IRAN: Fear

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Pre-IRAN Fear In spite of the fondest hopes of the U.S. State Department, the Iran air showed no signs of clearing. Instead, the fog of fanaticism, misjudgment and threatening disaster continued to hang heavily over the strategic land and its strategic oilfields.

Behind Boarded Windows. Premier Mohammed Mossadeq huddled his frail frame in an overstuffed chair behind the guarded doors of an office in Teheran's Parliament building. He would not budge from the room, but worked, ate and slept there, a nationalist fanatic living in fear of assassination by other nationalist fanatics. To protect himself from snipers, he ordered all the windows of his room boarded up. In an adjoining chamber, a parliamentary oil commission was drafting a plan to take over the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., declared nationalized last month.

Britain's Ambassador, Sir Francis Shepherd, tried in vain to get into Mossadeq's redoubt. He had another note to deliver from the Foreign Office in London. The best he could do was to leave it at the Iranian Foreign Ministry. His Majesty's government insisted that the Shah's government must not unilaterally break its 1933 contract with Anglo-Iranian. London wanted "negotiation to the satisfaction of all concerned," proposed sending a mission to Teheran at once. London said it would bring up the issue before the International Court of Justice at The Hague if the Iranians did not cooperate, and finally warned that any further unilateral steps to take over Anglo-Iranian would have "the most serious consequences."

"It's just the same old nonsense—we've heard it all before," snapped one of Mossadeq's aides. The Iranian reaction to rumors of possible British military intervention in Iran was instant and hectic. The National Front newspaper Shahed screamed: "[Neither] oil-eating British politicians [nor] any power or force in the whole world would be able to declare the oil nationalization law null and void without starting World War III . . . For every Iranian the question of oil is a religious and national matter . . . To reach the holy goal a holy war may be needed."

In a Fog. Washington, with no clear Middle East policy to fall back on, huffed & puffed to blow the Iranian clouds away. The State Department issued a statement on the U.S. position: "We have stressed to the governments of both countries the need to solve the dispute in a friendly way through negotiation, and have urged them to avoid intimidation and threats of unilateral action."

The important thing, said the gentlemen at Foggy Bottom, was to keep up the flow of Iranian oil, the prime source of supply for Britain and the rest of Europe. If Teheran refused to collaborate with London, they added, U.S. oil technicians would not be available to run the Iranian oil installations—as the Iranian government had hoped.