Oil Burns

Azerbaijan means "the land of fire." Last week the province of Azerbaijan, in northwestern Iran, was in the heart of a fierce political fire.

In Teheran a Government spokesman announced that Armenians and others in Azerbaijan had rebelled against the Government; the insurgents were being armed from Russian trucks; the situation was "dangerous and painful." Leaders of the uprising were members of the new, separatist Democratic Party, an offshoot of the old Communist Tudeh Party.

In the background of this explosion were 1) Moscow, 2) oil. Ever since the Iranian Majlis (Parliament) curtly rejected Russia's claim for oil rights in northern Iran and forbade any Government to negotiate such rights till after the war (TIME, Dec. 18, 1944), Russia had been needling the Iranian Government. The Azerbaijan revolt looked like the substitution of action for frustrated diplomacy.

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