NY Paper Calls for Mossadegh’s Elimination

March 2, 1953 — The Brooklyn Eagle


The Mossadegh Project | March 17, 2013                    


Though the anti-Mossadegh credentials of influential New York newspaper The Brooklyn Eagle (aka The Brooklyn Daily Eagle) were never in question, even they had to concede the legitimacy of nationalization and acknowledge Mossadegh’s integrity and leadership abilities in this 1953 editorial. Yet not to worry — the piece concludes with a chilling, Mafia-like call for the Premier to be “eliminated” from the scene.




Mossadegh’s Reckless Game Rules Him Out

For the last two years events in Iran have been building up to the crisis now at hand. An impoverished, misgoverned nation has been brought to the verge of violent revolution by a Premier determined that his policies shall prevail, regardless of consequences.

Premier Mohammed Mossadegh has been playing with fire ever since assuming office. The nationalizing of the oil industry, which is virtually the only major source of wealth that Iran possesses, may not have been wise but it was legitimate. It was also politically expedient in view of the spirit of intense nationalism prevailing in the country and throughout the Near and the Middle East.

Mossadegh’s tragic mistake has been in his determination to browbeat the British into the acceptance of ignominious terms for settlement of the Anglo-Iranian oil dispute and his contemptuous rejection of successive American proposals for compromise.

Apparently, the Premier under-estimated the loyalty of the people to the Shah and over-estimated his own popularity with the masses. Violent rioting and an angry mob battering at his door, causing him to flee in his pajamas and seek refuge in the Parliament Building, have brought home to Mossadegh a realization that he has followed a course of folly.

The crisis has enhanced the prestige of the Shah, who has acceded to the appeal of his people that he remain in his country. It has demonstrated also that Premier Mossadegh, notwithstanding his integrity and his unique powers, is a millstone around the necks of his countrymen and must be eliminated from public life.


Truman and Mossadegh’s First Messages on Iran Oil Dispute (1951)
President Truman and Premier Mossadegh's First Messages on Iran Oil Dispute (1951)

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Related links:

Time Favors Mossadegh on OilThe Herald Statesman (Yonkers, NY), March 27, 1953

Joseph Stalin Should Have Been TIME’s 1951 Man of the Year | Schenectady Gazette (1952)

Iran Premier’s Stubbornness Brings CrisisThe Brooklyn Eagle - September 12, 1951



MOSSADEGH t-shirts — “If I sit silently, I have sinned”

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