Diplomacy by Blackmail

The familiar deep voice of Premier Mohammed Mossadegh poured out from Radio Teheran one afternoon last week. For 90 minutes the wily old man rambled over the 19 months of Britain-Iranian oil negotiations, then reached his climax: "Iran has done her best, but the British government always obstructed a settlement. They [the British] have thus forced Iran to cut relations with them."

The long-expected rupture of diplomatic relations was here at last. Or was it? London had apparently already accepted it as inevitable. Replying earlier in the week to a note from Mossadegh demanding $56 million at once as his price for resuming stalled negotiations, the British called his demands "unreasonable and unacceptable." Then the British Foreign Office, in that final diplomatic gesture of despair, issued a white paper on Iran, to get its own side on the record. It spoke bluntly of Mossadegh's "inaccurate statements" and "misrepresentations."

The world got set for Mossy's next move: kicking out the British charge d'affaires. After all, some weeks before, the Iranian Foreign Ministry had borrowed from the British embassy library a book on the complicated protocol of severing diplomatic relations, and still had not returned the book. Soon it became clear that Mossadegh was stalling. He did not really want to break off diplomatic relations; he just hoped that the West (meaning the U.S.), shocked by his radio statement, would break down and come through with a good offer. It was the old Mossadegh game again: diplomacy by threat of suicide.

The U.S. State Department was indeed trying to find some way to extricate the old man. It had drawn up plans to set up a U.S.-dominated international oil company to purchase and market Iran's oil. The new company would advance Teheran about $100 million and accept repayment in Iranian oil. Once oil began to flow, the British-owned Anglo-Iranian would be paid for its expropriated properties with $300 million worth of Iranian oil. At this late date, there was little chance that either Iran or Britain would be interested.

From the U.S. official closest to the Iranian oil crisis for the longest time, Henry Grady, U.S. ambassador to Teheran for 14 months, came an undiplomatically candid comment on the diplomatic break. "Had Britain and the U.S. backed [General Ali] Razmara, the former Iranian Prime Minister who was a friend of the West and who was fighting the nationalization movement, this present situation would not have developed," Grady said in San Francisco. "Nor would Razmara have been assassinated.

"During my tenure 1 made at least half a dozen recommendations, all of which were either ignored or flatly turned down by our Government, under British influence and insistence. I think this tragedy can be laid at the feet of Mr. Acheson."

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