IRAN: Huff from the North

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Almost as a side thought, Nikita Khrushchev interrupted his word war for Berlin to threaten the Shah of Iran for "insulting" the Soviet Union. The effect was no side issue in Teheran. In a misconceived maneuver during negotiations for Iran's new bilateral agreement with the U.S., the Shah had invited his Soviet neighbors to make him a counteroffer—and then sent them away emptyhanded. "Iran treated us as if we were Luxembourg," huffed Soviet Ambassador Nikolai Pegov. Khrushchev centered all his abuse on the Shah and the Shah alone. "He fears not us but his own people," roared Nikita. "He will not succeed by a bilateral pact or even a quinquelateral pact in saving his rotten throne from the fate of the rotten Iraqi throne."

"We are not afraid of Soviet threats." answered the Shah at a parliamentary reception. But betraying a genuine nervousness, his security police censored all newspaper comment on his international maneuvers and confiscated all foreign periodicals that reported them, including TIME. This week the Shah's representatives in Ankara are to sign a bilateral agreement with the U.S. similar to ones scheduled to be signed at the same time between the U.S. and Baghdad Partners Turkey and Pakistan. Essentially the new agreement, which is not a treaty and therefore requires no two-thirds Senate approval, represents Secretary Dulles' specific extension to Iran of the Eisenhower Doctrine pledge committing the U.S. to go to its aid if Iran is the victim of Communist aggression, direct or indirect.