IRAN: Blame the British

"Incipient terrorism" is rife in Iran, a Ntw York Timesman reported last November. He was expelled from the country for saying so. The man who kicked him out, a noisy nationalist named Hussein Fatemi, is Premier Mossadegh's right bower. Fatemi fancies himself a newsman (he edits Teheran's xenophobic Bakhtar Emrooz). He helped light the fires which roasted the British out of Abadan.

Last week, Fatemi went to a Moslem cemetery outside Teheran to address a nationalist gathering at the tomb of Mohammed Massoud, an Iranian newspaperman killed by terrorists in 1948. Fatemi had just reached the climax, declaring: "What is life worth, compared with such high objectives?" when a shaven-headed 15-year-old boy in the audience reached inside his coat and drew out a U.S.-made .45. With both hands, he fired a bullet into Fatemi's belly, only three yards away.

The assailant made no attempt to escape: he tossed the pistol away, crying "Allah akbar!" (Allah is great), and then started to faint. Police seized him. Pasted on the revolver was a message demanding freedom for Navab Safavi, imprisoned leader of Iran's most feared terror group—Fadayan Islam. The terrorists had picked young Mohammed Mehdi Mojtahedi to kill Fatemi because capital punishment does not apply to teen-age killers in Iran. The boy told cops that the next victim on Fadayan's schedule was Premier Mossadegh, because he flirted with foreigners.

Fatemi, crying, "Save me, I am burning!", was rushed to a hospital, where Mossadegh's elder son, Dr. Gholam Hussein Mossadegh, sewed up his shattered intestines. At week's end, he was reported "holding his own."

As remarkable as his continued survival was Fatemi's continued refusal to acknowledge any "incipient terrorism" among the Iranians. His first words on recovering consciousness: "The British have done it again. But again they have misfired."