Attitude Adjustment
August 21, 1952 — The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Mossadegh Project | August 24, 2015                    


An ignorant editorial in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Thursday, Aug. 21, 1952.

On Sept. 12, 1952, The Tyrone Daily Herald of Tyrone, Pennsylvania (about 110 miles east of Pittsburgh) featured this very same piece, their lead and sole editorial, under their own masthead, as if it was theirs.




Saving Iran

THE American and British governments are reported at loggerheads on what should be done to prevent Iran from being lost to the Reds.

But can anything be done to save a country which is bent upon self-destruction, as Iran seems to be?

The rival American and British formulas are the old, familiar ones. The British would muddle along, letting bad matters become worse, in the hope that Premier Mossadegh will be replaced by a stronger man with whom they can do business.

This has been the British attitude since the outset of the controversy and the one which led them into their present blind alley.

The American plan likewise has been tried and found wanting.


It is to supply Mr. Mossadegh with money to keep his government in operation in the hope that, given time, the aged Premier and his followers may regain their sanity.

★ ★ ★

We’ve been helping Iran with money and free advice for a quarter of a century, with nothing but kicks and bruises to show for it. We are doing more now than ever before, yet American prestige is at an all time low.

But seemingly the idea will not die that we can do anything with money.

Between his fainting and crying spells, Mossadegh used the Communists and the religious fanatics to expel the British.

Then when both of these vicious groups turned their guns upon the United States for no reason at all, the Premier didn’t make as much as a gesture to restrain such attacks.

Yet this is the thin reed the State Department would prop up with our money to save his country from the very elements he has allowed free rein.

The British formula impresses us as the better since it costs nothing, for whichever viewpoint prevails, the side which yields probably will be able to say, “We told you so.”


70th Anniversary of TIME’s Man of the Year Article
Challenge of the East: TIME's 1951 Man of the Year Mohammad Mossadegh

Search MohammadMossadegh.com



Related links:

Iran’s Opportunity | The Morning News, October 7, 1952

Blackmail in Iran | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sept. 27, 1952

Iran May Be Lost | U.S. editorial, August 13, 1952



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

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