and
that you had to know as much about a lot of things as some people who were
engaged in these businesses themselves in order to know what was practic-
able, what was feasible, what would operate, and that I thought to rely
on the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the very people whe were in the heart
of the trouble, was not the way to get disinterestedm and wise advice.
He sort of withdrew from the conversation
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