Both Great Britain and Iran have asked the United States to intervene and use its “good offices” to help settle the oil nationalization problem without bloodshed. The United States can do nothing else but accept.

But we should no longer back up British policy in Iran. We should face the clear facts that Iran will not submit to force or threats, and that Britain likewise cannot back down and run away. Such a course would undermine Britain’s whole position in the Middle East.

We should insist that Britain accept the principle of full nationalization of the oil industry. We should offer to supply technicians to run the complicated oil industry until others can replace them, if the British should refuse to do so under nationalization. We should tell Iran that while we agree that a sovereign nation has a right nationalize its industries, we do not agree that this can or should be done without providing just compensation and strict guarantees of fair treatment.

It would be stupid and unrealistic to permit fighting to break out in Iran when the Communists in Russia are waiting eagerly to come in and pick up the pieces. The United States must use all its power and prestige to prevent such a calamity or Iran will go the way of China.

Neither Britain nor Iran wants to fight. Neither will gain from a fight. It is up to this country to provide the common sense answers that will prevent a fight. Americans may only pray that Secretary of State Acheson will rise above his past mistakes and meet this challenge to American diplomacy with decisiveness, courage, common sense and speed. It may soon be too late. [Dean Acheson was widely blamed for “losing” China.]

To the Editor of The Star:

Your editorial of September 27, "Stop Fighting in Iran," is one of the very few I have seen in the American press to have faced the Iranian situation with realism and common sense.

One cannot pass accurate judgment on the Iranian oil move unless he understands the nature of such a move. To be brief, the Iranian action is primarily a vehicle for gaining control of the country. Iranians want to stop British interference in internal affairs. Before the oil nationalization, Britain was aware of the fact that if the Iranian public will is to be the determining factor in the country, Britain’s huge profits from the Iranian oil will be in peril. Therefore, she was following a policy of status quo in Iran. This meant the British backing of a few aristocrats who were ruling the country for their selfish ends. This fact is admitted by many British authorities.

The Iranian oil move should not be labeled as contrary to common sense, but should be praised and backed as the emancipation of a people.

The Iranians are firm in their stand, as firm as the Americans were in their declaration of independence. It further indicatesthat the Iranian move is as much against Russian as against British intervention, because it is nationalistic.

In 1944 Iran refused to give Russia an oil concession.

In the eyes of not only the Iranians but all those peoples who have experienced a similar fate, the backing by any country of the present British policy in Iran is tantamount to endorsing an imperialism which has no place in the present free world.

A British use of force in Iran would bring about not only war and Communism in that country but it would with all probability involve the entire Middle East and finally the world. I commend your judgment that “we should no longer back up British policy in Iran.”

To come to today’s immediate issue, from the beginning the British technicians were given free choice by Iran either to work for the National Iranian Oil Company or to leave the country. Many of them have gone. At present about 350 of them are still in Abadan, ordered to stay there by the British government. Meanwhile, hundreds of non-British Western technicians have applied for jobs in the nationalized oil industry. But their case is uncertain and the British technicians have blocked the way. The case of the British technicians should be settled.

Iran never has contemplated confiscating British installations. In fact she has incorporated into her nationalization law even the arrangement for payments. The oil nationalization law reads “should the Company make its claim for compensation an excuse to forestall prompt delivery, the government may deposit up to of the current income, less cost of production, in the Bank Melli or any bank acceptable to both parties to secure the claim.”

JAVAD VAFA.
Indiana University,
Bloomington.