Danger Zone

October 18, 1951 — The Jamestown Post-Journal


The Mossadegh Project | December 26, 2021                 


An editorial on Middle East turmoil from The Jamestown Post-Journal newspaper in New York state.




Peace in Balance

Never since the last great war has the world’s peace hung so gravely in the balance as now. It would be folly to refuse to face the situation.

Egypt, breaking two existing treaties with Great Britain, rejects a proposal by the Western Powers to internationalize the Suez Canal, declares that the British troops guarding that vital waterway will be thrown out, and speaks of a Jehad, a holy Moslem war. [jihad]

Ali Liaquat Khan, Prime Minister of Pakistan, is assassinated in the unruly province of Rawalpindi, in northeast Pakistan, near Kashmir, where Indian troops have for two years been facing Pakistani forces with the continuous menace of hostilities so imminent that the United Nations has been vainly trying to effect a settlement. There Moslems face Hindus. In Egypt, Moslems menace the civilization of the West.

In New York City, the aged Premier Mossadegh of Iran tells the U.N. Security Council that it has no jurisdiction to deal with Iran’s violation of the treaty with Britain and with the confiscation of the great Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, more than half of the stock of which is held in the United Kingdom. “We will not be coerced, whether by foreign governments or by international authorities,” declared the Iranian Premier.

Taken by itself, the Iranian issue would not eventuate in armed hostilities. But that country also is a Moslem land. Add the Arab Moslem world and the Pakistani Moslem state, and the prospects are alarming. Not many months ago the chief of the Pakistani armed forces headed a group bent on overthrowing Liaquat and making war on India for Kashmir, now held by India, creating a situation which the intransigence of Prime Minister Nehru of India has made it impossible to settle.

The British Government has announced that it will not yield to force. British troops will remain to guard the Suez Canal and Britain’s treaty rights in the Sudan will be protected. The few battalions of British Egyptians and Sudanese in the Sudan are under British command, and the British Governor-General announces that any attempt by Egypt to seize the state will be resisted.

The issue presented by the whole situation is not one that concerns Great Britain alone. It concerns and menaces the civilization of all Western Europe and the United States. Sole control of the Suez Canal, not only the lifeline of Britain but of all Christian nations, by countries with retarded civilizations and culture, would mean the eventual loss of the whole Near East to Moslem domination, with eventual expropriation of European properties along the line followed by Iran.

The events of the last few years have shown that good faith, observance of obligations and common honesty in international dealings are concepts becoming less honored by the Near East and approaching the pattern of Communist Russia and her satellites.


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Related links:

Anarchy in the East | Oct. 1951 editorial on Liaquat Ali Khan

Sore Need For The First Team | Santa Cruz Sentinel, Oct. 18, 1951

Iran Army True to Shah | Jamestown Post-Journal, April 15, 1953



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

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