EN
The significance of the Anglo-Iraqi treaty in 1930 stemmed from the fact that it provided for the termination of a mandate - the first such example followed in the Near and Middle East only in Transjordan sixteen years later - and established a new pattern of Anglo-Arab relations. If Britain was prepared to surrender its mandate by 1930, it should arrive at this position reluctantly only after the painful experience of persistent agitation among nationalists in the trust territory and a wide segment of the public in England. The instrument itself assured a preferential status of the United Kingdom in Iraq. For the duration of the alliance Britain was allowed to retain two air bases and to make use of all Iraqi facilities for the transit of British armed forces (land, naval and air). Under the accompanying notes British ambassadors in Baghdad were to enjoy 'precedence in relation to the diplomatic representatives of other Powers', and the Iraqi government undertook to request a British advisory military mission and normally to engage in consultation with Whitehall, 'British subjects when in need of the services of foreign officials'. The twenty-five year treaty, which became operative on Iraq's admission to membership in the League of Nations on 3 October 1932, proved vital to the United Kingdom in the Near and Middle East campaigns of World War II.