Flora Lewis on Iran and Oil

A Psychological Diagnosis of Persians (1951)


Arash Norouzi

The Mossadegh Project | October 20, 2024                  


Flora Lewis in 1965 Distinguished American journalist Flora Lewis (1922-2002) was a reporter, foreign correspondent and columnist. In a career spanning 50 years, she wrote for The Associated Press, The Washington Post and The New York Times and authored four books.

Lewis wrote a number of articles on the Iran oil crisis, including this one at age 29, written for The Observer (London), as published in The Ottawa Journal on September 18, 1951.

Canadian media archive




It’s Much More Than Just Oil To the Persians

Written by Flora Lewis for The London Observer and the Ottawa Journal


TEHERAN.

The essential problem in the Persian oil dispute, and the chief obstacle to a solution, is that to the Persians it is not really an oil dispute at all but a dramatic crisis in their internal politics.

Mr. Stokes painstakingly put together a set of proposals aimed at satisfying every expressed Persian wish and complaint to the utmost point compatible with the minimum needs of British interests. [Richard Stokes] He tried logic, cajolery, and bluff business heartiness. But to his surprise, the Persians scarcely listened to his careful explanations. There was no common language, because the Persians, while they spoke about oil, were not actually thinking of it.

What, then, were they thinking of? The answer is complex and confused. Persian aims, although expressed in urgent and violent terms, are not based on any clear philosophy. The easiest aims to understand are those of certain elements in Persia’s upheaval with which Mr. Stokes was not required to deal directly.

THE Communists, for example, know what they want, and they are preparing carefully to reap the harvest that is ripening for them.

Abolghassem Kashani, the fierce little mullah who has arrived at a point of dominance in Persia’s non-hierarchical religious system, seems, to know what he is after, too. [Ayatollah Kashani] His calculated xenophobia is aimed at reaffirming the still powerful feudal system. He is close to the Prime Minister, Dr. Moussadek, and through the part he played in staging the assassination of General Razmara, had much to do with bringing Dr. Moussadek’s National Front party to power. Yet he shows no hesitation in publicly threatening the Premier with “Razmara’s fate”, should there be any concession to the hated foreigners. [Ali Razmara, killed March 7, 1951]

Dr. Moussadek has no superhuman physical courage; he is clearly mindful of what terrorism can do. [Premier Mohammad Mossadegh] But it would be a mistake to attribute the failure of the latest efforts for an agreement to sheer fear of the terrorists. There is another more positive force, strongly felt but imperfectly expressed. It is a desire for a moral renovation of a country that has decayed into apathy and inertia. Dr. Moussadek and his National Front supporters have the exhilarating feeling that they are beginning to achieve the rejuvenation of their nation. Cold cash for oil and dull legalistic formulas for running industries are prosaic, and unworthy of concentrated attention, compared with this thrilling mystique. It would seem like a denial of Dr. Moussadek’s vaguely messianic mission if he were to reach a reasonable solution of the oil crisis straight away.

PROBABLY he would not like to come to a final break with Britain; and certainly not to an open break with the West as a whole. No doubt he quite honestly regrets that the negotiations have broken down — and yet he could not allow them to succeed.

There are, from the Persian point of view, several possible ways out of this self-imposed purgatory. One is that the elections which must constitutionally be held sometime between November 23 and February 23, 1952, may, if the oil crisis persists, produce a quite new kind of Parliament, a Majlis that represents more than a handful of self-interested individuals. If a settlement is reached before the elections, the same old gang will almost certainly get back. A renaissance of the Majlis might satisfy Dr. Moussadek that he had got a national renaissance under way, in which case he could-gladly relax and seek an agreement.

Another path which Persians see to their hazy goal — and it must be emphasized that these are Persian theses — is to run the oil industry alone for a year or two. The leaders understand that it would not be run properly, but they think they could handle it long enough to make their countrymen feel they had won their spurs. Then, they feel, they could ask the foreigners to come back without killing the sense of purposeful progress they had aroused.

Mr. Stokes and Mr. Harriman repeated until they were out of breath that the facts of oil production and marketing make this thesis a fantasy, but they were not really believed. [Averell Harriman] The Persians are convinced that the Western world so badly needs the oil that if they only have the patience to hold out the West will come to get it on Persian terms. They do not believe that British technicians want to leave permanently. They do not understand that the Anglo-American alliance is more important to the two countries concerned than Persian oil, and that a wedge cannot be driven between them on this score. And lastly, they do not believe that they are running a serious risk of Communist conquest since they feel sure that, in the last resort, the West would, step in and save them.

This is an imposing collection of misapprehensions. Its stubborn persistence can be explained only on the ground that the Persians are caught in a maze of fascinating dreams which excludes clear thinking about exterior forces.

DIRE things could happen as a result of the failure of the Harriman mission and the Stokes venture, but they most probably will not at least not soon. Probably the Persian economy will continue gliding downhill and Persian business men, as they feel the sharpening pinch, may get restive.

The landed classes may begin to worry more realistically about where the popular movement which at first attractively diverted attention from internal reforms, is leading them. And the unhappy poor may tire of the endless, fruitless confusion. In that case, new negotiations will be attempted.

What London and Washington now have to decide is whether this waiting game is likely to produce results before Persia so weakens herself that chaos and communism loom up as the inevitable alternatives to outright occupation, or whether a quick shock treatment might in the end prove no more risky.

This is a tremendously difficult decision which can be made only on the basis of guesses. And it is no help to know that a wrong guess could be disastrous for the free world.


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