Real Talk

January 6, 1952 — The Utica Observer-Dispatch


The Mossadegh Project | July 16, 2015                    


After ex-Ambassador Henry Grady wrote a blunt critique of Anglo-American policy toward Iran in The Saturday Evening Post (What Went Wrong in Iran?, January 5, 1952), The Utica Observer-Dispatch produced this sympathetic editorial.




More Sour Diplomacy

Another nail has been driven into the signboard displaying to the world the ineptness of the United States State Department from the days of F.D.R. on down. [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] This one was given an eager pound by Henry F. Grady, former U.S. Ambassador to Iran, who was there when the British oil fight broke out and who set in on efforts to patch up the mess.

Grady declares he feels strongly that American-British cooperation is necessary “for the welfare of the world” and he only wants to be constructive. He hopes the Churchill return to power may restore some of the common view he thinks needed between Washington and London. [Winston Churchill]

The Iranian fight, which led directly to the Egyptian rebellion, was, he declares in a Saturday Evening Post article, “unnecessary”. In spite of obvious value of Iran to Russia, he points out, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company went ahead without check to Downing Street or Washington to stir up a dangerous situation. And the United States, giving promise of economic aid in Iran, was slow to provide it. This gave our Middle East enemies a chance to say we don’t live up to pledges.

As Grady sees it, we have given away American money to places “not nearly so strategic” as Iran. The British bobbled their arrangements until they precipitated the present nasty problems. And neither nation has so far shown a real effort to straighten it all out. So a man who was there reports “I find it impossible to understand American policy toward Iran.”



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Related links:

‘Mossy’ and the Money | Utica Observer-Dispatch, November 20, 1951

Wrong Address | June 11, 1951 editorial

Oil Management Plan | letter to The Binghamton Press, July 6, 1951



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

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