Limited Victory

The precarious settlement of the Iran crisis last week was U.N.'s most dramatic victory to date.

But exaggerating its importance or Anglo-American failure to follow through with a positive policy in the Middle East and elsewhere might snatch away the victory's fruits. What happened at U.N. last week was this: when the Security Council met to discuss Iran, Russia was still absent. But Andrei Gromyko had written that Russia would withdraw her troops from Iran by early May and that "other questions" like oil and Azerbaijan were "not connected" with the evacuation. Next day Byrnes moved to accept the Soviet reply, with Russia and Iran making a further report on May 6. The Council saw eye to eye with Byrnes.

"Illegal." Gromyko saw it in a different light. He sent another letter, denouncing the decision as "illegal." He ended: "The Soviet Government insists that the Iranian question must be dropped from the agenda."

In Teheran, Premier Ahmed Gavam announced a "complete agreement" with Moscow covering departure of the Red Army, a Russo-Iranian oil company with the Soviets holding 51% control, and direct Teheran-Azerbaijan negotiations as "an internal Iranian affair." The tie-in was as plain, if not as pretty, as a Persian poet's metaphors.

When U.S. editorialists fell all over themselves celebrating "the Russian backdown," there was a chance that the U.S. public might be misled into thinking that the Iranian issue had been settled once & tor all. In sober fact, Russia had probably never intended an indefinite military occupation of northern Iran. What she had always wanted was 1) a Government in Teheran amenable to Russian demands, and 2) access to Iranian oil. In the Russo-Iranian treaty Gavam had indicated a high decree of amenability.

But if Gavam had made a deal, it was at least a better one than he could have got without U.N. support. And if Gromyko had issued another ultimatum, it was one which admitted that U.N. had had a right to consider the case.

Cleaning House. Though their defeat was limited, the sensitive Russians characteristically prepared to launch a diplomatic counteroffensive. Poland, Russia's stooge, served notice that she would bring before the Security Council a charge that the Franco regime in Spain was a threat to world peace. Russia might also object to U.S. troops in China and Iceland.

U.N.'s action on the Iran case sent all the big powers scurrying about in a furious burst of housecleaning, to redd up their records before U.N. got around to them. Since it was apparent that the main issue would involve the world's power vacuums, the areas where the dependent peoples live, most of the housecleaning activity turned around colonial questions.

Of the Western powers, it was, oddly enough, Britain, not the U.S., which took the lead in a more constructive approach to colonial questions. Last week Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin lent new importance to the Anglo-Egyptian negotiations by announcing that he would go in person to Cairo to participate in revision of the basic treaty between the two countries. Bevin's promise might stave off a possible Egyptian move to call U.N.'s attention to the presence of British troops in Egypt.