"To Hell"

Iran's lower house of Parliament, the Majlis, was transformed into one of the strangest lodging houses in history. In one wing, six actors and three actresses rehearsed a French play called Robe Rouge for presentation in the Majlis gardens. The production was originally scheduled for Teheran's Saadi Theater, but Mossadegh's nationalist hoodlums, suspecting something leftist about the theater, had wrecked it. The Majlis, traditional refuge from political persecution, was the only safe place left for the players.

In another wing, pajama-clad Jamal Imami, a wealthy, uncompromising right-wing Deputy sat on the edge of a cot and explained to a British newsman: "The only possible solution is for this government to be overthrown. We shall stay here until this is achieved." A tray of dirty dishes and a thermos bottle perched on a nearby window ledge. Servants strolled through the building bearing food and bedrolls for the 30 editors and Deputies who had taken refuge in the Majlis from the nationalist mob.

The editors clustered around a stove in one room, writing editorials and giving orders to staff men who slipped in to see them. They sniffed nosegays and munched bonbons sent in by admirers. Personal bodyguards came & went with visitors to the sit-ins.

One day the Majlis met, whereupon partisans of both sides scrapped in the gallery and chased each other through the halls. As soon as soldiers butted them apart, the Deputies in the chamber below began hooting and slamming desks, while outside a gang of Mossadegh mobsters beat on the Majlis gates and screamed, "Death to Mossadegh's opponents." When order was restored, Oppositionist Imami yelled at Mossadegh: "Go on outside and talk to your stabbers." "I will go . . ." said Mossadegh, near tears. "... to hell!" said Imami.

Mossadegh's No. 2 man, Deputy Premier Hussein Fatemi, sternly warned Iran's old oil customers (including Great Britain) that they had exactly ten days to resume buying Iranian oil. After that, he implied, Iran would sell to Russia and her satellites. The threat was about as empty as Iran's treasury. The West no longer hangs on Iran's oil.

By boosting production in other Mid-East fields and speeding worldwide refinery output, most of the West's deficit has already been replaced. The only way Iran could ship its oil to the Reds would be by tanker. As of the last count, Russia and satellites have exactly 23 of the world's 1,955 oceangoing tankers.

The Mohammedan Koran sternly forbids the use of alcoholic beverages, but through the centuries, Moslem Iran drank freely and happily of the fermented grape, and produced a bibulous poet, Omar Khayyam. Last week, in Omar Khayyam's homeland, the Majlis turned on liquor as though it were the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. itself, voted for prohibition.

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