741.9111/47: Telegram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Thurston) to the Secretary of State
[Received 6:26 p.m.]
193. Embassy’s 81, January 28, 4 p.m.60 The Embassy has received a note from the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs stating as follows:
“The part of article IV of the Anglo-Soviet-Iranian Treaty, to which the Government of the United States of America directed attention as a stipulation which can touch upon American interests, is interpreted by the contracting parties only as their decision not to discuss questions of the transfer of buildings and other structures, erected by the Allied States on Iranian territory, prior to the signature of the special agreement provided for by the aforesaid article. [Page 272] The same is true for paragraph 2 of appendix number III, which states in respect to part 2 of article IV that the treaty does not contain stipulations which would require the Iranian Government to bear the expenses for any work whatever which the Allied States perform for their own military purposes and are unnecessary for the needs of Iran. Thus, these stipulations of the contracting parties only state that the said question will be specially discussed when deemed necessary.
Together with this, the Soviet Government wishes to assure the Government of the United States of America that, if materials received by the Soviet Government from the Government of the United States of America on the basis of the Lease-Lend law should be the subject of negotiations provided for by part 2 of article IV of the Anglo-Soviet-Iranian Treaty, the question of the sale of these materials to the Iranian Government would be decided by the Soviet Government in accordance with the letter of November 7, 1941,62 of the plenipotentiary representative of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to the President of the United States of America.”
- Not printed.↩
- Foreign Relations, 1941, vol. i, p. 858.↩