Bleeding Out

November 20, 1951 — The Goulburn Evening Post


The Mossadegh Project | June 24, 2022                     


Lead and sole editorial in The Goulburn Evening Post of Goulburn, New South Wales, Australia (established in 1870).

Australian media archive on Iran




The Goulburn Evening Post

WHAT’S NEXT IN PERSIA?

The complaint by the Deputy Persian Premier (Dr. Husseen Fatemi) [sic] that Mr. Churchill is “deliberately blocking” settlement of the Anglo-Persian oil dispute is in keeping with the state of mind of the Persians. [Hossein Fatemi, Winston Churchill] Having cut their own throats and now, having begun to feel the effects of the suicide act involving a bleeding to death among other features, the rulers in Teheran are turning again on the British. When the British refused to yield it was the foreigner who was to blame. Having got out and having done all the things the Persians wanted them to do, it is still the British who are to blame. Premier Mossadeq should be nearly home by now. Maybe he will spend a long time with Farouk of Egypt, [King Farouk] where the two will be comparing notes. Farouk will be intensely interested to know how it was that the British came to heel so easily in Persia, in contradistinction to manner in which they have dug their heels in along the Suez Canal. According to the Persian time-table, the British, by now, should be well out of Ismailia, Suez, Port Said and all along the canal. Mossadeq may be able to give Farouk some points before he tries to square up with his own people who, by now, are beginning to feel to the full the consequences of getting rid of the British by the exercise of dishonesty under a title, nationalisation, that had such a strong moral appeal to the Government then in power in Britain. That it was open-handed robbery is plain enough to the ordinary individual and that the then British Government gave the greatest example of cowardice in Britain’s history was also obvious, although judging by the election figures over there, about half the people of Britain to-day seem to like that kind of thing. So far as Persia is concerned the critical stage is near at hand. Mossadeq is returning from the United States empty handed. When he kicked the British out, Mossadeq promised the people that with the property he had stolen, the oil works he had seized and the ships he had grabbed — while under Attlee’s orders, British war ships silently looked on — he was going to make them all wealthy. [Clement Attlee] Last week, there was enough cash left to pay the civil service for a month. They used to get nearly £2,000,000 a month from oil revenue — and that is a lot of money in Persia — but now they get nothing. The crisis will give the answer to two questions. The first is whether there are any sane people in Persia, people who ever grew up and the second is whether or not, the Russians, in their usual style, will march in. It certainly looks, whatever the outcome, as if Mossadeq’s days are over. He himself is in no hurry to return. A possible successor is Ahmed Qavam, who sold the Russians once before. But he is a man of 76 and if Western hopes are resting on him, it is easy to conceive they will be disappointed. [Ahmad Ghavam]


Richard Stokes’ Second Thoughts on Iranian Oil (1951 Letter)
Richard Stokes' Letter to Clement Attlee, Aga Khan Concurs (1951)

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Related links:

Amb. Henry Grady’s Letter to The Washington Post, March 20, 1953

Statement on AIOC Mission to Iran | House of Lords, June 20, 1951

Iran and Its Oil | December 20, 1951 editorial



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

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