What benefit Iran’s Premier Mossadegh will achieve for his country by breaking diplomatic relations with England is mystifying. No oil will be produced, no oil has been produced for the many months of the discussion. And since, to a major extant, Iranian national revenues are dependent on oil production, Iran’s already desperate financial plight can only further deteriorate.

The only advantage Iran’s petulant Prime Minister can possibly attain is a sense of satisfaction of vengeance for himself and his fanatical followers. If the Prime Minister by his act hopes to find in Washington a solution for Iran’s oil difficulties with Great Britain, he is due for disappointment. The United States has made plain its general support of the British position, which is a reasonable one of demanding compensation, through judicial or arbitral proceedings, for nationalized properties of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

There is evidence that the Iranian government, the Parliament and the mass of the population do not want to become a satellite of the Soviet Union. Yet it seems certain that the Communists will find numerous opportunities to advance communism’s cause in the deteriorating state of the Iranian masses and faltering morale in Iran’s governmental services.

Mossadegh’s policies seem to have brought him inexorably and inevitably to the point of no return. Unless he promptly reverses himself—and there is considerable doubt that he could now do so, even if he wanted to, without risking his own downfall—by moving immediately to get Iranian oil into production again he will plunge his country rapidly into a state of national suicide.