September 13, 1951 — Reuters
| The Mossadegh Project | April 8, 2024 |
Reuters correspondent Alex Valentine on Iran and its dispute with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. He was British and about 27 years old at the time.
One Question But Many
Answers In Teheran Quiz
By ALEX VALENTINE
TEHERAN (Reuter). — Everyone here today is playing a great new guessing game.
There is only one question in this popular pastime but a variety of answers.
The question is: “How much longer can he last?” The answers: Anything from “only a matter of hours” to “for ever and ever.”
“He” meanwhile appears to be the only person in this scheming, intriguing capital, who remains indifferent to the game. Propped up on his sickbed pillows, the silk-pyjamaed figure of Mohammed Mussadeq, the Prime Minister, continues to steer the Persian nation on its course with a supreme display of unconcern.
Round the gaunt frame of the 76-year-old Prime Minister rages a constant battle of advisers.
“FUEL” SUPPLIES
Some continue to stress that at normal running speed the Persian ship has only three months’ “fuel” left in the near-empty Treasury coffers. These argue that Mussadegh is now committed to paying a £12,000 daily wage bill to Persian oil workers, although oil income has dried up since last March.
Others, in near-panic, ask what is going to happen when the coffers finally run dry. What, they want to know, will Mussadeq do then.
A few loyal supporters of the small but well organised National Front party continue to back the Prime Minister fervently. They share his confidence that all will be well in the end. Like Mossadeq, they do not know how it will work out but they are sure that it will.
The diplomats here, trying desperately to formulate clear reports for their home governments, flit from party to party, from Persian to Persian, trying to find some of the answers. At the end of their rounds, they are more confused than at the beginning.
“Mossadeq,” they are told on the one hand, “Mossadeq is almost finished. It is only a matter of days, perhaps even hours.”
“Nonsense,” say others. “All nonsense. He is stronger than ever before. He can go on for ever like this.”
It is certainly easy for the Persian propagandist to build up a good case for the ageing Prime Minister. It runs something like this: “He said be would nationalise oil—and he has. The British delegations have come here in an attempt to make him compromise. He has refused. The Persian nation is today for the first time the masters of its own destinies.”
RIDING ON WAVE
Until the effect of having no more oil revenue is felt at a low level, there seems to be ne reason why Mossadeq should not continue to ride on this wave.
The Teheran taxi-driver, the wood-cutter in the Alburz mountains and the carpet-makers of Isfahan are paying no more today for their bread than they did three or four months ago. This is a country where politics hinge on food prices rather than upon abstract issues of principle. [Alborz Mountains, Esfahan]
By cutting down on long term social expenditure, by paring non-essential imports, by scraping together a series of loans, the nation can probably carry on jerkily for three or four months without disturbing the taxi-driver or the wood-cutter or the carpet-maker.
Within that time, Mossadeq and his his supporters are convinced, the British will have “come to their senses” and will be willing to settle on more generous terms than those offered by the Stokes mission in August.
The arguments of the British Lord Privy Seal [Richard Stokes] and of President Truman’s special representative, Mr. Averell Harriman, that the British offer was commercially sound and generous, have gone unheeded here. So, too, have the arguments that Persia is not technically capable of running her own oil industry.
Mossadeq and his advisers remain adamant that not only can they get better financial terms out of the British but that they can also control the running of the oil industry.
COULD MAKE GOOD
The Persians are well aware that Britain, and for that matter the Western World, is not dealing with this dispute on a purely commercial basis. Although it would be a serious blow to be permanently deprived of Persian oil, the West could within a few years make good the loss.
The Persians know that the West is desperately anxious not to create in Persia a political vacuum into which the ever-watchful Russian neighbour would move. Even if Russia did not contemplate physical invasion, there is always the 70,000 strong Communist party here — and this is the nation’s best organised political force.
The problem of Britain at the moment appears to be to try to strike a delicate balance — to wait long enough for economic hardship to cause an amelioration in the Persian attitude but not so long that she falls prey to Communism.
Mossadeq seems prepared meanwhile to flirt delicately with both sides although he is undoubtedly aware that should the West lose the battle for his affections, such phrases as “Persian independence” could no longer have any meaning.
He refuses resolutely to recognise any of the more practical considerations.
He has agreed on several occasions with American experts who told him that he could not run the oil industry on his own—then gone ahead and attempted it just the same.
He concurs enthusiastically with statements that prolonged closure of the oil refineries must inevitably bring economic and political chaos to Persia—yet has forced them to close by rejecting British demands for British management.
He has stated publicly that in the last resort he would sooner the oil ran into the sea than let the British back into Persia. But he agrees at the same time that Persia would be the greatest sufferer under this policy.
It is a peculiar state of mind which baffles the outsider trying to apply normal processes of reasoning to it, and which is consistently inconsistent and logically illogical.
Related links:
Paradoxical Mossadeq Won Over Persians | Philip Toynbee (Oct. 1951)
Iran Disillusioned | Buffalo Evening News, Sept. 17, 1951
Britain Requests UNSC Hear Iran Oil Dispute, Sept. 28, 1951
MOSSADEGH t-shirts — “If I sit silently, I have sinned”
