Iran: Neither Protocol Nor Freedom

For years Soviet transmitters beamed a propaganda barrage against neighboring Iran, including appeals for insurrection against Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi. These days Moscow's line is more seductive than destructive. In Teheran on a state visit last week, toasting the health of "Your Imperial Majesty," was the titular Soviet Chief of State, Leonid L. Brezhnev, one of Nikita Khrushchev's most promising protégés.

Like a road company version of the boss, the husky, bushy-browed Soviet President displayed the common touch. Waving a glass of vodka at a Soviet Embassy reception, Brezhnev gaily shouted "Down with protocol and long live freedom." The performance did little for protocol but even less for freedom. For a royal banquet at Golestan Palace, Brezhnev specified in advance that proper dress would be a business suit (the Empress appeared in a filmy black gown, without her tiara). He visibly caused raised eyebrows at one dinner by licking his fingers after heaping caviar on a slice of toast. Riding through the streets of Teheran in a gilded coach, Brezhnev defied custom when he turned his back on the Shah in his eagerness to wave back to crowds shouting Zindehbad Rafiq ("Long Live the Comrade").

As for the comrade, he had reason to cheer too. A year ago the Shah assured the Kremlin that Iran, though a charter member of CENTO, would not allow U.S. missiles to be based in the country (none had been there in the first place). As Iran shares an uneasy 1,500-mile border with the Soviet Union, Washington could hardly protest. Since then Iran has accepted all kinds of Soviet economic aid, including breeding facilities on the Caspian Sea for 3,500,000 sturgeon, which will put it in a better position to compete with Russian caviar. Just before Brezhnev's visit, the Kremlin's East European satellites offered $160 million in easy credit.

When the Soviet President addressed a joint session of the Majlis last week, he confidently cooed that "at present, no clouds of misunderstanding darken the relations between Iran and the Soviet Union." But even as Brezhnev spoke, excited deputies whispered the latest news: 18 miles inside the Iranian border, three Soviet jets had shot down an unarmed Iranian plane on a photographic mapping mission for the Shah's land reform program, killing the Iranian surveyors. Unaware of the incident, amid cold stares from his audience, Brezhnev droned on, demonstrating once again the perils of what the Kremlin calls peace.